The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, November 8, 2019 — 5A

It was the second distinct time I was lobbied to watch “BoJack 
Horseman.” This was a few days before I, more willingly, saw Bong 
Joon-ho’s (“Snowpiercer”) “Parasite.” I had given “BoJack” a chance 
once before, at another trusted friend’s lobbying, only to be turned off 
by how on-the-nose the show seemed to be. At the time, I preferred my 
social commentary to take more allegorical, thought-provoking forms, 
perhaps in the spirit of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” — a favorite 
from my adolescence. 
Even though I pretended to work on homework while he queued 
the third episode of the sixth and final season of “BoJack,” it wasn’t 
long before I got sucked in. One scene 
in particular struck me, when one of 
the characters, Diane (Alison Brie, 
“GLOW”), interviewed the CEO of an 
increasingly 
powerful 
conglomerate, 
and he told her on the record that he 
murdered one of his employees. Diane 
and I responded with equal shock at first, 
only for the CEO to clarify that the U.S. 
House of Representatives just approved 
a bill legalizing murder for billionaires. 
She and I both gradually resigned, too, to 
the CEO’s explanations of how this could 
be possible. “Really, Diane?” he asked, 
each time she offered another check or 
balance that might oppose the passing 
of this seemingly absurd, but also 
depressingly not-so-absurd measure. By 
the final “Really?” I wondered: Is that 
really so far-fetched, in this country? 
Afterward, I asked my friend to 
explain what he liked about the show, 
offering my initial ambivalence in 
response to its directness. He said that 
that was actually the part of the show 
he appreciated most — its willingness to 
spell out the things we’re too scared to 
admit could happen or are happening in 
the world — which I now realize is what 
this standout scene delivered.
A week later, as I tried to process 
Bong’s latest feature, I kept revisiting that scene and conversation 
about the appeal of a show like “BoJack Horseman.” “Parasite” makes 
a similar appeal in the way it juggles reality and realism. And so do a 
number of films from recent years — to the extent that they seem to 
constitute a new wave of contemporary cinema. This wave — consisting 
of films like Bong’s, as well as the work of directors like Hirokazu Kore-
eda and Boots Riley — is tidal. It disorients us, destabilizes the forces 
(often insidious) that give structure to our lives, prevents us from taking 
the air we breath for granted. And it’s what we need to reckon with the 
extremes of capitalism in this day and age.

***

“Parasite” starts with a scenario for which the title prepares us. The 
four members of the Kim family — the father and mother, Ki-taek (Song 
Kang-ho, “A Taxi Driver”) and Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), and their 
young adult children, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik, “Train to Busan”) and 
Ki-jeong (Park So-dam, “Ode to the Goose”) — are living in poverty 
and struggling to find work. At his friend’s suggestion, Ki-woo finds 
employment by forging a college degree and assuming a position as 
a private tutor for the wealthy Park family’s young daughter Da-hye 
(Jung Ziso, “Daughter”). The rest of the Kims then conspire to get 
employed by the Park family — either getting the Parks’ servants fired, 
or convincing the Parks they need additional staff, like an art therapist 
for their son — and do so successfully for some time. 
But to say “Parasite” is about a poor family’s infiltration of a rich 

family’s domestic labor force is like saying, for instance, Boots Riley’s 
“Sorry to Bother You” is about telemarketing. Both of these capitalist 
critiques resist the chokehold of synopsis, and are better described 
in terms of the range of social issues they fearlessly depict and 
deconstruct. In Riley’s film, this ranges from union organizing to racial 
discrimination, from violence in the media to corporate violations 
against human rights. Bong juggles a range of issues as well — the 
widening gap between rich and poor, class consciousness (or the lack 
thereof), environmental catastrophe — but all through the lens of class 
relations. And as these lists may imply, a characteristic of this new wave 
of films is intersectionality: awareness of how the seemingly incidental 
are interrelated, of how forms of marginalization converge, by no 
accident, on the same targets.

While that may sound like a recipe for allegory (how better to 
balance many competing conflicts than to metaphorize, to branch 
out to both figurative and literal terrain?), directors like Bong resist 
clearly signaling what we’re supposed to take as realism versus what 
is metaphorical. On the one hand, that makes for a troubling viewer 
experience. One sequence in particular comes to mind: when the Kim 
family thinks they have the Park mansion all to themselves while the 
Parks are out of town. While they luxuriate in the Parks’ food and 

drink, Chung-sook makes a dark joke, that in spite of the power they 
feel themselves to possess in that moment, the four of them would 
scatter like cockroaches if they were caught. It’s hard to know what to 
make of the next scene, then, that disturbingly fulfills her prediction, as 
the Parks come back home unexpectedly and the Kims crawl under and 
out from tables in order to escape unnoticed. 

