By far, the evilest
villain in the film Parasite turns out to have been the patriarch of the
parasitic family. Not only does he do nothing to stop his family from
committing the original con, acting as far less than the stoic source of moral
fortitude and equanimity which his initial character foil, Mr. Park, exhibits,
but his profound envy for this gentleman sparks a neurosis which, over a very
short time, escalates into the most senseless act of murder. It is by no
mistake that the two men wear the feathers of Native Americans at the climax of
the film, for what they represent is that rage which, either robbed of
civilizing grace or having never seen it, lashes out with infantile destruction
at the alien world of wealth and sophistication. What the patriarch of the
parasitic family represents is self-entitlement, expressed as the raw will to
destroy that which it desires. Mr. Kim wants to live Mr. Park’s life; he even
goes so far as to covet the wife. Yet it is his negligence, his heavy-handed
arrogance, one alien to seasoned criminals, (the likes of which we see in Breaking
Bad, for instance, or even Death Note,) that dooms his family, for
when they have the perfect opportunity to plan their grand ascension to the
plane of wealth instead they waste it, pilfering the secrets of their hosts,
intoxicating themselves in a manner only native to the unaristocratic. They
know neither the reserve to leave the door unanswered when the old housekeeper
comes to knock, nor do they feel the shame and the disgust which would in such
a matter warrant sympathy for her and her husband. It is because they fail to
answer for their sins against the family, creeping about within the dark, that
Kim bears witness to the act of love between Park and his blushing wife. Park
and his wife are also envious, their act of love modeled after some fantasy of rundown
life, but it’s a fantasy that has been planted by the daughter of the Kims, and
they do nothing but to act it out in what they falsely think is privacy. The
Parks are kind enough to hide their civilized disgust when they discover
panties in the back of their own car, and it is nothing short of this that
lands the parasitic patriarch his gig at the expense of someone younger and
more qualified, if not yet “needy”, so to speak. Yet how can this Mr. Kim
deplore them for what they should say in privacy? It is offense to which he
only walks by his own secret path, rather than a directed insult. What he hates
is not what his host DOES, but rather what the host PERCEIVES, and in that
rests the seeds of a psychosis, for the narcissist, refusing to perceive his
own foul stench, hates most the thought that others turn their noses up at it
behind his back. It is for this reason that Mr. Kim winds up living down in the
crawlspace, in the place of the same maniac who nearly killed his son and
stabbed the hosts nearly to death. It seems that all is lost during the
struggle between the recluse and the Kims’ son, but as it turns out it’s the
early victim who will live to tell the tale. At that moment when the ritual of
decency is interrupted by an act of madness, Mr. Park behaves the most
responsibly, lifting the car keys from beneath the carcass of the man who
nearly killed his wife and child. There is no question at this moment that Park
is the Better Man, but as the stench of his assailant fills his nostrils Mr.
Kim is so reminded of this stark superiority between them that he is possessed,
as if by Cain, to kill the father right before the wife. Kim’s wife and son
survive, but at that moment the Parks’ lives are over, where before there had
been yet a feeble hope at dignity and even healing. Let us not forget that all
of this went on without the Park’s say-so or knowledge; they had no idea,
thinking themselves kind. Their one sin was living that one life which all the
others wanted; their one error was permitting others even partial access to
this life. A rational man would rejoice, knowing that at least someone kindly had
been able to enjoy what he was yet to know. Yet madness works in other ways.
Kim’s lust for “simple” Mrs. Park is clear when he first holds her hand, and
hearing Mr. Park fondle her breast and all the while denounce his stink
engenders jealousy the likes of which not even I can fathom. A True Man would
sooner have confessed to all his sins in that one moment than to let the ruse
go on. But the coward had no recourse but to crawl back into poverty, a
circumstance that would arouse our sympathy but not our solidarity, for in that moment
it was chosen by the victim. Kim had the capacity for murder then, but he had
not the plan to do so, leaving it up to his son’s device. The women in the
family, by this point, came to recognize the lodgers underground as equals,
where before their senseless rivalry for ample resources had doomed them nearly
to exposure. Yet the lies the daughter wove came back to haunt them, for just
as the ladies of the family were ready to thus offer up their peace, the lady
of the Parks came carrying a cake which had been baked not just to celebrate the
birthday of her son but to help him to cope with trauma, a trauma fabricated by
the Kims. It’s in this moment that their son tries to murder the lodgers, all
for wanting what he had, just as his father kills their host for having only what
they wanted. Hence the madman becomes the latter foil.
[({Dm.A.A.)}]
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