Much has been said and written about why Squid Game has captured the imagination of audiences in 90 countries. There is, of course, the simple premise: debt-ridden, desperate people - often with an outsize appetite for risk - for whom the outside world seems bleeker after being introduced to the possibility of winning billions of won. (The candy coloured sets in an unambiguously dangerous world and the meme-able lines help, too.)
Equally gripping, though, is how the show uses violence. There is no doubt a lot of it - 255 contestants die in the first of six games. And yet the violence is never gratuitous. Instead, at crucial moments in the show, the characters’ survival instinct kicks in viscerally, affirmingly in the face of violence.
Case in point: Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo), who is about to commit suicide before returning to the game centre, betrays Ali Abdul (Anupam Tripathi) to survive.
Also read: 'Squid Game', set and match
It’s a streak one also sees in another - vastly different - Korean drama My Name, which dropped on Netflix on October 15.
My Name is a revenge drama. Ji-woo (Han So-hee) joins the biggest meth-distributing gang in town to find her father’s killer, and in the process uncovers secrets that force her to review her goal.
The violence here comprises choreographed knife-fights, fist fights and occasionally gun shots. Each time the camera captures the brutality and bloodshed, there is no shying away from the pain and loss that follow. Gang boss Choi Mu-jin (Park Hee-soon) tells Ji-woo after a bloody bout: “I’d forgotten how much it hurts”. The violence here is a signifier of skill, strength, courage and perseverance - those who wield it, suffer it, shun it are locked in a battle for survival.
Also read: Squid Game Netflix’s biggest launch ever, reaches 111 million viewers
As with Squid Game, My Name puts forth two questions: what kind of person could kill someone and why? Both shows put forward the idea that violence dehumanises. But whom does it dehumanise?
In Squid Game, it selectively dehumanises the killer and the killed. The contestants are made nameless, referred to by their numbers. Indeed, this dehumanisation of contestants helps to pave the way for the use of unbridled, and sometimes arbitrary, force against them.
The violence here selectively dehumanises the killer, too. The guards who kill survivors in coffins and trade in organs are by and large faceless and nameless - contestants’ early efforts to appeal to their humanity fall horribly flat. They are mercenaries, there to do a job, the violence they use is sanctioned, even ordered by the system everyone has opted into.
Further, Cho Sang-woo’s devolution into the unhuman/bestial is gradual. From sharing tips on how to survive the deadly game of Green Light, Red Light, to withholding information and letting the guards kill Ali in his stead, Sang-woo goes on to stab Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon).
In My Name, the question of who is dehumanised by the violence comes up again and again, too, in different contexts. Pitted against extraordinary odds, the protagonist Ji-woo learns to be ruthless; to mean it when she hits or lashes out with a knife. Her rage gets channeled into a discipline to train her mind and body to be capable of murder. Yet, the first time she kills someone, she’s shook up. Choi Min-ju, the drug boss, asks if she can become a “monster” - because that’s what one must become to kill.
During a sex scene in My Name, we see Ji-woo looking at a reflection of herself and her partner Jeon Pil-do (Ahn Bo-hyun). By this time, she's committed the murder and discovered the horrible secret. Yet in that moment she is reminded of what it is to be human, and to want to live a life beyond her rage and desire for revenge.
Some critics have said that My Name unravels towards the end, as the secrets spill and Ji-woo resets her goal. Yet, it is possible to see the shift in the story as another kind of violence - it makes Ji-woo question everything. In the midst of this, her relationship with Jeon Pil-do anchors her. Sex between them is a source of comfort. It builds trust, so that when Pil-do asks her to lean on him and go to the police with her story, we believe - along with Ji-woo - that this is viable. What follows is more violence, none of it gratuitous. It’s a lot but it’s never extra.
Also read: 'Squid Game' and the ‘untranslatable’: the debate around subtitles explained
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At the time of writing, three out of the Top 10 shows on Netflix in India are Korean dramas. Dystopian drama Squid Game has retained the No. 1 spot which it claimed soon after releasing on September 17. Revenge drama My Name, which came out October 15, has yoyo-ed between the No. 5 and No. 6 spot. And Hometown Cha cha cha which aired its (mostly disappointing) finale on Sunday (October 17), about a man consumed by guilt over the death of his Hyung (friend like family), is down a few notches but still somewhere at the top.
Also read: India binges on Bibimbap and Tteokbokki, while devouring Squid Game
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