(This article contains spoilers for movies such as Parasite, The White Tiger, and Us.)
Karl Marx once said that history itself is nothing more than the struggle between various classes in society. Would that he could have lived to see the way our society operates now, he might have felt more than a little vindicated. We are in the midst of the largest inequality gap since the turn of the 20th Century. A financial crisis in 2008, coupled with over a decade of bad judgment and irresponsible use of economic infrastructure from our leaders, culminating in last year’s COVID-19 pandemic, has ground much of society to a halt. Wages have stagnated, the middle class is shrinking out of existence, and poverty is climbing. While we try to find our way out of this mess, it’s also important to understand its implications on a micro-level. Qualitative, anecdotal data will be useful in understanding the psychological effects this century has had on the evolution of humanity, and what better way to do this than in cinema?
In 2020, Bong Joon-ho’s much heralded Parasite made history when it became the first foreign-language movie to take home the Best Film Oscar at the Academy Awards. It was richly deserved: Joon-ho’s masterpiece was a searing insight into the minutiae of wealth inequality, eschewing grandiose pronouncements for the subtle micro-aggressions that are mainly the preserve of the rich. Consider the Kim family; low class, clustered together in a small apartment below ground. In order to get Wi-Fi, they must steal from a local business, unable to afford it themselves. In a modern world, internet is essential. Ask yourself how many jobs these days do not require the use of email, or advertise their vacancies by posting notices on shop windows? Something as seemingly innocuous as the lack of internet can have far-reaching ramifications on the smallest of scales.
Now take the Parks. Able to afford tutoring for the most inconsequential of details. See how Mrs. Park deems her son an artistic genius for crafting doodles that any child might do, and employs someone to foster and nurture that ability. The most minute detail for the Parks can be made exponential, while the most minute detail for the Kims can be cripplingly detrimental. That is a wealth inequality that is not often explored. Those moments are where the real magic of Parasite lies. It comes in small instances, such as the Park son’s observation that the Kims all smell the same, or Mr. Park’s similar observation that Mr. Kim smells like someone who rides the subway.
There are subtle ways in which passive interactions demarcate the gulf in difference between the Parks and the Kims. For all that the Parks are polite and kind to the Kims, who are servants in the Park household, there are still boundaries that, when crossed, show an ugly, entitled side to the Parks, a side which is emblematic of many in a higher class. Mr. Kim, who acts as Mr. Park’s driver, ingratiates himself to his employer with his driving skills. A close-up of a coffee cup in Mr. Park’s hand shows that he appreciates the smoothness with which Mr. Kim is able to round corners. Small talk is made; careful, surface-level small talk. Yet when Mr. Kim deigns to overstep his boundaries with more personal conversation, Mr. Park is visibly angry. The implication is clear: Mr Kim cannot speak to Mr Park like an equal. He is far from that.
Elsewhere, the cinematography showcases the visual differences between the two families. The Kims, as mentioned, live in a basement apartment, vulnerable to passing drunks urinating on the streets, and floods which threaten to destroy their home. The Parks have a home on top of a hill, enabling them to look down upon the city of Seoul. While the Kims must walk down to their home, the Parks walk up to theirs. Consider, also, the revelation that a former housekeeper of the Parks lives in a hidden basement dwelling of the Parks’ home, unbeknownst to them. Here we have a literal underclass, subsisting like parasites (to give the move its title) on the unknowing rich.
On the same landmass as Korea sits the Indian subcontinent, the setting of the new Netflix movie, The White Tiger. India’s social stratification has a deeper well than in Korea, thanks to an archaic caste system. We see this clearly in the story of Balram, a poor boy from the village of Laxmangarh who cultivates a working relationship with a wealthy family which he then manipulates for his own gain. Throughout The White Tiger Balram’s monologue shows his growing consciousness of class divide as his anger subsequently boils over into murderous rage.
Similar to Parasite, what The White Tiger shows us as viewers is how every aspect of a person can be a signifier of their class: the way they dress, the language they use, their teeth and hygiene, the education they have. A key moment shows Ashok, Balram’s employer, use him as an example of how uneducated India is. He asks Balram a serious of simple questions, which Balram is unable to answer. Ashok then highlights to his partner the incredulousness of Balram’s simplicity, calling him “half baked”. Another signifier is alcohol. Balram tells us that there are two types of men in India: those who drink Indian alcohol and those who drink English alcohol. Indian alcohol is a variety of cheap hooch, whereas English alcohol is rum, whisky, beer. As Balram’s fortunes are juxtaposed throughout The White Tiger, we see how high quality alcohol has become one of the signifiers that he is wealthy.
