Before Squid Game, there was Battle Royale

Not sure it really matters that much. Squid Game is a global phenomenon and even though it’s ostensibly a Korean series, it’s pretty clearly funded by the very American corporation Netflix.

> Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning.

You Americans really have lost the touch of reality with regards to politics, that's for sure.

Tech companies are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the world. They do what they do in order to increase profit. Nothing left-leaning about that.

In a few days your new president and his gamer buddy takes office, and they both have their own social media networks.

They're liberal on cultural issues, because it's an easy marketing win, (or at least was), they're not interested in any left-wing ideas that would give greater ownership of these companies to their employees for example.

> college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take!

Sure, the left wing take is to have high quality education paid for via tax dollars and thus being universally available, same as healthcare should be.

That's such an American thing to say. Tech companies are better described as neoliberal

I think the other commenter is right in calling them neoliberal, not left wing. An economically left wing corporation is sort of an impossibility…but I don’t want to veer into that debate here.

To answer your question: because a good portion of a company like Netflix’s annual revenue is derived from credit card payments that are sort of “forgotten” monthly bills. These companies don’t benefit at all from a financially-literate and secure customer base.

America's corporate seemingly managed to convince y'all that identity politics are "left".

First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that. In fact it's the epitome of individualism when you're focused on what makes you different from them instead of focusing on what is common between the general population (which they are part of). Labeling it as left has been a very successful psy-op to create a controlled dissidence (which is not dissident at all).

Why do you think megacorps like Disney et al are so adamant on pushing this agenda? Everything a company does, everything, is calculated. This is not "neoliberalism" like sibling comments are mentioning. This is a very calculated power move to shift the narrative (and how it's labeled as "left" is proof that it succeeded).

The only alternative explanation would be that they're trying to capture a greater market share, but it has been proven time and time again that it has only led to flopping (by pushing away the majority of non-identitary people while not even capturing the already small minorities) and yet they still push for it. Why?

By making vast swaths of "revolutionary" youngsters (as all youngsters are) fight for this nonsensical cause, they have effectively suppressed any possibility of a real struggle for power that might topple the actual elites.

And as a neat side-effect this identitarism has managed to make the everyday man focus on their peers as the source of all their woes. Corpos like that. It prevents Mangiones that might take action against their actual oppressors. Energy is finite, so they're trying to make it be wasted on intra-class instead of inter-class politics.

Stop playing their game.

Only a person who has no idea about left wing politics could describe tech companies as "extremely left wing." They are just boring old neoliberals.

So extremely of the left they made the Wobblies look right wing! /s

https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399591/wobblies-of-the-wor...

>That being said, many gladiators didn't really have the skills to pursue a different career after retirement.

Same applies to many, many soldiers — and it's not just about the skills.

It's just that things don't matter as much anymore outside of that environment.

This was always so interesting to me, especially when I think back to being a kid. The neighborhood kids would hang out in nearby farms and fields, catching bugs, snakes and frogs...only to put them in jars or terrariums to see if they would fight. In retrospect, it seems positively sociopathic, but it was fun at the time (and spurred a lifelong interest in frogs, for me).

As an adult, it makes me wonder if that's what we were doing though; setting up gladiator games to try and feel a dominance over something in a world where we were constantly the bottom of the hierarchal ladder. The above step on the below, so to speak.

There's "inspired by" media with similar concepts, then there's straight up copying it and not even bothering to change the content. Star Wars is inspired by westerns but adds its own flavor. Squid Game straight up copies Kaiji to the point that the only real difference is the language.

While I fundamentally agree with you about the lineage, I can appreciate that there is a direct thread of artistically psychotic surrealism in Squid Game that feels inherited from Battle Royale.

The pink caskets (which might be my favourite visual element) feel like they would be at home in the world of Battle Royale, but IMO feel way too dark humor for Hunger Games.

Battle Royale and Squid Game both feature characters reaching quivering ecstacy when players die. My memory could be rose colored at this point, but Hunger Games just wasn't that dark.

> Squid Games is just Kaiji with better presentation.

The presentation comparison is apples to oranges. Kaiji just wouldn’t work as live action (although they tried with a movie) as it relays heavily on the affordances of anime/manga as a medium to present Kaiji’s inner world and show visual metaphors for his emotions. Without that you take away the substance. It’s fair to say Squid Game steals a lot of themes and ideas from Kaiji, but it’s certainly not just Kaiji with different wrapping (unless there is something I am missing having not read the manga).

Because Kaiji is just less popular

That's the correct analogy and chronology.

Another one is Ready Player One borrowed from Sword Art Online, which borrowed from .hack, which borrowed from Serial Experiments Lain, which drew upon a rich pantheon of cyberpunk novels.

Same, Battle Royale always seemed anti-government to me where Squid Games is very explicitly anti-capitalist.

I know there was a reward for winning and the fundamental reason for the Battle Royale was economic, but I always got the vibe the government was the problem.

Like, the kids in Battle Royale weren't exempt if they were rich, right? It was a lottery. Squid Game only appeals to people struggling under capitalism.

A lot of stuff is apparently explained in the book that just happens for no reason in the movie. Especially the whole ending seems to be missing quite a few scenes to make any sense (I've read online that in the book it is actually explained)

My point is, those things actually don't need an explanation for the movie to be good. The director just said "fuck those details, let's get to where these kids gets weapons in hand"

Cube is a great lesson in budget filmmaking.

It's based on a manga. Or whatever the Korean equivalent is.

Pretty sure S1 of AiB was out around a year earlier than SG, in 2020.

They both seem to go back a ways though - AiB is based on Manga that was serialised starting in 2010 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Borderland

And SG was apparently first written in 2009.

And yes, I agree it should get more attention! There are obvious similarities, but AiB appeals to me more in its mysteriousness.