I wasn't going to watch Squid Game, the latest improbable Netflix hit, a Korean drama in which a group of terminally indebted casualties of the modern market economy are offered redemption in the form of a chance to win undreamed-of wealth. All they must do is compete in such children's games as Red Light, Green Light - we called it Statues – played in a faux playground, all primary colours and oversized swings. Instructions to move or freeze are delivered by a truly creepy giant robot doll. Imagine Pee-wee's Playhouse as a circle of Hell. The catch: not everyone can win and you really do not want to be a loser.
For decades I had to watch any number of sickening splatter fests. It was my job. The plus side: when I wasn't sprinting from the room as someone's head exploded, I ended up seeing some excellent television, from Dexter to Breaking Bad to Game of Thrones. These days real life is gruesome enough. I can retreat to the sedative pleasures of Love It or List It all day long if I want to.
But, in the end, there was no escape from Squid Game. Everyone was talking about it. Someone tagged me in a tweet mentioning the show's unsubtle Holocaust references. The contestants are gassed unconscious on the way to the game's secret location. This is the kind of competition that requires the crematorium creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has said was inspired by Auschwitz. Contestants become numbers in matching tracksuits marching to the next game through absurdist Escher-like architecture to classical music.
Does Squid Game earn its right to that imagery? No. Even when given the chance to leave, many choose to stay in the game. We've seen this sort of survival schtick forever, from trippy 60s classic The Prisoner – "I am not a number! I am a free man!" – to The Hunger Games and degrading reality shows where elimination means getting voted off the Island, if in a less brutal manner.
The show does reveal how ideologies can be marketed to make it seem like even their worst excesses are all for your own good. The masked guards in jolly pink jumpsuits enforce rules without thought, let alone feeling. "We are here to give you a chance," they say reasonably, amid carnage. When contestants fight: "We will not condone any act that impedes this democratic process." When some cheat: "They tainted the fair and pure ideology." All totalitarianism is a crime against the meaning of words. It's not a stretch to see connections to a post-Trumpian world.
It's soon revealed that hell is other people in a society constructed to make things like friendship, trust, loyalty, and altruism just impediments to self-realisation. A contestant decides to stay despite everything and take her last desperate chance to escape a reviled underclass. "It's just as bad out there as it is in here, goddamit!" is her badly dubbed conclusion.