Perhaps the strongest indictment of the class divide, however, is made through what we’ll call The Rooster Analogy. A particularly harrowing scene shows a rooster being taken from a cage in which there are many roosters present, and then being butchered in front of the others. Balram points out that the roosters must know what is coming, must have seen their companions chopped up into so many parts, yet remain docile, awaiting their turn to be executed. This is India, Balram says, a country full of lower class citizens awaiting their own death, doing nothing to change the course of their lives. It’s an astute analogy, one which opens up questions of the psychological effects of poverty, of a hopeless despair, and one which leads to Balram’s realization that he is the white tiger, a rare species that comes along only once in a generation, willing to break those class barriers.
Balram’s entire young life is predicated upon his class. He is the proletariat, subject to the whims of the capitalist class who own land on which Balram’s family must pay rent. Early on he loses his mother to poverty, then his father succumbs to tuberculosis which might have been avoided had he had access to healthcare. Instead, Balram’s father dies in a deserted medical facility, awaiting a doctor who will never come. Balram is then taken in by his grandmother, a tough matriarch who eschews the idea of formal education for the money Balram could provide his family if he were to take work. This is a funneling system very common in poor socioeconomic communities: education is for the wealthy, while the poor must struggle to survive. Balram may be “half baked”, but he is so because he must earn a living for his family. Mr Kim’s children fold pizza boxes for income, while Mr Park’s children take expensive, and entirely superfluous, art classes.
What Balram comes to realise is that the purpose of the social system into which he was born is to maintain the status quo; like those roosters, Indians are locked into a system which does not allow them the tools or the opportunities to ascend to a better quality of life. Class is not, as he had believed in the beginning, a natural, God given set of rules which he is predestined to follow. As Balram plots to overthrow his employers in a brutal way, he reflects that class is simply a human construct, a way of ensuring the higher class retains power, a power Balram can take if he is willing to go far enough for it. Like Mr Kim before him, Balram allows the unrepentant fury of the underclass to overcome him. The real tragedy is that Balram did not overthrow the system, but simply climbed to a higher place within it.
The western world is not immune to the cruel divides of class warfare either. Over in America, class division takes on subsets that include color – a topic which might consume the continent in flames one day. In Jordan Peele’s Us, a woman called Red sits across from a wealthier, healthier, version of herself. She is pure, untrammeled fury as she stares across at her better self, a self who was given every opportunity, every chance of success. She is the resentful consequence of circumstantial fate; a representation of the duality of life. It’s a duality which Peele utilises to full effect. In Us there is a world beneath our own where our mirror images, called Tethered, exist and struggle in horror. It is not exactly subtle, but it is effective. The Tethered in Us are emblematic of circumstantial classicism; they live in a horrific situation so that their counterparts may thrive. It is the subjugation of Balram and Mr Kim made extreme, the embodiment of a very real system in America whereby a lower class must toil in mediocrity and poverty in order to provide a better life for their betters.
Red rises up, however. Brandishing a knife and a murderous intent, she escapes the world beneath to exact revenge on the woman who – in a surprise twist – was in fact a Tethered herself, who swapped places with Red as a child unbeknownst to her family. In Red is a type of privilege: a fury that her rightful place on top was taken from her by an underling. More than that, it’s a bloody examination of how the underclass can boil over in fury. For all that Red was as subjugated as Balram and Mr Kim, she is equally as angry and bloodthirsty.
Red’s explanation (somewhat convoluted though it may be) of the Tethered existence includes the idea that the Tethered were meant as soulless copies of their above ground counterparts. They were not considered to have souls, and so were not given free will. Red was the first to become “untethered” because she was human to begin with. The subtext here is simple: when a higher class descended to a lower rank, those in the low ranks realised there was no difference between them. Like Balram understanding that classicism is not ordained by God, the Tethered understand they are no different than the humans above them but have been conditioned to believe it – or, to put it more succinctly, when a stunned Gabe asks Red who she is, Red just smiles maliciously, “we’re Americans”. Just like Balram, just like Mr. Kim, they rise up, knowing the truth of their existence: that the divides between the haves and have nots are manmade and can be torn down just as easily.
So what do all of these instances mean? Parasite, The White Tiger, Us, these are only three quick examples of modern cinema examining the class divide. There are many, many more – for further viewing on this please see Sorry To Bother You, Snowpiercer, Joker, and I, Daniel Blake. But why now? And what does it mean that in each of the movies examined here there is a reckoning against the upper class?
Karl Marx once said that history itself is nothing more than the struggle between various classes in society, but how many of us are truly aware of that? How many of us, in the last decade, have paid heed to the invisible machinations of society that impede us, hold us down, show us that we are undervalued even while telling us the opposite? Our collective consciousness is on the rise now. The advent of social media has ensured information spreads quicker (albeit we still need to understand which is real and which is fake) and our tolerance is growing weaker. Like Mr Kim, Balram, Red, the Tethered, like the many, many, examples of frustrated proletariats in cinema who blaze their way to the top, we are beginning to become conscious of class. Cinema, as it often has over the years, is simply reflecting the look of society – and that society is about to change.
