Zero Sum Squid Game

Humanist drama concludes that the Game wins

There be spoilers below.

Like many others, I enjoyed and admired the first season of Squid Game, astonished by the makers’ ability to create heart-stopping, high stakes situations and amused by its snarky (if somewhat blunt) satire on neoliberalism (albeit most commentators use the sloppier catch-all term ‘capitalism’). Since then, we’ve had two further seasons, and by the third, I felt a heavy sense of Squid Game fatigue. I am wholly relieved to see the back of it. That’s if, indeed, we have...

I confess I find keeping up with storylines in long-running series a chore. I didn’t remember much detail of season 1 by the time season 2 was released. I believe this is a flaw in the format – I can remember details of films I’ve seen decades ago, but there’s something about the season-format which encourages binge watching, which itself reduces attention; the eyes are on the finish rather than on the course, as Brecht might have it. Season 2 of Squid Game introduced a plethora of new characters, as well as expecting us to keep up with the central strands of Seong Gi-hun (Player 456) and detective Hwang Jun-ho’s separate attempts to shut down the game. One advantage of season 2’s distance from season 1 was that the games themselves were, although pretty much repeating season 1’s affects, a kind of welcome reminder of previous pleasures, a bit like riding a roller coaster for the first time in years.

Season 3, which followed soon after 2 (and, in terms of story, immediately followed) did not have that advantage. As soon as I was confronted by yet another nail-biting game, I felt a sense that I didn’t want to sit through this stuff anymore. It’s all very well to experience fictional human beings being killed for the wealthy’s kicks in the service of initially getting the satirical point, but once the point has been made, all you’re really left with are the pleasures of vicarious sadism.

Nevertheless, having sat through so much, and with the end in sight, I stuck with it and binged the final three episodes in one evening. There’s a couple of things. Squid Game is a perfect example of what I’d call humanist art – it asks whether, in the face of how things are portrayed, its characters (and by extension us) are still able to believe there is goodness in humanity. All humanist art tends to end in sentimentality – here, someone makes a gesture that affirms “humans are...” better than the game allows. This has some affinities with the Christian sacrificial model (the character here even spreads their arms out in cross gesture as they go to their death). But humanist sacrifice is always in vain. Here, the sacrifice is ostensibly aimed at saving an innocent life – that of a baby, which (for scholars of British drama) fulfils much the same function in Squid Game as the various infants in the plays of Edward Bond. The character performs this sacrifice as a kind of pedagogic exhibition aimed at the creators of the Game and the “VIPs” who enjoy it.

The problem here is that the moment only works if we buy the idea that this is the first sacrificial act that any of them has ever even experienced or even heard about. This takes the piece very far out of regular human experience. Most of us have seen small acts of sacrifice performed by family, friends and colleagues. Most of us know that all of the religions of the world value forms of self-sacrifice. Nevertheless, the moment (which I found moving in spite of the failure of most of season 3 to engage) could conceivably stand as an emblem for all selfless sacrifices, a kind of “yah boo sucks” to all of the self-centredness in the world, as emblemised by the Game.

Yet the series loses the ability for us to hold onto the moment in this way, with the various tying ups which follow. The two games that the three series cover both have winners, and the organisers honour their promise in giving the winners the prize loot. This is a substantial amount of money – 45.6 billion South Korean won; approx. £28.5 million. Much is made in the series’ coda of these winnings going to the child inheritors. We’re meant to think positively of this, given the amount of gloopy music poured over these scenes, and their being intercut with reunions of lost North Koreans children with defectors or their families. These are emotional payoffs worthy of an episode of Surprise Surprise. If we think about it all for a second, we understand this ending is a celebration of wealth inherited by kids whose parent managed to effectively beat the competition in a kill-or-die game. In fact, both inheritors are effectively the children of Player 456, actual or adoptive. Player 456 as material winner is therefore the series’ sole absolute positive. What we have seen over the series is a lot of players who were unworthy of winning, either due to their ethical shortcomings, their physical inability, their failure to keep a positive mindset, or their ill-luck. Even 456’s sacrifice is about giving a child a material leg-up. The series’ ending affirms the game and celebrates as a positive result the passing on of fortunes by the winning player.

Perhaps we had Squid Game wrong by classifying it as satire. Perhaps it is rather an Ayn Randian parable about the wholesome goodness of ruthless competition and rampant materialism. Certainly, this is the outcome for the producers. The initial season generated $900 million in “impact value” for Netflix – that’s without the merchandising, spin-offs, sequels. The least edifying moment of the final episode is the sight of Cate Blanchett, embarrassing herself by appearing in a kind of cameo trailer for a US-set spin-off. We haven’t seen the end of Squid Game yet, and how could we? It’s making much too much money. It’s a franchise now, no matter that the initiator is heartily sick of it.

Let’s ‘fess up and admit that Squid Game’s sadism is its selling point. Stripped of the fig leaf of critiquing capitalism, the series’ sadism is reduced to simply itself – we as an audience enjoy watching people competing and being killed in merciless ways. It’s televisual Saw. As it’s now come out, as it were, as pro the Game, audiences are left in a queasily intriguing position. Do we admit that we didn’t really care about all of this critique business to begin with, and confess that what we simply enjoy is the brutality? It puts both the makers and the audience in a position of bad faith around their professing to be desirous of a better world than that of the Game.

I said above that Squid Game is humanist drama. This is true of most of our mainstream entertainment. Humanism is full of the kind of contradictions that the end of Squid Game leaves us with. Humanist drama also paints over the existence of faith in the world. None of the characters in Squid Game has faith, nor do many characters in mainstream drama. This is against the backdrop of a human race where 84% of world population professes a faith (these are 2010 figures). It is fair to say that humanist drama is a tool for the mainstream erasure of faith. It portrays faith as either non-existent, or abnormal, or malevolent, or at best a cultural or personal quirk. It therefore leaves us with the conundrum that gives the final episode of Squid Game its title – “Humans Are...” It hopes that humans are able to sort out our problems and put ourselves right. Inevitably, it leaves the situation – the game – as it was at the beginning.

The world’s major religions do not expect us humans to be able to solve our issues. Squid Game at least paints itself into the corner of admitting that this is true.