Description
This paper looks at the highly successful Netflix show Squid Game. We argue that while the commercial and global dimension of the show demonstrates its economic success, Squid Game reveals itself to be an important political artefact to understand contemporary and overlapping financial, pandemic, and political crises. The show creates a world touching on themes such as existential crises, endemic insecurity and the violent nature of contemporary neo-liberal zeitgeist and society. They paint a world full of visible and invisible violences that affect the neo-liberalised subject. In doing so the show offers a variety of discursive elements of neo-liberalism and crisis global audiences are familiar with such as the importance of choice, the inescapable logic of participation and winning, the existential nature of activity, or the deadly implications of being left out/behind/abandoned and boredom. A particular focus, furthermore, lies on the illusion of voluntary participation, personal responsibility, and the infantilisation of the subjects participating in the game. Understanding these themes and why and how they can resonate with viewers can help us understand the way violent crises unfold and how popular culture helps (co-)constituting them.