But maybe we shouldn’t know what to do with these complexities 
that Bong juggles, especially the absurdity of living in the extremes 
of capitalism. “It’s so metaphorical!” Ki-woo memorably exclaims 
on three separate occasions in the film. It’s hard not to read that as a 
direct challenge from Bong: Don’t we want to relegate these things to 
metaphor, when perhaps that’s a coping mechanism? When perhaps 
we’d do well to accept that we’ve created the conditions for what would 
seem impossible to be all too possible?
As the cockroach sequence probably suggests, dark humor is 
the prevalent mood in Bong’s work. “Sorry to Bother You” has a 
similar register (as does “BoJack Horseman”). Instead of feeling 
inappropriate or tone deaf, it’s often refreshing. The realities these 
creatives are confronting are tough to swallow, and they recognize 
that. Instead of softening the blow, 
they let their audience struggle with 
them, choke on them. That is not to 
say, however, that these films preclude 
emotional sensitivity altogether; rather, 
these directors wield emotion more 
carefully (and perhaps, in turn, less 
manipulatively). Select scenes from 
“Parasite” point to these more selective, 
but 
subsequently 
more 
impactful, 
emotional displays. I’m thinking of the 
withering look on Ki-taek’s face every 
time he overhears Mr. Park expressing 
revulsion to the scent of poor people or 
recognized the scent on himself. But the 
prime example here may be the work of 
another filmmaker: Hirokazu Kore-eda, 
the director of 2018’s “Shoplifters.” The 
extraordinary aspect of this film is not 
how little the forces of capitalism and 
the widening wealth gap has left the 
non-biological family at the center of this 
film, or the life of shoplifting they must 
sustain in order to sustain themselves. 
Rather, it is the love and care they show 
one another, if not show one another 
more frequently and authentically, with 
the forced realization that all other 
forces of society have left them behind.

***

At the outset of the 2010s, The Guardian published an article titled 
“Hollywood searches for escapism after the apocalypse.” It tried to 
make sense of the onslaught of post-apocalyptic films the U.S. was 
putting out at the time by linking it to wide-scale social change, and 
people’s anxiety over that. I first encountered this narrative theory at 
the same time I first encountered Bong’s work. It was in an ecocriticism 
unit of a course on literary theory, and we watched the beginning of 
2013’s “Snowpiercer,” which takes place on a train that hosts the 
survivors of a climate disaster that brought on another ice age. 
Critics are describing “Parasite” as another dystopian feature, but 
I would hesitate to call “Parasite” or its contemporaries “dystopian.” 
That term assumes a remote future, when I don’t think Bong, Riley 
or Kore-eda want us to take comfort in the same cushion between 
us and the people we see on screen. These films are doing something 
different from the apocalyptic films from a decade ago — something 
more productive, authentic and useful. They aren’t distracting us with 
the impossible or improbable; they’re showing us what we’ve made 
possible, are making possible, in an honest, if disturbing, light.
It took me a little while to admit that about these films. It’s not easy 
to see the world for what we’ve made it. But eventually I’d ask myself, 
Really? in a tone not unlike the one I’d heard on Season 6, Episode 3 of 
“BoJack Horseman.” Are these impossible, or do I want them to be? I 
needed these directors to push me to ask that question and to realize 
it’s probably the latter. I think a lot of us need to see more clearly where 
we’re headed before we think about the future.

‘Parasite’ joins the powerful wave of capitalist critiques

NEON

FILM REVIEW

JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

At this point the “Queer Eye” formula, while still 
charming, is extremely well-trodden and slightly 
less engaging than when the 2018 reboot of the series 
“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” first appeared on 
Netflix. You get the impression that the parts of the 
show that cry out for some more substance (looking 
at you, Karamo and Antoni) than the ones focusing 
on style have anything but 
real substance, relying on 
little more than superficial 
platitudes and advice that 
is meant to be simple but 
is 
ultimately 
bafflingly 
useless. The fear of that 
goes into overdrive when 
the “Fab Five” venture out 
to Japan and try to apply 
their “methods” to a vastly 
different culture.
Nonetheless (thankfully), to their credit, cultural 
sensitivity was pretty high. The subject of the first 
episode of this mini-series is an older nurse named 
Yoko who works in hospice care and who society 
views as having “given up on being a woman” 
due to her lack of extensive grooming. As usual, 
the interactions between her and the Fab Five do 
take some time to develop chemistry. But they do 
eventually, and while it’s something we’ve seen a 
million times before, it’s heartwarming nonetheless.
The Fab Five are joined intermittently by 
American-Japanese model Kiko Mizuhara, a 
valuable addition who adds a good amount of 

