How The Parasites Praised (And Didn't Learn From) Parasite

***This Contains Spoilers For The Movie Parasite***

How many in Hollywood actually understood Parasite?

Parasite was hit with universal praise from critics, audiences, cinephiles, and just about anyone that is a fan of the medium. Unlike the past forever when the Academy Awards winners and the general consensus were in complete disagreement, Parasite winning Best Picture earlier this year just completely made sense. It’s a spectacular film that will stand the test of time along with the best of them. The acting, writing, pacing, surprises, cinematography, hidden secret details, and powerful ending makes this one of the better movies from the 2010s.

However, Parasite didn’t exactly move the needle in what it was trying to say to certain audiences, especially American ones. Parasite’s incredible run and award season marathon was clear evidence that people saw this movie, the poor and the rich, but did the richer people actually FEEL this movie as much as they should? Did the members of the Academy truly learn lessons from this film that was also speaking to them directly? Personally, if 2020 is any indication, there is universal agreement to the power of quality in this film, Parasite touched the senses of the cinematic brain, but didn’t quite reach the hearts of those who most needed to see and understand the message. People SAW that there is extremely inequality, but in the year 2020 we aren’t seeing enough action to try to correct this.

Within the two incredible hours of Parasite were the underlying themes about how people are born and raised in separated levels of society. Yes granted there is sometimes movement and elevation from your poorest class to the higher classes, but a majority of the population will not see or experience the level of wealth and economic structure enjoyed by those you see on television, in film, in media, on those interviews in news networks, those running Hollywood, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley.  

The title “Parasite” describes the methodology of which the protagonist family tried scheming and sneaking their way into the highest class, but it also describes how the upper class stomps on the lower classes in order to maintain its position. They employ but don’t pay enough, they do charity but never a substantial amount, they take more than they give—even after they have taken enough to survive for the foreseeable future. The lowest class, the individuals in Parasite have to scrap, con, work their way just to make enough money to be able to dine at a nice place. The Parks family, the one living in luxury, literally mixes store brand ramen with expensive sirloin steak. The Parks were disappointed in their cancelled camping trip because of the rain; while the Kim family’s entire neighborhood became flooded by the same storm, with their home temporarily engulfed in a mixture of flood and sewer water.

Nowadays, I picture that horrible flood in the late second act as the pandemic in the United States---the upper class are bummed and frustrated about it, but gets to throw their parties nonetheless, while those in poverty and struggling to survive are completely drowning and losing everything in the process. While people are dying in hospitals, we are seeing tax cuts which has made billionaires even richer in the middle of an economy-crippling pandemic.

Coronavirus is about to kill 200,000 people in the United States alone, with no signs of slowing down, and as of now no cure or vaccine to combat it. 2020 has become the year of wearing masks and social distancing because the country severely mishandled the response to the pandemic. Granted the United States is not the only country that had struggled severely to this virus (Brazil, United Kingdom, Italy, Iran, Mexico, India), but if there’s a country with the power and money and resources to not only put a stop to this pandemic but also helped out the globe by handling it.

The United States is the importing, economic, touristic, and traveling center of the planet. If the United States had properly handled the pandemic, the rest of the world would have fared better. If the United States upper class, highest-earning companies, and government had made the proper investments to help fight this mysterious virus, then the recovery time would have been far shorter. But the problem is, the United States historically has had an extremely wide gap, and this gap had been growing exponentially in recent decades. Then we have a government that for a long time has been infighting and benefiting the rich and the companies above everyone else.

We were seeing a rise in the amount of billionaires and impoverished people at the same time, which is wild considering this means a growth in people economically moving in wildly different directions. Most frustrating of all, the man running the country and his administration are full of people who are so high up the economic ladder they’d get daily profitable nosebleeds. So instead, the United States became the number one spot for cases and deaths, despite having the largest military by far, over SIX TIMES the GDP of Germany, and a stronger GDP than the entire European Union.  

But this extreme wealth isn’t just among the overly rich and entitled Republicans, good ol’ Wall Street City and Silicon Valley and Hollywoodland are stuffed with people and companies with obscene wealth and millions and billions to potentially contribute to help fight and instead….we just aren’t seeing the necessary wealth distribution to cover for a shitty president in a shitty time period. We see the messages, the Black Lives Matter posts, but we aren’t seeing the actual action needed to take on the worst time period in recent American history.

