COMMENTARY
Commentary
Commentary
1. The physical distance between master and servant embodying the separation between the rich and the poor is overcome climactically through a hug or a stab, opposing representational paradigms suggesting respectively hope and despair. The optimistic solution promoting empathy and solidarity embraces a female victim of poverty while the pessimistic scenario driven by fear recoils from a male avenger belonging to the lower depths. Filmmakers express their ambivalence by contemplating both possibilities (often in separate films) or highlighting their contradictions (the master wants a hug while the poor wants to stab).
3. PARASITE’s satirical treatment of master-servant relations as the tense cohabitation of class enemies seen in terms of an invasion or haunting represents but one side of the coin. The close relationship between master and servant in a domestic realm creates intimate bonds whereby the transactional exchange of money for labor between employer and employee gets mixed up with personal relations and boundaries concerning roles are less strictly defined. When master and servant become like family members or relationship partners, what duties and responsibilities should they assume with one another?
4. The master/servant narrative is frequently presented as an intersubjective encounter between the self and the other that can go one of two ways. Through listening and empathy, an ethical breakthrough may be achieved that allows for the emotional catharsis of both parties, with insights gained from transcending the boundaries of the self and admitting the perspective and needs of the other. Conversely, in situations where communication fails, the concerns and pains of the other go unacknowledged in the absence of true dialogue or conversation, resulting in enmity rather than understanding.
2. A marked gender divide characterizes the ideological imagination of the poor or the servant as the Other. Apart from ELENA, the films tend to sentimentalize the female servant as a victim suffering from the ill effects of poverty with whom the master empathizes, while the avenger for the proletariat or underclass is villainized as masculine, perceived as a threat associated with deadly violence. Working-class machismo is presented as an instinctive, inarticulate, and animalistic form of male aggression that – mixed with feelings of impotence and an inferiority complex – leads to the “toxic” expression of masculinity.
5. Caricatures of the Other across a social divide are relied upon and confirmed in cynical accounts satirizing the encounter between master and servant in which human behavior based on social hierarchy is comically predictable and unchanging. Class-based stereotypes are destabilized and subject to dismantling in various surprising ways with films that explore relationships between the rich and the poor in a more open-ended and less deterministic fashion, whether this involves intersectionality with issues of race and sexuality that are unexpected, or allowing for chance to disrupt well-intentioned efforts at intersubjective understanding.
5. The fractious society that we find ourselves in today is also remarkably violent and confrontational. Its disharmony stems from extreme inequalities produced by societal shifts that were engineered politically. The very real and negative effects this has had on those who lost out in the process of transition can act like a boomerang. The resentment that is built up on the level of the individual spills over into violence against oneself and others, while antagonisms within the family extend out into society taking the form of mass protest and civil unrest.
7. The fractious society that we find ourselves in today is also remarkably violent and confrontational. Its disharmony stems from extreme inequalities produced by societal shifts that were engineered politically. The very real and negative effects this has had on those who lost out in the process of transition can act like a boomerang. The resentment that is built up on the level of the individual spills over into violence against oneself and others, while antagonisms within the family extend out into society taking the form of mass protest and civil unrest.
8. The fractious society that we find ourselves in today is also remarkably violent and confrontational. Its disharmony stems from extreme inequalities produced by societal shifts that were engineered politically. The very real and negative effects this has had on those who lost out in the process of transition can act like a boomerang. The resentment that is built up on the level of the individual spills over into violence against oneself and others, while antagonisms within the family extend out into society taking the form of mass protest and civil unrest.
CODA. The fractious society that we find ourselves in today is also remarkably violent and confrontational. Its disharmony stems from extreme inequalities produced by societal shifts that were engineered politically. The very real and negative effects this has had on those who lost out in the process of transition can act like a boomerang. The resentment that is built up on the level of the individual spills over into violence against oneself and others, while antagonisms within the family extend out into society taking the form of mass protest and civil unrest.
6. The separate yet overlapping worlds of the master and servant constitute a representational challenge that ROMA and PARASITE – each in its own distinctive way – memorably solve through a strongly characterized cinematic treatment of space and place. Cuarón recreates Mexico City and its environs circa 1971 as two parallel universes with echoing locations – one wet and fertile, abundant with life; the other dry and barren, haunted by death – inhabited respectively by the rich and the poor. Meanwhile, the shared space of the family house is divided narratively between foreground (servant) and background (master).
7. Like Cuarón, Bong faces the challenge of filming the shared space of master and servant within the same home as well as expressing cinematically the differences between rich and poor neighborhoods. This he does through a vertical conceptualization of space that applies both to the house (with its hidden basement) and the layout of the city itself (as water floods the low-lying slums and the Kims’ banjiha apartment). Moreover, Bong borrows from the conventions of Gothic horror to suggest the monsters haunting the Parks’s mansion as constituting a “return of the repressed.”
