Unstable Structures Hidden Behind Polished Surfaces: Manifestations of Capitalist Dynamics and Possibilities of Trauma Re-enactment in Parasite (2019)

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One of the biggest, openly unacknowledged fears in contemporary society can be related to the rapid rising of a new class-in-the-making: the precariat. Parasite not only presents members of the precariat as victims of the system but also illustrates their strength by way of associating them with cockroaches—a connotation that makes them appear as rather dangerous (political) monsters whose unstable identities provide ways of adaptation to new set of situations, thus empowering them. Since the majority of the film’s story unfolds in the Park house, more emphasis is given to the examination of the environment through which a parallel can be drawn between the gothic castle and the Park house, revealing it both as a locus of power and ruin. Within the building, considerable amount of unease is produced by the deceitful outward appearance of both humans and inanimate objects in the film, while further tension is generated by the fluctuations in hierarchical levels and the unpredictable shifts in genre—all of which re-create and transform the instability inherent in the structure of the capitalist system into a cinematic experience. The film’s last scenes reveal the aftermath of the crisis, a reproductive dynamism becomes apparent in the way order and structures are repeated within the framework of the Park house based on the logic of the (stage-based) development of production that also eventuate the development of society in Marxist theory. This repetitive pattern, commonly found in gothic texts, has the potential to facilitate a processing of personal as well as of socio-cultural trauma through the repetitive merging of past and present where the past can re-gain its immediacy. Thus, Parasite not only provides a critique of the system but also opens up a space in which the problems arising from the workings of neoliberal capitalism can impose their urgency on the present, while an opportunity is also created for the revision of the past and its problem-solving strategies in hope of a better future.

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Film, Capitalism, Social inequality, Marxist Theory, Capitalist Dymanism, Representation, Parasite
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