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One of the most famous battles in all of Star Wars occurs at the end of Episode IV: A New Hope; a vicious intergalactic dogfight paves the path for our heroes’ attempt at destroying the devastating Death Star. Looking back on the iconic action sequence got me thinking: what is it like for the planet-bound folks separated from the action, stuck at home while an entire war wages around them that will influence their lives for untold years to come?
The thing is, we don’t need yet another spin-off from the galaxy far, far away to show what it’s like to be on the outside looking in during an unseeable war. While millions around the world are trapped at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a war carries on that has only grown in severity as people stay home to prevent the disease’s spread.
“WTF” presents: The Streaming Wars Episode II: The Quarantine Binge. All was well when the Netflix alliance captured cultural attention with its “Tiger King” docuseries, that is until the evil Disney empire began streaming new releases like Onward to maintain its subjects’ loyalty. Newcomer NBCUniversal enters the fray with its streaming service Peacock, a maneuver that makes classic sitcoms like “30 Rock” and “The Office” available for Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Flex customers across the country beginning Wednesday April 15.
Just before the war grew out of hand, however, underdog Hulu unleashed its secret weapon. On April 8, the history-making Best Picture winner Parasite became available to stream exclusively on the streaming service. In its first week of streaming, the film became the second most-watched movie overall on Hulu ever among titles currently available to stream, according to IndieWire. The feat is made more impressive when you realize Parasite beat out titles like A Quiet Place and Creed II, which have been available for several months.
The South Korean film, directed by the country’s premiere proud dad Bong Joon-Ho, became the first foreign language film ever to win Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards. Its streaming success presents the perfect opportunity to return to the film and explain why, if you haven’t seen it yet, you have no excuse to miss out on it now. Parasite, WTF?
Discourse surrounding Parasite generally concerns class and social disparity; subject matter director Bong regularly tackles across his filmography with movies like Snowpiercer and Okja. The social commentary rightfully dominates any initial viewing, but consuming the parable during our current crisis promotes a different interpretation. In addition to overt themes criticizing classism and the underlying socioeconomic infrastructure that separate people within a culture, Parasite tackles ideas of isolation and the ties that bind people, even when forced to remain separate.
Initially Parasite dresses in the guise of social satire, as the audience is introduced to the poverty-stricken Kim family while they desperately search for a Wi-Fi signal in the dingy semi-basement that they call home. The family is portrayed as outsiders from the rest of the world, relentlessly looking for their window into it like insects looking for their way into your house. A more obvious insect metaphor occurs soon after and further characterizes the assiduous family; a city employee sprays toxic fumes to fumigate the neighborhood and the cockroach-like Kims open their windows in brazen defiance of a world that seems to want them gone.
The game is changed when the family’s eldest son Ki-woo wiles his way into a tutoring position for the obscenely wealthy Park family. Ki-woo proceeds to leverage that position during an elegant, Ocean’s Eleven-esque “getting the crew together” sequence resulting in the rest of his family—father Ki-taek, mother Chung-sook and sister Ki-Jeong—additionally becoming gainfully employed by the Parks. The Park family remains oblivious that the Kims are related, and there’s a sort of perverse pleasure inherent in watching the Kim’s brash, masterful manipulation solidify their place in the Park house.
While interactions between the Parks and the Kims ultimately color the movie’s exploration of unjust societal structures, a shocking mid-section twist—the best since Get Out’s “sunken place” revelation—pulls the curtain back on the tonal mishmash present in Parasite. The movie metamorphosizes into a tense, unnerving thriller exploring ideas of familial entrapment and isolation that feel particularly salient during a national quarantine.
Eventually, the movie’s expertly plotted social commentary leads to chaos, yet it somehow impossibly sticks the landing. Bong threads the needle in such a way that Parasite’s message never feels preachy or obvious; it leaves its audience aware of structure failings across classist structures without making any kind of statement on what the answer is. Ultimately, neither the Kims or the Parks are the good guys, and the only bad guy is the system all these disparate characters—and we, the audience watching them—are stuck in.
This makes the current crown jewel in Hulu’s library the perfect watch during quarantine. The film is complicated and nuanced, leaving its audience with far more to reflect on and unpack than empty reality trash like Netflix’s “Tiger King” series, and its themes are more mature and thought-provoking than anything in Disney’s library. It may not be enough to win the war, but the movie should certainly push Hulu over the top in this Streaming Wars battle.
Parasite’s epilogue tears apart the happy/sad binary that every denouement seems to fall into, and the resulting final scenes are haunting, poignant and peerless. In the end, systematic failures lead to indefinite isolation, a reality all-too-similar to life during the COVID-19 pandemic. The movie’s open-ended ending isn’t happy or sad, just a lonely, timely reminder that all it takes to connect in isolation is the persistence of a flickering lightbulb.