Jeff Bezos has enough money to not only end this pandemic, but also has enough money to end WORLD hunger. John Krasinski was able to sell a television show for millions in the middle of a pandemic---a show about doing nice deeds and nice gestures to help spread good news during a tough time period. Kodak secured a $765 million loan in the middle of a pandemic. Kanye West was secured millions to protect his clothing brand; airlines after decades of spectacular numbers are receiving billions in help, sports leagues nationwide not only have same-day testing for the coronavirus when most of the country has to wait days for their results, but they even have these rings which can detect coronavirus symptoms---which of course is unattainable to about 95% of the country. The money to tackle the virus exists, the money to take on most of the issues hurting the United States exists, but its just not trickling down to the people that need it most.

In Parasite, it is implied that the impoverished Kim family would have to work and save money for at least a century to afford the house they were working in (research the final song in the movie). The Park family on the other hand could probably save entire neighborhoods with their money, could elevate the neighborhoods they are living literally on top of, but the movie displayed zero implication that they ever helped the less fortunate with their wild seemingly endless riches. Parasite points out that the rich remain rich by capitalizing on the poor, taking advantage of the poor, who will accept and appreciate the scraps given to them. In one of many plot twists and surprises, some of the employees for the Park family were actually homeless, and that’s despite working for an ultra-rich family.

And this is what bothers me the most about Parasite’s win; you clearly saw the movie, yet don’t act on it. You clearly saw the dilemmas, inequalities, corruption, systemic poverty, and yet when the country needs you the most, when its clear as day that minorities and the lower-class citizens in this mega-rich country needs more charity, need more financial support, needs more help, need stronger backing from those who have benefited the most from the freedoms of extreme capitalism, the results have been quite honestly disappointing. I’m not asking for all the solutions to come from them, but I am asking for effort and actual action.

We have enough millionaires inside and outside the White House to participate in giving up some of their wealth, the money that’s just icing on their delicious cake called upper class life and resolving a variety of problems we are facing today---extending from the coronavirus or the consequences of life under a pandemic. We have corporations that easily can cut prices or implement coronavirus relief fees or even sacrifice pockets of their profits to help and they would still be making fantastic money. We have people in the richest corners of the United States who could sell half their houses, give up half their wealth, sacrifice their profits from this entire year and still make it out very well, extremely well, while simultaneously helping millions. But with the exceptions of a select few, the actions aren’t matching the words.

We see the outrage and concern from the celebrities, from the economists, from the powerful concerning the terrible response to the pandemic, to the mere existence of Donald Trump and his merry batch of Administrative assholes, and the murders leading to the stronger revival of Black Lives Matter, and especially the widening gap between social and economic classes in the midst of rising costs and high unemployment numbers, but we don’t see the money and resources being placed front and center to assure they’ve done their part, they’ve actively participated in trying to eliminate some of these conflicts.

It seems rather wrong for me to demand for others to donate THEIR money for the cause and for the current tragedies at hand, but I’m not speaking about the middle class having to do their part; they’ve already done their part by working the jobs and spending the money in the midst of the pandemic. I am discussing those with the obscene wealth, those that make 8, 16, 20 million per film, those that receive billions upon billions in bonuses just by existing and remaining with the company. I am discussing folks like Bezos, who bought a $115 million home in the middle of a pandemic, or a Mark Zuckerberg who is buying up land in Hawaii. You know exactly who I am referring to when I am discussing giving up portions, percentages, millions and billions of dollars that they were never going to need regardless.

At the very LEAST, Amazon should be pouring money to help keep the United States Postal Service through the rest of this year after years of exploiting their services.

But Hollywood is not immune from this either. I haven’t seen enough commitment and contribution from a Central California that had just declared an anti-capitalist, class conflict instant classic the greatest film of 2019. So you saw the movie, you understood the movie, you clearly must have realized the themes and messages being portrayed since it also won best screenplay. But as we have this deadly pandemic killing Americans and destroying jobs and savings and dreams within a population of people with none of the resources necessary to survive (and we have a government that not only failed, but stopped caring about the entire conflict), we have yet to see the necessary stepping up, the necessary strong actions to battle the real-life conflicts happening in the real world, in the real environment that exists within your same state and beyond.  

I find it fascinating that a film that has made $200 million worldwide, has become the most-watched film in the history of Hulu, and one of the 50 highest-rated films on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Metacritic still didn’t produce much post-praise action and movement among those with the funds and resources to truly tackle the very-real problems presented in Parasite. Even if the film was made in South Korea and could have been discussing the current situation in said country, this film easily fits into the lopsided and unfair structure of the United States. I just ponder who the real-world targets believe the film is actually referring to. That being said, between the intense protesting happening in Brazil, Beirut, Belarus, and especially the United States, Parasite may have struck a nerve with the working class and the new generation of people growing up in an increasingly unfair world ruled by the few, ruled by those with money and power.

Parasite is clearly an Eat The Rich film, and Hollywood seemingly doesn’t realize that THEY are also the Park family.