Spoiler alert: This blog contains spoilers for squid game 

 

My last blog explored a little bit of the Pakistani web series, Churails. Particularly the part where rich men gather in suits and strange animal masks to attend elaborate events where they rated women based on their looks and body parts. Churails is filled with animal analogies, and a couple of years ago, I wrote an article exploring the analogies in depth. 

However, while I was writing my previous blog, I coincidentally was finishing up my Netflix binge of Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Squid Game. This is why the fact that Squid Game also featured an elaborate event where suited, animal-masked men (the VIPS) treated a group of individuals in a very dehumanizing way kind of toyed with my brain. In Squid Game, people who are severely in debt are recruited to play games that resemble childrens’ games, however, they are killed if they lose. In the show, these men gathered and bet money on the players of the game, and watched the game for their entertainment.

The visible similarities between animal-masked men in Squid Game and Churails are beyond appalling. In both series, the people wearing masks are rich men who wear suits underneath. The masks are gold or silver with a geometric pattern, the elaborate pattern and color of the masks is possibly a deliberate attempt to represent wealth in both cases. I still do not know if the animal-masked men trope is a trope seen in other pieces of media. Upon searching, I haven’t been very successful. 

However, the biggest similarity is the fact that in both cases, the masked men animalistically try to dominate another group of people. While in Churails the focus is on gender (it obviously can not be separated from other identities such as class), in Squid Game the focus is predominantly on class. 

While at first glance, this might not seem to directly link to the content from this course, there is definitely a link. The masked men trope (is it really a trope?) helps my understanding of the predatory nature of oppressors. Throughout this course, I have learned about the predatory, exploitative nature of colonialism. This was made very explicit particularly in the McClintock text last week but was also seen in Things Fall Apart and the Fanon texts.