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