CODA. While pessimistic accounts of the master/servant encounter end despairingly with violent death or deep division, their antithesis seeks a positive outcome that suggests the idealized and normative possibility of transcending social barriers in reality through spiritual deliverance or humanistic bonding, whether this means the striving for a form of ascension from the earthbound to the otherworldly; the invocation of religious faith to counter nihilistic despair; or the positing of unlikely friendships and human solidarity as solutions to life’s contradictions. Hauntingly, DAYS ends with a question rather than an answer....
8. The master’s house may be designed like an impregnable fortress heavily fortified against the poor with its tall walls and secret bunker. Ironically, it is the precisely the bunker that allows for intrusion, while “parasite”-like members of the lower class succeed in infiltrating a gated existence by becoming servants and taking care of what the masters cannot manage on their own. Still, there are invisible boundaries and imaginary borders revolving around odor and germs that the rich at once grow paranoid over and fetishize as a result of their sanitized habits.
1. The physical distance between master and servant embodying the separation between the rich and the poor is overcome climactically through a hug or a stab, opposing representational paradigms suggesting respectively hope and despair. The optimistic solution promoting empathy and solidarity embraces a female victim of poverty while the pessimistic scenario driven by fear recoils from a male avenger belonging to the lower depths. Filmmakers express their ambivalence by contemplating both possibilities (often in separate films) or highlighting their contradictions (the master wants a hug while the poor wants to stab).
3. PARASITE’s satirical treatment of master-servant relations as the tense cohabitation of class enemies seen in terms of an invasion or haunting represents but one side of the coin. The close relationship between master and servant in a domestic realm creates intimate bonds whereby the transactional exchange of money for labor between employer and employee gets mixed up with personal relations and boundaries concerning roles are less strictly defined. When master and servant become like family members or relationship partners, what duties and responsibilities should they assume with one another?
4. The master/servant narrative is frequently presented as an intersubjective encounter between the self and the other that can go one of two ways. Through listening and empathy, an ethical breakthrough may be achieved that allows for the emotional catharsis of both parties, with insights gained from transcending the boundaries of the self and admitting the perspective and needs of the other. Conversely, in situations where communication fails, the concerns and pains of the other go unacknowledged in the absence of true dialogue or conversation, resulting in enmity rather than understanding.
2. A marked gender divide characterizes the ideological imagination of the poor or the servant as the Other. Apart from ELENA, the films tend to sentimentalize the female servant as a victim suffering from the ill effects of poverty with whom the master empathizes, while the avenger for the proletariat or underclass is villainized as masculine, perceived as a threat associated with deadly violence. Working-class machismo is presented as an instinctive, inarticulate, and animalistic form of male aggression that – mixed with feelings of impotence and an inferiority complex – leads to the “toxic” expression of masculinity.
5. Caricatures of the Other across a social divide are relied upon and confirmed in cynical accounts satirizing the encounter between master and servant in which human behavior based on social hierarchy is comically predictable and unchanging. Class-based stereotypes are destabilized and subject to dismantling in various surprising ways with films that explore relationships between the rich and the poor in a more open-ended and less deterministic fashion, whether this involves intersectionality with issues of race and sexuality that are unexpected, or allowing for chance to disrupt well-intentioned efforts at intersubjective understanding.
6. The separate yet overlapping worlds of the master and servant constitute a representational challenge that ROMA and PARASITE – each in its own distinctive way – memorably solve through a strongly characterized cinematic treatment of space and place. Cuarón recreates Mexico City and its environs circa 1971 as two parallel universes with echoing locations – one wet and fertile, abundant with life; the other dry and barren, haunted by death – inhabited respectively by the rich and the poor. Meanwhile, the shared space of the family house is divided narratively between foreground (servant) and background (master).
7. Like Cuarón, Bong faces the challenge of filming the shared space of master and servant within the same home as well as expressing cinematically the differences between rich and poor neighborhoods. This he does through a vertical conceptualization of space that applies both to the house (with its hidden basement) and the layout of the city itself (as water floods the low-lying slums and the Kims’ banjiha apartment). Moreover, Bong borrows from the conventions of Gothic horror to suggest the monsters haunting the Parks’s mansion as constituting a “return of the repressed.”
8. The master’s house may be designed like an impregnable fortress heavily fortified against the poor with its tall walls and secret bunker. Ironically, it is the precisely the bunker that allows for intrusion, while “parasite”-like members of the lower class succeed in infiltrating a gated existence by becoming servants and taking care of what the masters cannot manage on their own. Still, there are invisible boundaries and imaginary borders revolving around odor and germs that the rich at once grow paranoid over and fetishize as a result of their sanitized habits.
