In SUMMARY: Parasite.

The crowning irony of the film Parasite is that no one seems to understand it, including those who made it. Critics insist that it is about "Class". It is not. It is about sociopathy and envy. Its leading characters are not mere anti-heroes but the very antithesis of heroism. They want only to enjoy that same lifestyle which they deplore in others, and there is no depravity too low, no treachery too shocking, either towards the rich, the poor, or even to each other, that could stay their greedy hands. They not only CAN never acquire what they aspire to; they OUGHT NOT to.

From just a brief glimpse into their debauchery, we see the very decadent villains of old, from Don Giovanni to Jafar. We are reminded that, in Marxist Economics, exploitation is proportional to PROFIT. Those born into wealth need not leech off of anyone; it's rather the PROCESS of UPWARD MOBILITY which turns Capitalism into an Instrument of Evil. Though they may fantasize of turning into decent people, they absolutely devastate their innocent benefactors, ensuring that, were they ever to claw their way up even halfway to the top, they would have to maintain their power and position with an iron fist and a duplicitous tongue, perpetually looking over their shoulders while spinning at 360 degrees.

What do they deserve? What do they want? In either case, it's that which they destroy in those who HELP them. While the Parks do harbour some naïveté and even some contempt, they never act upon the latter; the men in the family, true to form and role, express outwardly suspicions which, in fact, they never act upon, and it is only for a PRIVATE resentment towards the Poor, one hardly as depraved and complex as the Kim Family's own web of lies, crimes, and secrets, that they are slaughtered brutally by maniacs in barbaric fashion, all while doing what anyone would WANT to do with wealth, were one conscientious: entertain friends, treat their children with love, and celebrate Life.

Decent people in the audience will empathize with the Parks; indecent people will root for the Kims, but by so doing they will want the Kims to BECOME the Parks, and it is only out of their extreme bias for the Kims that they will allow them to destroy the Parks because they think they cannot join them and are incapable of living THROUGH their happiness vicariously. It is almost as though one were entitled to tear down any life, no matter how pure and desirable, once one finds reason to believe that the Path to one's own attainment of such a Life is either too difficult or impossible.

It is for this reason that, had the wealthy Park family turned towards Evil and Oppressive Means, they would have been justified. Of course, we shall never know what course they would have taken had the Kims made matters "difficult" earlier on. The Kims maintain the delusion that the Parks are Good by way of ease and convenience, as do some of the less critically minded critics. Yet it ought to be transparent to us all that this theory has no basis. Wealth, though it may make moral behaviour easier, also renders IMMORAL behaviour that much harder to resist as a temptation, and perhaps the greatest tempter and the greatest privilege of all is the delusional state.

It’s not as though the Parks have any sensible recourse; the actual state of Korean Politics makes Marxist alternatives and uprisings laughable even to the POOREST characters in the play, who also prove most depraved. In Parasite, we witness a regression masquerading as progress, a “progress” which is little more than a homogenized intellectual apathy, in itself a bourgeois conceit. We have ourselves been all too pampered by stories wherein the Heroes work their way up from Poverty by Noble Means, while the Nobles, many of them Spiritually Impoverished, descend into despair by arrogance alone. Yet Parasite undoes what the Enlightenment achieved. Again the Nobles behave nobly and the Poor behave poorly, yet critics no longer cheer for the Nobles, since several generations of Nietzscheans and Eminem fans have drowned out the Voice of Decency.

[({R.G.)}]