Spoilers included!!! -
For my film review, I watched the movie Parasite. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the movie and its commentary on class divides in Korea. I found the movie to be almost comical in its dipiction of how an extremely low class family works their way into working for a high class wealthy family. The movie starts off with the lower class family all searching for work. The family's son forges documents and is hired as a tutor for the higher class family. He then uses his influence to get his siter hired, and eventually the original housekeeper and driver are fired in favor of the remaining members of the low class family.
This movie reminded me a lot of the discussions we had in class about the class divide found in most East Asian countries. I found it interesting how the poor family was portrayed as having low morals and lying and cheating to get into good jobs. I wondered why all of the people belonging to the poorer social class seem so unwilling to help one another when they were all in such terrible situations. This would be interesting to show to students and use it to discuss class divides within Asian culture but to also compare to other societies; like India, that have an even more rigid class system, or even European countries, which aren't as rigid in that there is more opportunity for moving up within society. At the end I thought the symbolism of the rain water running downhill from the rich families home, where everything indoors was dry and clean, to the poor families home where the roof leaks and the houses are flooded from sewage water was interesting. It speaks to the major class divide in how the families truly live different lives. In the end, the poor family's outlook on tehir situation was telling of how they saw themselves within their society. The father, who has lived a poor life feels defeated and lives life with no plan or vision for his future, while his son speaks about marrying the rich family's daughter, attending university and moving up in society. In the end when the son has a conversation with the daughter of the rich family, he asks her "do I fit in here", and this is the moment when the son sort of becomes his father, and realizes that he will likely not change his place in society. The ending of the movie was interesting to see that even though the son had seemed to lose hope, he still believed that one day he would be able to buy the house that he once worked in and free his father from hiding in the secret room in the basement.