"Squid Game": Spatial Contrast and Symbolic Analysis

What comes to your mind when you think of the Korean drama "Squid Game", which was a tremendous hit? Childish games, awesome visual effects, colorful tones, brutal killing games, or unexpected reversals? My feeling can be summed up in one sentence, using "contrast" to form "tension". Is it a bit difficult to understand? Don't worry, I'll explain it to you!

Compared to other movies with the theme of killing games, at first glance, the game design of "Squid Game" seems very "childish", and only children will play. Red light Green light, Dalgona, Tug of war, Marbles, Stepping stones, Squid game, how to turn a childish game into a horrific act of killing. It is this sharp "contrast" to form the tension of the story of the first game.

The same contrast is on the visual effects. The first game uses a giant doll device to set off the smallness of people, and the big object symbolizes absolute power and strength, making people unconsciously obey the rules faster.

The playground device in the second game does not have any substantial role, but also highlights the "contrast". Just as no one expected when playing “Red light Green light”, people would be shot if they move, and certainly did not expect bodies to slide down the slide.

Each time they play the game, they must pass through the channel dominated by pink, yellow and blue. The bright and lively tones create a childlike atmosphere compared with the killing games. Especially at the end of each game, surviving people come back covered in blood, which forms a sharp contrast to the background colors.

The labyrinth-like channel structure also strengthens the unreal sense of people losing themselves in the games, blurring the boundary between reality and the games, again and again.

In the scene design of the first two games, only the sky is real. On the surrounding set walls, even the clouds and the sun are fake, only the guns are high above. The director deliberately used a lot of bird's-eye view shots to highlight the sense of fatalism of being "dominated", which can also be seen as a kind of God's perspective. From the opening of the childhood game to the final duel of life and death, "everything is a game".

The sun is replaced with a piggy bank throughout the game, hanging at the highest place and being looked up to, symbolizing that the hope of letting people live is not sunlight but money. The golden glow is beautiful but blinding.

The design here also has a contrasting effect. The childhood piggy bank is large enough to hold 45.6 billion won, and the children's desire for money grows exponentially as they grow up. And eventually, desire devours humanity.

At the final dinner, three people, a long triangular table, a circular field, and the black and white grid elements of a chess board, bring the final game to the stage. The Games played in the previous five rounds are on the surrounding walls. The stronger the sense of ritual here, the more distant the protagonists are from each other. They detach from common sense and conscience and fall into a crazy game.

Compared to the thrilling, thought-provoking, sensory stimulation of the games, "Squid Game" focuses more on scene design. Colors and Game props appear as a kind of symbol, and the metaphors behind them are worth thinking about deeply.

The whole drama emphasizes "symbols". Not only are the scenes full of symbols, but even people are also turned into symbols, establishing a dehumanized game world. Circles, triangles, and squares represent laborers (responsible for carrying and burning bodies), soldiers (responsible for maintaining order), and managers (responsible for background operations) respectively.

Participants in the game also have their names erased and are given numbers, as if living a prison life. The elderly is number 001, the leading actor is number 456. It means that the elderly is the person who starts the game, and the leading actor is the person who ends the game.

A likely foreshadowing for the second season is that the leading actor gives his No.456 jacket to the elderly, who gives his No.001 jacket in turn, saying, "Put on the jacket, others won't look down on you." It implies that the leading actor is likely to take over the elderly as number 001 in the second season and re-open the game.

The bodies of the eliminated are put into "gift boxes", but some of the soldiers and managers secretly collude to buy and sell organs. So, the "gifts" seem to imply organ trading, which is even more ironic.

VIPs are also symbolized to show the disparity in status, they put on golden animal masks and sit high up in the stands. None of the VIPs is Korean, but instead foreigners who symbolize the power of each country. There are a tiger, lion, crocodile, and other beasts, but right in the middle is a deer, and the man in the deer mask is wearing a Chinese costume, triggering speculation in the audience about the real identity of the VIPs.

The policeman is regarded as the most specific character in the drama. He is calm, wise, and brave. The most crucial thing is that he is the only one who breaks away from the rules in the drama, and it is also the core of the character's existence.

From the manager (the policeman's brother) to the staff, to the participants represented by the leading actor, including the elderly who started the game, everyone is involved in the rules and order of the game world, and it is they who constitute a weird game world detached from the real world.

In the next season, the policeman may break the game world with the leading actor. His falling off the cliff should only be a foreshadowing. Since when does the manager not kill people with one shot? He wants his brother to survive.

The drama builds a condensed society with simple games, and contrary to the popular thought-provoking ideas, it desperately wants to return to the original. We are all in the game, obeying the condensed social rules beyond our humanity, and this squid game is never fair.