The "Foreigners" in Squid Game
I keep thinking about them. One was 💪 , the rest... 🤔 | Week 42 of 52
Holy moles, people! It’s week 42 of 52. Mid-October in our second year of quarantine is upon us, hard to believe. How are you hanging in there?
This week, my newsletter is entertainment-minded once again.
Squid Game.
Squid Game. The very utterance sends a dark chill down my spine. This Netflix show from South Korea is a global phenomenon. It shines a light on the capitalist system that we ̶’̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶p̶p̶e̶d ̶ ̶ live in, which really doesn’t care if we live or die.
Think about this for a moment: It costs a lot of money to give birth to a baby. Even to adopt one, with lighter-skinned babies costing more (did you know this?). Then, you need money to feed, clothe, and educate that child. You have to buy food and a car, which you’ll primarily use to drive to work.
Then post-mortem, we still have to spend money on our own funeral, coffin, cremation, and/or burial.
Government: “We can’t just give away free burials, now!”
Fig 1. And if this is not how you shower, change that.
(Non-spoiler alert: This issue describes characters from Squid Game broadly, but won’t reveal how the story unfolds.)
The “Foreigners” in Squid Game
I first consulted my friend Filip about the show. Is it good? I don’t trust hype.
“Yeah,” Filip said. “It’s really well done. All these people are in massive debt, and they have to compete to play games and win money. There’s no way to cheat, so everyone’s equal.”
“Wait, is this a documentary?”
“No, it’s fiction, but it’s about our society. It’s interesting, too, the way they show minorities. There’s a character who’s a migrant worker, and he’s at the very bottom of the social ladder. People are racist everywhere. It’s not just in America.” My face fell. We’re all implicated. Humans — tell me if you disagree — are the cruelest species around.
As soon as possible, I’d finished Squid Game. I did this even while my laptop was in repair, and I had only my cell phone to watch on, propped on my dish drying rack. I cried cathartically nearly every episode. (Have I been a lot more emotional these days? Probably.) I also felt gratitude for what I did have, yet angry at how much money rules our lives.
Sure, the show’s dark, but it’s so compellingly done that I thought about almost every element of my own life as a result. And I appreciate how they feature elderly characters as full people, something you don’t see commonly in our part of the world.
Then, I had a thought: “The foreigners, though!” I was intrigued and tickled by how South Koreans had represented them. One was sympathetic. Others, quite flat. Then again, don’t all cultures create and maintain The Other?
Type 1: The Kinda Foreign North Korean
Fig 2. Every time I saw this character, Sae Byeok, I thought, “Well. That is obviously played by a beautiful model.” Haha.
The perverse game within Squid Game brings together contestants from all walks of life. While the majority are South Korean, there are a handful of outsiders.
One of these characters, Sae Byeok, is from North Korea. Which makes her foreign, but also familiar. Real life North Koreans, who live under rigid communism, tend to be lampooned by their more hip neighbors. They’re different and weird and backwards. In a wild troll move, the real life South Korean military has even blasted loudspeakers playing news and K-pop over the border.
North Koreans’ grave reality, as defectors reveal, includes interstate travel restrictions, famine, limited electricity, and attempts to escape into China that are often met with deadly force.
Jung Hoyeon, who plays Sae Byeok, does a great job capturing her character’s hardened state. She’s very still behind her poker face, but captures a vulnerability that makes her character interesting and unpredictable. A roguish rule-breaker, yet also the “good guy” you want to root for. It’s nice to know that writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk makes her a badass, not a caricature.
Type 1B: The Other Asians
I think Asian cultures have always had quite a lot of internal racism, for lack of a better term. Growing up Chinese, I was practically indoctrinated to view the Japanese negatively — for what their government did to “us” in WWII. (Apparently, my grandfather had to flee his home, set fire by enemy forces, when he was a child.)
Yet, fast forward many years later: my dad is self-studying the Japanese language; sushi is the only reason I remain pescetarian instead of full veg; and everyone in my family but me has gone to Disney Sea in Tokyo, where nightmarish giant Woody’s mouth beckons you in.
I wasn’t going into Squid Game expecting to see any non-Korean Asians, but the ones who are there have definitely flattened been to plot devices. For instance, Filipinos and Chinese people aren’t seen in the best light. They appear briefly, as part of criminal enterprises: running casinos and shady black markets.
Conversely, South Korean culture has become a valuable export to the rest of the world. K-pop stars create fashion and makeup trends, along with their huge hits. When I visited China several years ago, some of the most expensive clothing brands were South Korean. And we all know about K-beauty products, which I fully recommend.
Type 2: The Minority Migrant Worker
Fig 3. Guess which one.
Ali Abdul is this character’s name, and I am bustin’ at the seams to explain why certain parts of this role make me go, Hm. Really. 😒 I dunno about you, but to me, Ali Abdul sounds like what Fox News viewers think the Genie from Aladdin’s name is.
It’s like how J.K. Rowling gave the name Cho Chang to Harry Potter’s first/only Asian girlfriend. Ali Abdul and Cho Chang are like Least Common Denominator names. They’re definitely not super thoughtful alliterations. I imagine the American equivalents would surely be Sally Smith or Betty Boop.
Ali, a Pakistani character, is basically The Magical Negro of the show. In this context, my definition of The Magical Negro is a film/TV trope of a lone, darker-skinned minority whose sole purpose is to help the lead — often an average guy belonging to the ethnic majority.
This character is as grovely as can be. If you didn’t know how to say “Thank you” in Korean, know that he will repeat 감사합니다 (“gamsahabnida”) about three times per conversation, bowing each time. Even one of the South Korean characters tells him to lay off, but what can he do? That’s the only dialogue he’s given!
Ali’s backstory, represented by a wife-and-kid scene, isn’t especially specific to his Pakistani background. The actor who plays him is actually Indian. And I think he was speaking Hindi (India), not Urdu (Pakistan). I tried verifying this by speaking something he said into Google Translate, which would agree with me.1
Why couldn’t they have changed his home country to India? The show didn’t have any Pakistani-specific details.
Anupam plays him well, though, with an open and expressive face. It would’ve been nice for his character to have more dimension. But I’m sure this very likable actor will get a ton more opportunities after this.
Fig. 6 Anupam and a Filipino actor named Christian Lagahit, who told NME (with no trace of bitterness whatsoever) that he’d also auditioned for Ali, but did not get the part.
Type 3: The Westerners
Oooh ho ho. These guys.
To avoid spoilers (and complete my weeks-prolonged writing process), I’ll keep it brief. The Westerners are the most ridiculous and artistically useless characters on what is otherwise a super rich, layered show.
On the one hand, they enjoy a lauded status because, white. My mom always says that Asian people like to look at Western faces. On the other hand, they seem to be mocked. Not the cutest faces cast here. Then, they have the worst possible lines in English. At least half a page was dedicated to lame, repetitive jokes about the number 69. “It’s just such a beautiful number,” one of them says, laughing.
So what’s behind this sort of characterization? I imagine it to be a blend of fascination but also, “Meh.” Because they’re an Other!
Despite these two flubby character types, Squid Game has truly been one of my favorite all-time shows. And for that I say to it, and to you, 🤲 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫:
Hit the heart or leave a comment if you’d like. Until next time!
I guess I inherited my dad’s passion for languages (he’s an interpreter). Even when I watched Borat 2, I could tell that Sacha Baron-Cohen and Maria Bakalova, who plays his daughter, were speaking in different tongues.