CODA. While pessimistic accounts of the master/servant encounter end despairingly with violent death or deep division, their antithesis seeks a positive outcome that suggests the idealized and normative possibility of transcending social barriers in reality through spiritual deliverance or humanistic bonding, whether this means the striving for a form of ascension from the earthbound to the otherworldly; the invocation of religious faith to counter nihilistic despair; or the positing of unlikely friendships and human solidarity as solutions to life’s contradictions. Hauntingly, DAYS ends with a question rather than an answer....
1. Globalization’s hollowing out of the working class is reflected in the depiction of aging blue collar fathers whose physical labor involves (pointedly) the construction of homes. Faced with work-related injuries that variously leave them unemployed or dealing with chronic medical conditions that require prohibitively expensive treatments, these characters struggle with neoliberal corporate insurance policies and state welfare directives that make it hard for them to claim legitimate benefits, even as they come to terms with bodies that have become frail that were once robust.
1. The physical distance between master and servant embodying the separation between the rich and the poor is overcome climactically through a hug or a stab, opposing representational paradigms suggesting respectively hope and despair. The optimistic solution promoting empathy and solidarity embraces a female victim of poverty while the pessimistic scenario driven by fear recoils from a male avenger belonging to the lower depths. Filmmakers express their ambivalence by contemplating both possibilities (often in separate films) or highlighting their contradictions (the master wants a hug while the poor wants to stab).
2. A marked gender divide characterizes the ideological imagination of the poor or the servant as the Other. Apart from ELENA, the films tend to sentimentalize the female servant as a victim suffering from the ill effects of poverty with whom the master empathizes, while the avenger for the proletariat or underclass is villainized as masculine, perceived as a threat associated with deadly violence. Working-class machismo is presented as an instinctive, inarticulate, and animalistic form of male aggression that – mixed with feelings of impotence and an inferiority complex – leads to the “toxic” expression of masculinity.
3. PARASITE’s satirical treatment of master-servant relations as the tense cohabitation of class enemies seen in terms of an invasion or haunting represents but one side of the coin. The close relationship between master and servant in a domestic realm creates intimate bonds whereby the transactional exchange of money for labor between employer and employee gets mixed up with personal relations and boundaries concerning roles are less strictly defined. When master and servant become like family members or relationship partners, what duties and responsibilities should they assume with one another?
4. The master/servant narrative is frequently presented as an intersubjective encounter between the self and the other that can go one of two ways. Through listening and empathy, an ethical breakthrough may be achieved that allows for the emotional catharsis of both parties, with insights gained from transcending the boundaries of the self and admitting the perspective and needs of the other. Conversely, in situations where communication fails, the concerns and pains of the other go unacknowledged in the absence of true dialogue or conversation, resulting in enmity rather than understanding.
5. Caricatures of the Other across a social divide are relied upon and confirmed in cynical accounts satirizing the encounter between master and servant in which human behavior based on social hierarchy is comically predictable and unchanging. Class-based stereotypes are destabilized and subject to dismantling in various surprising ways with films that explore relationships between the rich and the poor in a more open-ended and less deterministic fashion, whether this involves intersectionality with issues of race and sexuality that are unexpected, or allowing for chance to disrupt well-intentioned efforts at intersubjective understanding.
6. The separate yet overlapping worlds of the master and servant constitute a representational challenge that ROMA and PARASITE – each in its own distinctive way – memorably solve through a strongly characterized cinematic treatment of space and place. Cuarón recreates Mexico City and its environs circa 1971 as two parallel universes with echoing locations – one wet and fertile, abundant with life; the other dry and barren, haunted by death – inhabited respectively by the rich and the poor. Meanwhile, the shared space of the family house is divided narratively between foreground (servant) and background (master).
7. Like Cuarón, Bong faces the challenge of filming the shared space of master and servant within the same home as well as expressing cinematically the differences between rich and poor neighborhoods. This he does through a vertical conceptualization of space that applies both to the house (with its hidden basement) and the layout of the city itself (as water floods the low-lying slums and the Kims’ banjiha apartment). Moreover, Bong borrows from the conventions of Gothic horror to suggest the monsters haunting the Parks’s mansion as constituting a “return of the repressed.”
8. The master’s house may be designed like an impregnable fortress heavily fortified against the poor with its tall walls and secret bunker. Ironically, it is the precisely the bunker that allows for intrusion, while “parasite”-like members of the lower class succeed in infiltrating a gated existence by becoming servants and taking care of what the masters cannot manage on their own. Still, there are invisible boundaries and imaginary borders revolving around odor and germs that the rich at once grow paranoid over and fetishize as a result of their sanitized habits.