Yep.
That's how I interpreted the ending. As long as the house (the structure of society) stands, there will always be people living upstairs and downstairs, and that the antagonism that comes from inequality will never cease.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Maureen Dowd of the NYT thinks that Parasite is about "con artists who invade an elegant house and wreak chaos" and that Trump should empathize
- Thread starter RastaMentality
- Start date
That's how I interpreted the ending. As long as the house (the structure of society) stands, there will always be people living upstairs and downstairs, and that the antagonism that comes from inequality will never cease.
They still exist as subservient to those who more or less own them. They may be making more money than before, but they aren't truly free.
It wasn't like, a mad cap comedy where they were 'faking' the work being done. The house was being cleaned, the kids were being tutored, the Parks were being driven around, etc.
Yes, even the hope of the son to eventually make enough money to "buy" the house (a long shot in its own right) would be self defeating, because he'd only be perpetuating the structure. He'd be feeding the beast that destroyed both the families, the Parasite.
And the irony was that not enough to really magically change their lives.
Exactly. The idea of upward mobility is often a farce.
Hence why the Stone was revealed to be hollow
People are inherently evil.
Not all of them, some of us are just born to be shitheads.
🤝
I really liked your observation of the house being a personification of capitalism as a megastructure
That just simply isn't true. People are inherently moral putty and the way society and our experiences condition us shapes our morals. It just so happens the dominant socio-economic system in the world often promotes self-serving individuality and greed as positives.
Or did people who were already greedy and self serving create the system? Sometimes you have to accept people are just shit.
Case and point racism.
It's just a joke based on the events of the film rather than the message, it's funny. The irony of some of the people's posts suggesting they are superior for understanding the movies message makes the movie even better.
Which is why it's pretty ridiculous to think Maureen Dowd, a Pulitzer Prize wining journalist, doesn't understand that.
It's a joke at Trump's expense, not a literal analysis of the film.
Race as a concept wasn't even created until pretty recently in human history, like in the last few centuries to morally rationalize the enslavement of African people and to create an "other".
This cynical view of humanity is understandable given the conditions we live in now, but nah. People aren't just inherently evil. in fact, saying that kind of lets the people who make consciously evil decisions off the hook because "it's just human nature".
I mean, it's about way more, but it is about con artists who invade a house. Could be a surface level byline.
I was speaking in a general sense even if this thread was about Maureen Dowd's article.
Actually I'd argue it makes them social outcasts, as we as a species have agreed these traits to be undesirable.
Racism the word has only existed recently but the idea of othering and tribalism has existed long before that. People can just be shit.
And then you come in suggesting your superior and understand the situation more than them.
It's not a funny joke if the joke doesn't actually make sense because that's not actually what the film is about, that's all people are saying.
That's different than the concept of race. Prejudice has always existed but we didn't pigeonhole entire ethnicities of people as "white" or "black" until pretty recently.
The values and morals are created by people at the top of the social hierarchy of a society, but they don't dictate human nature. You don't come out of the womb as a greedy, prejudiced shitbag.
Greed and selfisness; along with murder, lying and a host of other "traits".
Yeah, I am too. You're right the themes are obvious, which is why it's odd to see so many assume an intelligent and accomplished woman such as her is completely oblivious to them.
Come out of the womb racist? Perhaps not.
Come out of the womb with no compassion, empathy and low emotional IQ? Absolutely.
I care not whether racism is different than tribalism. We've been trying to put down others for being different since we could think.
Absolutely not. The only people inherently incapable of having no empathy are people with sociopathic tendencies and that isn't how a typical human functions.
We aren't just an entire species of sociopaths
Ok, but they exist.
Which was my entire point. Some of us are born to be shitheads. You agreed with me.
Thank you.
If you asked people to describe "greed and selfishness" and what that constitutes, you would get many different answers. Some would say wanting the rich to pay their fair share in taxes is being greedy. Also, we justify and rationalize murder all the time. We have entire industries built on murder. Lying, too!
It's one thing to say "greed, selfishness, lying, and murder are bad." It's another to live in a society where there are industries and infrastructures that accentuates and encourages these elements.
Well that's one way to stretch a point that refutes yours to agree with yours.
Think about it like this, if humans are born incapable of empathy, how the hell have we created civilization, which requires us to be social?
Spoilers: humans are social creatures by nature
We're arguing in the abstract though, not the morally gray, nuanced real life.
We teach in school it's bad to lie. Its bad to murder. It's bad to be greedy.
In the moral vagueness society agrees those things are bad.
No, you said I was saying all humans are inherently greedy. I said some of us are born shit.
You agreed with me and here we are arguing in circles. Some of us are born to be shitheads. Capitalism, Socialism and Communism won't change that fact.
I love how this turned into a discussion thread about the film itself lol. This is not sarcasm keep it going I like reading these.
None of the characters in the film create the house. The people running it don't even fully understand it.
any logic to justify society staying the same eh
"sorry man, this is the best we can hope for. people are just naturally evil."
You said verbatim "people are inherently evil". We aren't arguing in circles, you're backpedaling.
And yes, a change of the socioeconomic status quo can and will change the way we engage with each other and society at et al.
All the education in the world can't fight back against a material system that profits off of these negative traits and runs virtually every industry that affects people's lives.
Well, it can, if you change the lesson plan a little bit.
I wasn't completely convinced that the house embodies capitalism up to your post. The hidden cellar being the lower class the ones above don't pay attention to, though, just makes too much sense.
That said, it's crazy how belittling some posters act towards others in this thread. You can argue your interpretation's merits without talking down to others. Bad showing.
That either sounds a bit saucy or a bit menacing. I'm going for the former.
"Live and let live" is an interesting euphemism for "violently defend the status quo"
.... how on earth would that apply to the original Housekeeper? I was not referring to the upperclass family.
The eighteenth Brumaire is probably my favorite thing written by him
Ya, I'm not sure why some people are so hostile and dogmatic. Parasite's themes can be apparent but it isn't really a movie that wags its values at the viewer. There's a lot to unpack and people are going to reach different conclusions.
Once she and her husband have blackmail evidence against them (within minutes of meeting) they treat them at slaves as virtual gunpoint. They are firm believers in being happy in the unfair arrangement of parasitic structure to the extreme point where the childlike gambling husband treats the father like the North Korean dear leader. This stance on status quo escalates to the point the basement husband goes on a killing spree and salutes the dear leader yelling "respect". Instead of coming to an agreement or arrangement with the family that took their place when they realized they were basically the same (which the family did by being willing to at least let her in even though it was a precarious situation) they reveled in the fact that they captured traiters to the regime. Hell they even had them on their knees with their hands on there hands as if waiting for execution by firing squad. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the family we follow are scam artists trying to hustle their way behind the system in order to eek out a better life, while the maid couple are obviously NK regime loyalists. Both parasitic in their own ways but the couple are obviously not without issue. Also it goes without saying that the rich family are fat grub parasites themselves. The point being that the structure of capitalism makes parasites of us all. It's the path of least resistance.
Possibly.
Perhaps some of us are just wired to be evil, or at least more open and likely to be swayed to evil morals and acts.
Actually it's more like
"hey you guys who want your revolution and uprooting of capitalism may find out that it actually doesn't fix some of the flaws inherent to humanity. namely that some of us are just the worst".
