If you haven’t seen Netflix’s Squid Game yet—well, what are you waiting for? If anything is a parable for our time, this is it. Too often meteoric cultural phenomena that purport to capture the zeitgeist fail to capture my interest, but this one is different. If you believe, as I do, that wealth inequality causes more than its share of economic, social, and psychological problems, this is the series for you.
The show follows a number of down-on-their-luck (i.e., heavily in-debt) characters who are convinced to play a series of children’s games for a multimillion-dollar prize. The catch? While the contests are based on kids’ games, they’re extremely dangerous—as in fatal.
The first game—red light, green light—leaves dozens of the original 456 contestants languishing in pools of their own blood right out of the gate … dead, but no longer in debt. It just gets more harrowing from there, as the poor and desperate contestants are encouraged to turn on each other—with deadly consequences—for a shot at a better life and to amuse their billionaire overseers. I know that happens every day in America, but this is a Korean show, so that puts a bit of a new wrinkle on our waking nightmare.
In one episode, a group of Western VIPs shows up to watch the carnage, and that’s where this fantastical tale meets our own grim reality (i.e., that’s where Trump comes in).
In an interview with IndieWire, Squid Game director Hwang Dong-hyuk said that one of the repulsive VIPs who get their kicks from the rampant bloodshed is decidedly Trumpian. And not just because he says obnoxious, ignorant, and stomach-churning things from underneath a solid-gold mask:
“I conceived of the theories for the show in 2008. At the time, there was the Lehman Brothers crisis; the Korean economy was badly affected and I was also economically struggling,” Dong-hyuk said in an interview with IndieWire via a translator. “Over the past 10 years, there were a lot of issues: There was the cryptocurrency boom, where people around the world, especially young people in Korea, would go all-in and invest all their money into cryptocurrencies. And there was the rise of IT giants like Facebook, Google, and in Korea, there’s Naver, and they are just restructuring our lives. It’s innovative but these IT giants also got very rich. And then Donald Trump became the president of the United States and I think he kind of resembles one of the VIPs in the Squid Game. It’s almost like he’s running a game show, not a country, like giving people horror. After all these issues happened, I thought it was about time that this show goes out into the world.”
If you’ve seen Squid Game, you probably know which VIP Dong-hyuk is talking about. If you haven’t—again, what are you waiting for? (It might even be worth subscribing to Netflix for a limited time just to watch this show. It’s that good—and that important. Though, be warned, it doesn’t scrimp on the bloodletting.)
Personally, I think it’s unfair to compare even fictional characters to Donald Trump. No one is that disgusting. His rally speeches make Chuck Grassley’s colonoscopy videos look like a Christmas Eve screening of Miracle on 34th Street.
Then again, after decades of Reaganomics and Reaganomics-lite, that repugnant creature was bound to pop out of its pod and start devouring the most vulnerable members of our society. The question is, when will we “players” stop fighting each other and focus on the real villains behind the scenes?
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.