A Pedagogy of the Parasite

Parasite: A Philosophical Exploration, eds. Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and Giannis Stamatellos (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 33-46

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite incisively depicts the contemporary class divide and its ethical impasse between contract/tolerance and hate/violence, devoid of any political resolution. However, this critique of neoliberal capitalism finds itself embraced in the global cultural and industrial spheres, compelling us to delve deeper into the film's intricacies on both the textual and contextual fronts.

International Journal of Literature and Arts, 2023

The media text chosen for this research is the film "Parasite". The purpose of the study is to correlate the film with Marxism. Marxism can be defined as the political, social, and economic philosophy. It was invented by Karl Marx that highlights the struggle between two classes of society; the bourgeoisie or capitalists, and the proletariat or working class. A critical analysis of the film has been done to distinguish where Marxist theory was observable. The findings showed that the film Parasite is a perfect illustration of Marxism. It gracefully depicts the class system, which can also be correlated to the real world. On one side, it showed an elite class, so, on the flip side, it exposed the lower class. Hence, both are standard social classes in today's society. The film doesn't only depict Marxism but also shows the dark side of humanity. On one point, it gives hope to the Proletariat class by delivering a message that upward mobility is possible. So, on the next point, it also alerts the Bourgeoisie class that if the working class tries to become rich, they struggle for it, and are ready to cross all limits to achieve it. Henceforth, a powerful and substantial connection was observed between the film Parasite, Marxism, and the society.

International Journal of Literature Studies

Movies are a combination of technology and entertainment with the consideration of aesthetics. Movies reflect society and transform the citizens’ views about things and basically about everything else in the world. A movie does not only entertain, but it also educates the viewers about society. Lessons from these movies can also be applied in real-life scenarios. Also, some movies reflect the context of the society in which the movie is reflected into. Some of these depictions even reflect the social setups of society. Social set-ups in movies show the different classes as people compete for resources and survival. This study investigates the class inequalities depicted in the movie Parasite by Bong Joon Ho by delving deeper into its characters, settings, and symbolism. Related Literature and Related Studies serve as the foundation of this study. The data from the chosen literary work is analyzed using a qualitative strategy through discourse analysis and is scrutinized through the ...

Parasite, the Korean movie that overcame linguistic limitations of the Academy and transcended borders with an evocative and relatable tale of class-conflict stands as the paradigm shift in the global culture of cinema. Besides the various institutional validations that the movie received, it is worth asking why the movie was successful in generating a wide range of positive responses, from niche and otherwise audiences. I will first summarise the essential cinematic qualities of the film. I will then further argue how Parasite deploys powerful metaphors to reiterate some classic standpoints about classconflict, and modernity from non-Western Marxisms. It is especially remarkable how Parasite presents questions about 'class' generated primarily from the experience of the postcolonial non-West through relatable designs.

LITERACY : International Scientific Journals of Social, Education, Humanities

The modern era is an era marked by the development of science and technology as well as socio-cultural developments that take place rapidly through various sources and media. Communication media is often used by the public in a positive learning world, for example as a means of delivering moral messages. There are many types of moral messages conveyed through communication media, one of which is through films. This study aims to determine the impact of social inequality and moral messages contained in the film 'Parasite'. The method used is qualitative and quantitative methods, namely through observation of dialogue data in films, expressions, and plot practices, action data in each scene, demands from each story session, and also audience comments. The results obtained from this parasitic film can criticize life in South Korea, especially the socio-economic gap between the rich and the poor. This film also contains many hidden meanings, such as the comparison of body odor a...

Science Fiction Film & Television, 2021

This article analyses and compares two films by South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho: his 2006 sf film Gwoemul (The Host; South Korea 2006) and his most recent film Gisaengchung (Parasite; South Korea 2019). I interpret these two films through the lens of outbreak narrative and socio-environmentalism. I argue the films foreground the way each class has a different power and ability to defend itself against environmental toxicity, even though our bodies share the same porosity to it. The films show that with the unequal distribution of power and wealth, the rich and necropolitical nation-states use outbreak narrative to (re)constitute communities based on class lines, drawing imaginary lines between them. As a fictionalised enemy, poor communities are pushed away to uninhabitable places – the exceptional places made for emergencies. Bong shows that those pushed away to live minimal lives metamorphosise into parasites in the mental, behavioural and somatic senses, and further demonstrates that the current economic and political conditions offer no possibilities of solidarity. The paper concludes that his films demand that humanities scholars rethink our approach to environmentalist discourses, reminding our audiences that environmental justice for the poor can never be achieved without changing the necropolitical system of politics and economics.

Parasite: A Philosophical Exploration, 2022

Taking its intellectual departure from Michel Serres’ The Parasite (1982), this chapter situates Bong Joon Ho’s fantasy-nightmare of late capitalist exploitation and class conflict within its classical horizon. Bong constructs a cinematic parable in which characters and locations bifurcate and swap the roles of guest and host and of site and para-site, instantiating and expanding Serres’ model of the parasitic relation as well as its metabolic, economic and static aspects. More than this, Bong’s self-conscious staging makes clear that the title of his film refers both to action within the artwork and to the work itself and its creators, including the filmmaker himself who is both host and guest of the occasion that is our experience of that parable as it flows. For this reason, the ultimate addressee of the central question the film raises – how are parasitic relations of host/guest, creditor/debtor to be contracted and regulated? – is the film itself, in its complex positionality in relation to its creator and viewers. More simply: Parasite stages itself as the ultimate answer to the question of who (or what) is the parasite that is named in its title.

Lire Journal (Journal of Linguistics and Literature), 2021

Film works can be created from various perspectives and production methods by teams in the film industry. Parasite is a South Korean movie presented as a production-based film and it raises a big theme of lifestyle differences between social classes. Parasite Movie portrays a new perspective with an astonishing story and plot-twist in the context of film with the issue of social inequality in the modern era. Various awards were obtained by Parasite films on a national and international scale for its beautiful story. The data is collected from the scenes in the movie which later the data is connected with some theories. This study also aims to find out the literary meaning of the movie Parasite, specifically the representation of social class through some literary research.

CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2021

The purpose of the present article is to study the social implications of repetitive metaphors in the film and of the word Parasite (2019) and to observe what makes the life of a lower-class family parasitic within a typical capitalistic society. In the mainstream discussion, the metaphorical functions of such words as 'smell,' 'insects,' 'the rock,' and 'the party' are assessed within the context of the film. The central questions of the article, therefore, are: What are the recurrent and metaphorical motifs in the plotline and how can their implications be related to the overall theme of the film? How does Parasite exhibit the clash of classes in a capitalist society? To answer the questions, the present study offers a comprehensive analysis of its recurring metaphors as well as its treatment of the characters who visibly belong to two completely different classes. Through a complex story of two families whose fate gets intermingled, Bong Joon-ho masterfully presents a metaphoric picture of a society where inequality is rampant and the poor can only experience temporary happiness in the shadow of the rich (represented by the Park family).

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (2019) emanates sensory worlds of class, work, and judgement, transforming a black downstairs/upstairs comedy about grifters moving into the home of a naïve rich family into a darkly tragic tale of discrimination, revenge, and odour. The film begins with futile schemes of the lower-class Kim family, making their way in the world through little ploys and persistent work, folding pizza boxes and stealing internet access. Through a bit of luck, the son of the Kim family, Ki-woo, is introduced to the Park household, recently in need of an English tutor for their teenaged daughter. Through both determined manipulation and staged obsequiousness, each of the four members of the Kim family ingratiates themselves into lucrative spaces labouring for their rich patrons.