(Spoilers Ahead!)
Two recent films, Jordan Peele’s Us and Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite delve into exciting portrayals of oppression and classism. The films have many overlapping concepts: class war, death, subterfuge, living underground, and the fact that both films center around two pairs of perfect nuclear families. The Wilsons and their doppelgangers (Us) and the Kims and the Parks (Parasite), all consist of four people: a mother, a father, a daughter, and a son. Of these paired families, one lives underground and is trying to claim a life above, while the other is explicitly privileged and defends their way of life. Each film could be considered a story about the entire family, but heavily leans on one character, especially toward the ending. Peele’s Adelaide Wilson, and JoonHo’s Kim Ki-Taek are the principal characters at the center of the films' conflicts. They have very different roles, and end up in opposite scenarios, with Adelaide free and Ki-Taek trapped underground. In Us there is less subtlety in the motivation of the oppressed family, they are coming up from underground to kill the people they are tethered to so they can live in the sun. In Parasite, as the title suggests, the Kim family becomes a parasitic force, siphoning wealth from the inattentive Park family.
Adelaide, played by Lupita Nyong’o is established as the main character of Us at the beginning, when she gets lost as a small girl. The rest of the film serves as a character study about her, even though her family gets a lot of screen-time. She is part of the privileged household (with a nasty secret) and fears the disruption of her way of life. Us establishes a world where families like the Wilsons have everything they want, while doppelgangers called the Tethered live underground and eat raw rabbit. In the world of Parasite, the Kim family lives in a sub-basement, which is small and dirty, while their employers, the Park family live in a mansion with a large yard. The father of the Kim family, Ki-Taek, played by Kang-Ho Song, is not the first of his family to infiltrate the household of the Parks, but he becomes the main character over the course of the film as he is degraded repeatedly by the Park family. The two characters make for an interesting comparison, because Ki-Taek struggles with his poverty and hatred for the rich, while Adelaide has already fought for her privileged life and now must fight to keep it.
Neither character entirely fits in with their family or the privileged lifestyle they try to adopt. Ki-Taek starts off Parasite as a strong head of family, the shot of him stoically folding pizza boxes while the rest of the family is coughing on insecticide establishes his character as someone with drive, even though he is unemployed and lower-class, he will do what needs to be done. But his drive is met with failure, and a foreshadowing comment that “One out of four” are rejects. As one of the early lines in the film it is immediately striking, considering there are four members of the Kim family, the reject is implied to be Ki-Taek. The line could easily have been in Us rather than Parasite, it applies to the Wilsons because Adelaide is not like the rest of her family. As an adult, Adelaide is never at ease, her family is relaxed and unafraid while on vacation, but there is not a moment in the movie, until the last shot of her, where Adelaide looks unafraid. As a child, Adelaide’s mother says “I just want my daughter back” when Adelaide stops talking after the incident with the Tethered, a reminder that she is not like other people on the surface (because she is the fake).
Both of the characters’ oddness take the form of senses; Ki-Taek has a noticeable ‘smell’ that Mr. Park cannot stand. Ki-Jeong, his daughter, insists is from living in a sub-basement. The smell makes its first appearance when Da-Song smells both Ki-Taek and Choong-Sook, and comments that they are the same. Later, Mr. Park heavily insults the smell while Ki-Taek listens secretly. The insults begin to push him over the edge, the idea that the wealthy can mock the poor for how they cannot help smelling. When Mr. Park does not acknowledge Ki-Jeong’s mortal wound but does take time to acknowledge the stink of Moon-Gwang’s husband, Ki-Taek finds that it is the last straw. He fatally stabs Mr. Park and runs off. Adelaide’s give-away is sound, at the beginning of the movie she snaps her fingers off-beat, confusing her son. Sound is important throughout Us because none of the Tethered can speak, except for Red (the original Adelaide). Their ululating sounds are grippingly inhuman. The audience, and Jason, her son, are shocked to find that when Adelaide finally kills Red, she releases loud ululating sobs, like the Tethered do. Jason is left to wonder who the real monster was.
Adelaide and Ki-Taek end their stories as dramatic opposites. After killing Red, Adelaide keeps her life above-ground, with her family intact. Her success is because of her desperation, and the brutality she displays in the final fight, and the ending flashback of the film. She has gotten away with climbing the social ladder, and she is happy about it, daring to smile at her suspicious son. Ki-Taek’s story ends in tragedy. Long-suffering and at the end of his rope, without a plan, he kills the cruel and indifferent Mr. Park, and takes the place of Moon-Gwang’s husband in the secret basement beneath the Parks’ house. He has descended even further, rather than finding a place in the sun. Ki-Taek must continue to live as a parasite, underground and with no hope of leaving. It is a tragic ending for the Kim family, showing the dire situation of the impoverished and what little chance there is to move up in the world.
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