cultural context and fits in well with the crew. For 
the most part, the Fab Five are incredibly respectful 
with the people they encounter and make sure to 
clear up some of the finer points of, for example, 
how to address someone in Japanese. In addition, 
the featured locales are diverse and provide a breath 
of fresh air from many of the locations presented in 
the United States.
Yet the producers did miss several opportunities 
for novelty. For starters, I could’ve done without 
wanting to gag every time one of the Fab Five 
sputtered out a “kawaii” 
from 
their 
Anime 
101 
education. Moreover, (and 
to be honest I don’t really 
know if this is really just 
a problem with the series 
as a whole) I really don’t 
understand what Antoni’s 
point was here. Cultural 
exchange with apple pie 
is acceptable I suppose, 
but given that the skills the contestants learn are 
supposed to eventually help in their own day-to-
day life, maybe it would be more useful to bring on 
a Japanese chef to help cook simple Japanese food? 
In general, I would have loved to have seen more 
Japanese “counterparts” to the Fab Five, as they 
would have intimate knowledge of the nuances of 
their culture and provide learning opportunities 
for the Fab Five and presumably mostly American 
audience.
At this rate, the producers of “Queer Eye” seem 
to know what makes a hit, and they’re content with 
recycling it over and over. Luckily for them, even the 
recycled formula does produce some comforting TV.

‘Queer Eye’ went to Japan

SAYAN GHOSH
Daily Arts Writer

The classic opera “La Boheme,” composed by 
Giacomo Puccini, is beyond iconic. Not only is the 
score boundlessly beautiful, but the tragic story 
still rings true in each era that has followed its 
conception.
The plot of the opera is suspiciously relatable 
to most college students: young people living a 
penniless, open minded, unconventional lifestyle, 
surviving in subpar housing, gossiping about 
relationship drama and dealing with an array 
of diseases from late night adventures parading 
around the city. 
If librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s 
four act plot is not enough for you, Puccini’s score 
will be. Puccini is widely known as one of the 
greatest opera composers of all time. His sweeping 
score for “La Boheme” is one of his most well 
known. This SMTD production brings Puccini’s 
score to life with a full SMTD orchestra as well as 
twelve members of the Michigan Marching Band 
playing on stage throughout the production in full 
costume. 
“La Boheme” is set in post-war 1947. Regardless 
of the time period, the premise is universal enough 
to be situated at any time. SMTD faculty member 
and director of the production, Matthew Ozawa, 
decided on the 1947 setting because of the stark 
contrast between the massive despair of World War 
II and the young aspiring artists who have faith in 
the future. This contrast makes the opposition in 
the story that much more heartbreaking. 
“The idea of people having just gone through war 
… they have to find so much through their artistry 

and through each other to gain back that sense of 
humanity that maybe had been lost,” Ozawa said. 
“‘La Boheme’ is quite possibly the perfect first 
opera to go to,” said conductor Kenneth Keisler in 
an interview with The Daily.
Even though the opera is technically tragic, 
there are long moments of comedy, and the heart 
of the show is pure gold. Each character, especially 
the main lovers Mimi and Rodolpho, have such 
strong dreams and aspirations that it’s difficult not 
to fall in love with them. 
The idea of turning to each other instead of 
material things to find happiness is something 
that I appreciate going into the winter months 
here at Michigan. Our vice is more along the 
lines of Netflix instead of jewels from the Paris 
bourgeoisie, but I believe the thought carries over. 
“What’s so interesting to me is that the artists 
really have to struggle to have food and heat … it’s 
their art that creates the beauty and hope of life.” 
Ozawa said. Taking Ozawa’s advice, I will happily 
lean into my last winter here. My art will probably 
be better for it.

La vie boheme at the opera

NATALIE KASTNER
Daily Arts Writer

La Boheme

Nov. 7-10, 2019

The Power Center

Student Tickets: $13 with ID

Reserved Seating: $24, $30

Queer Eye: 
We’re in Japan

Netflix

Miniseries Premiere

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW

PETER SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY

NETFLIX

Parasite

Neon

The State Theatre

