Art imitating life

By Reyshimar Arguelles

I haven’t seen Parasite, the South Korean film that made Oscar history for being the first foreign language film — and for that matter, the first Asian film — to win Best Picture. Reviews raved about it and self-confessed film snobs celebrated the director Bong Joon-ho for sticking up to the monolith that is white Hollywood.

While everyone was talking about Parasite’s big win, I was wondering if the film itself has anything to do with the Japanese animé Parasyte, which is about shape-shifting aliens that thirst for blood and gore.

But I guess I can be among uncultured people whose only criteria for entertainment include gratuitous amounts of sweaty fight scenes with no real value whatsoever. Or is it simply because I have given up on modern film culture altogether, convinced by the idea that for anything to be praiseworthy, it has to follow a certain formula: a mix of A-list celebrities and talented nobodies wearing period clothing and going over and beyond to be in character.

But Parasite has to be a different specimen altogether, because at first glance, it may seem like the type of film hardly anyone who believes in Hollywood supremacy can appreciate. The fact that it had decimated other contenders during Oscars night has penetrated the egos of foreign moviegoers who couldn’t fathom how a film in another language could wriggle its way to the top and be among such greats as Rocky and The King’s Speech, and even racial narratives such as 12 Years a Slave and Green Book.

There are good films and there are cultural treasures that speak to us at a personal level in an attempt to break apart our biases and leave us glued to a new reality. You know a film is great if it challenges us to make compromises. But isn’t art a process of compromising? Doesn’t it compel us to make sacrifices in the name of higher ideals?

True, the criteria for “high art” involves such a message of compromise, one that Parasite is able to effectively articulate by describing how the supposed parasites in the film (the Kim family) desperately attempt to detach themselves from their morose situations and experience a life of lavishness (or so I have read from the film’s synopsis). And while the film’s surface-level message about the fruitless attempts to “make it” is clear, it shows us a part of South Korea that is far from its techno-progressive visage, so adored and celebrated by fans outside the peninsula who expect nothing more than beautiful people and clean and efficient public services.

But instead of K-Pop groups and samgyupsal joints, Bong gives us a depressing albeit comedic portrait of a slum family trying to win a semblance of dignity they can never attain while in their decrepit Seoul flat.

Parasite’s triumph during the Oscars exposes, in a way, the excruciating generalizations imposed by Hollywood’s influence on native cinema. In no strict terms does Oscars culture possess a monopoly in preaching about racial divisions, environmental catastrophe, and raising class consciousness. If there is any real need to confront these issues, we cannot find a savior in what Hollywood continues to produce.

Prior to Parasite, there were countless Asian masterpieces that had fallen under the radar, such works as Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Mosef Makhmalbaf’s A Moment of Innocence, hallmarks of cinema in their own right and yet shelved as reference materials for modern filmmakers to imitate.

Parasite has given justice to filmmakers who actually have a say in important issues. At the same time, Bong is able to bring his country out of Blackpink and soju and give it a place for genuine discussion on confronting capital’s influence, even if such a place is populated by influencer-celebrities who think they’re doing the world a favor because they build charities in “feel good” acts of false concern.

 

Parasite is nothing like a “feel good” movie, except that it gives me a good feeling to see movie fans rage about the fact that they cannot process a great film faster than they can read subtitles.