Light On Dark Water

The Squid Game

Anybody seen this? I'd been hearing about it-it's very popular right now–and watched an episode out of curiosity, slightly against my better judgment. Should've listened to my better judgment, because of course once I got to a certain point I wanted to see what was going to happen. And then I was sorry. 

It's a sort of variation on the gladiatorial game concept, or the Hunger Games concept. It's equal parts violent and creepy-weird, the sort of thing that makes you feel a little polluted for having watched it. Strongly not recommended. 

Maclin Horton

6 responses to “The Squid Game”

  1. Rob G

    Never heard of it but thanks for the heads-up.
    I felt the same way about Game of Thrones. Once I found out that it was basically LOTR except with lots of sex and graphic violence I wasn’t remotely interested, regardless of the reviews and the number of top-notch actors who showed up in it.

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  2. Mac

    It’s a Korean series available on Netflix, apparently very popular.
    I was the same about GoT. Never seriously tempted to watch it. I read the first chapter or so of one of the books it’s based on and although there were already some intriguing things about it, it ended with a particularly gruesome murder that insured that I wouldn’t read any further.

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  3. Mac

    Here’s an interesting and, based on what I saw, accurate commentary on it:
    https://theamericanscholar.org/what-squid-game-is-really-about/
    “the vivid hyperreality of a colorful neo-video game landscape”–that’s one of the aspects that struck me as so creepy. Not a gritty shoot-em-up sort of game, but a bright gaudy harmless-looking one. That, and the use of children’s games like red-light/green-light as vehicles of the violence.

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  4. Stu

    Interesting article. The author was not really “pro” or “con”. I have not been tempted to watch, but I am FINALLY watching The Crown, after the rest of the world has already seen it. I suppose it reminds me of Downton Abbey more than anything. John Lithgow’s Winston Churchill was great.

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  5. Stu

    I enjoyed Parasite. Rented it after it’s Best Picture win and watched twice during the period I was able to stream it. But movies are so different, even if unpleasant you just spend two hours with them. Much more civilized way of viewing IMHO.
    These TV series just trudge on and on…sometimes a series that I find fun and enjoyable just starts to get to me after a while; I’m annoyed by characters that at first I found interesting. This is why it took me so long to get to The Crown – I hate to get sucked into bingeing.

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  6. Mac

    ‘not really “pro” or “con”‘– yeah, she’s just looking at it from the cultural significance point of view.
    The really outstanding performance in The Crown for me is Olivia Colman as Elizabeth. I’m not sure whether she’s in the season with Churchill or not.
    I haven’t seen Parasite.
    But the length of the “tv” (now really streaming) series is what makes the good ones so good. They have the time to develop the characters and the story in real depth. Books to movies was never really a good match. A series like Breaking Bad is really more comparable to a novel than a 2-hour movie based on a book can be. But it’s true that they can get old. I got pretty sick of the Downton people.

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