Squid Game's Ending Fails Us and Itself on Purpose
The show's seemingly banal ending reminds us of the futility of individual action in confronting capitalist hegemony
*Note: this piece is particularly spoiler-ridden with respect to the last episode of season 1 of Squid Game. This is neither a review nor a synopsis of the show, and is directed at those who have watched it in its entirety (or if you don't care about spoiling the finale).
What would you do if you won the lottery?
The perennial question that for most of us translates into the adult version of 'what you would do if you ruled the world' tends to provoke some pretty predictable answers. I took to asking a liberal-minded person I know very well this question while we were specifically the topics of the forthcoming piece. My notes on their answers were as follows:
causes/foundations, organizations - dance troupes, home care, public schools, environmental causes, housing, mental health
-logistics of a program
-nonprofit/charity-industrial complex
-locus of influence (underprivileged neighborhoods)
-climate change
So in other words, climate change, poverty and/or economic inequality tend to be the sorts of hot-button issues that come to mind. But what stands out to me, as someone who works and writes in this domain, is the lack of impetus to try and use this newfound financial boon to effectuate anything political. Never mind that entire books have been written detailing the seedy underbelly of the charity and nonprofit sector, not even just progressively-minded political causes appear preeminent in people's minds (and yes, I understand this is anecdotal. Try it for yourself, asking without any pretense, and see what the person says). For example, it's less the Sunrise Movement than it is donating to the World Wildlife Foundation; less about starting or creating a PAC that might stand up to the National Association of Realtors, but rather donating to a housing nonprofit.
If the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he didn't exist, then perhaps the neoliberal era's greatest trick was convincing the world that the governments didn't exist. Color in the lines any way you'd like: it doesn't bode well for fighting evil.
Netflix's latest and greatest has people talking and it's a delight to see. Statistically speaking, it stands to reason that the bulk of viewers watching Squid Game are not radical leftists or socialists. Indeed, most American viewers are likely apolitical or otherwise socially liberal, and not necessarily critical of the system of capitalism that rules all of our lives. Yet the show continues to demonstrate its resonance with a mainstream audience to record-breaking effect. Whether it's just a tacit empathy, a feeling of self-reflection contained within the gruesome capitalist allegory, or whether there is some greater sense of solidarity felt among the huddled masses still fresh off a global pandemic and economic collapse, there is one thing that is clear: all is not well, people are afraid, pained and enraged and there are good reasons to be.
All this much is clear if you've seen even just a couple of episodes. The gameshow-like nature of the story lends itself to a digestible, repeating theme that crescendos into more violent and dramatic display as the show progresses. Episode 9, though, seems surprising in its banality. The show otherwise shows off sophisticated themes unlike that of even its predecessors in its subgenre like Hunger Games and Battle Royale: desperation and the limits of mercy, game theory and moral choice, and class exploitation all shine brilliantly throughout the show.
The ending though? Seemingly the standard good versus evil dichotomy, a return to a more rudimentary plot construction that bears a striking resemblance to the sorts of developments you'd find in American action films. Gi-hun, victorious and free from the crushing malevolence of the games, finds his way back to a familiar phone call with the familiar architects of the games he has just left. The arc of the narrative now bends towards a man versus society schematic where Gi-hun is set to square off against the shadowy, geometry-obsessed gamemakers in an attempt to end their heinous exploitation of the poor and destitute.
So...he's not going after the principal exploiters - the ones who drove those poor people to sign up for the games of their own free will? He's not actually tackling the overarching system of exploitation that drives so many people into depravity; rather, just the part that is too ostentatious about its exploitation?
Would it not be a better use of his newfound prize money (money that the subtitled version of the show explicitly makes clear that he didn't earn, but rather was "rewarded with" i.e. that he basically got lucky enough to win) to transform South Korea into a country that doesn't economically immiserate its citizens in the first place? The show sets itself in an only slightly-fictitious version of South Korea, painting the country as a neoliberal haven for Samsung and other corporations and oligarchs (called chaebol, or "rich families"). The real-world escalating debt crisis in South Korea takes center stage as the engine of much of the plot; the only dramatization being that they portrayed the country's healthcare system as slightly more American-looking (read: dysfunctional and predatory).
Gi-hun's backstory even tells us that he has firsthand experience dealing with the brutality of South Korean capitalists, as a strike-busting effort drove him out of his factory job of 10 years and killed his coworker. And this isn't ancient history within the scope of the show's conflict: one other contestant in the games was actively working in a factory until his greedy boss stiffed him of wages, and the old man supposedly in charge of financing the games, Il-nam, recalls the particular strike that Gi-hun had taken part in (and predictably did nothing to support, before or after).
The performative contradiction that lies herein is not shoddy writing or a lost plot; it is the whole picture of individual versus collective action. The neoliberal experiment has devastated our collective consciousness and reduced us to sole, feeble actors pushing up against a waterfall of capitalist hegemony. This is by design - just as the contradictions of Gi-hun's behavior and sentiments in the season finale are by design. In the dynamic of the gamemakers and the contestants, the only moments of the show where the latter have actual power over the former is when they assert their will in a collective effort to end their exploitation, namely, when they vote to end the games, which they can do at any point. This is the quintessential expression of power against the capitalists fomenting the death and mayhem throughout the games - power that was all but ceded when there was literally just one of them left. And now that one wants to take them all on by himself. In the final episode, Gi-hun didn't even bother to recruit the person he had 'spared' from the games; he merely took the card off of him and called the organization himself. Never mind whether that person would join his cause: if he was desperate enough to get slapped in the face repeatedly for some pocket change, wouldn't he find some way or another to wind up in the thrall of the games?
Gi-hun's own theory of humanity and goodness is itself dependent on a sense of collectivism that he ultimately does not follow. Earlier in the episode he confronts Il-nam once again, challenging him to a twisted bet of whether some passerby might help a houseless person they spot on the street within the hour of their conversation. Eventually someone does - and brings back the police to assist the houseless person. Presuming there's a paradigmatic difference between law enforcement in South Korea and the United States - where they don't brutalize the houseless as a matter of course in the former case - this development shows Gi-hun an example of collective action (namely, a taxpayer-funded social service) being the thing that saves the person in trouble. As it stands now where we are left off at the end of the season finale, Gi-hun has not yet contacted law enforcement about the Squid Games.
Neoliberalism wants us to believe that we can all be the sole heroes of ours stories. That we alone have the merit, the talent or skill or resolve to be successful in fixing the world around us. But Gi-hun didn't win the games on his own and he won't defeat them on his own, either. As a lesson to the rest of us, though, Squid Game is instructive. If individual action were truly a threat to those that exploit us, then perhaps they wouldn't be selling us narratives that so eagerly fetishize it.