Why squid

Squid Game is gruesomely violent and emotionally punishing. Since its premiere on Sept. But it also begs an uncomfortable question: Why are we so obsessed with a show about human suffering?

At its surface, Squid Game speaks to a long-standing fascination with the idea of gamifying survival. Horror films like Ready or Not , Saw , and Battle Royale follow protagonists who must survive a gauntlet of terror.

Even middle school readings center around the theme: Lord of the Flies leaves a group of teen boys to rescript the rules of society on an abandoned island; in the short story The Most Dangerous Game , a bored Russian aristocrat hunts a man for fun. If they survive, they win If they lose, they die in terrifying and inhumane ways — all while a group of billionaires watch for their own voyeuristic pleasure.

A rigged system enforced by state-sanctioned violence? Feels like being Black in America. It took less than a month for Squid Game , the South Korean survival series about systemic inequality and capitalism, to become the most-watched show in Netflix history. The show, in which an international elite coerces downtrodden people to play childhood games to the death with the hope of winning generational wealth, has had such a global appeal because of its universal themes of inequality, greed and oppression.

That certainly feels like being Black in America to me. One of the major themes in the show is the facade of choice — the notion perpetuated by the powerful that those without means can make personal decisions to break themselves out of their straitened circumstances.

But fairness never existed in the society the contestants came from, nor did it exist in the game itself. Netflix says it marks the streaming service's biggest series launch ever. If you've watched the whole show remember that spoiler warning above , you know the game doesn't really end with the ninth episode. It continues, and the future of "winner" Seong Gi-hun played by Lee Jung-jae is left uncertain.

Will we ever know what happens after he gets off that plane? The answer is a resounding In a red carpet interview on Nov. Netflix hasn't officially confirmed anything, however, and Hwang previously told Variety he may return to big-screen movies before thinking about a Squid Game sequel.

Get out the dangling piggy bank full of Korean won, Netflix, and pay the man. Until then, here are our ideas for characters, games and plots we'd like to see in Squid Game season 2. It certainly seems like Squid Game would make a great novel or graphic novel. But right now, you can't go to your bookstore and scoop up a Squid Game book to read.

According to Korean pop-culture site Soompi , Squid Game director Hwang Dong Hyuk said that he got the idea for the show back in from a comic book about people who were playing an extreme game. But he didn't name the comic. And it might not even be a single comic, because the director told the Korea Herald that he "read a lot of comics, and was mesmerized by survival games.

It seems likely that Squid Game will now be turned into book form, since it's such a hit. Keep an eye on those bookstore shelves. That film itself is based on Japanese manga. It's also about a death tournament using childhood games, and seems to have some very similar scenes, including a doll that spins around and tries to catch players moving.

Squid Game's director said at a press conference that only the first game in the film is similar to his show, and that he had been working on his concept for years before As The Gods Will came out in Obviously there's no deadly Squid Game tournament, where people are killed playing innocent children's games.

We hope. But the title refers to one specific game that gets its name from a court shaped vaguely like a squid. Main character Seong Gi-hun makes it sound as if Squid Game is unique to his town, describing a game that's kind of like Red Rover and kind of like Capture the Flag and is played in a playground court shaped like a squid.

In order to win, the attacking team, who are only allowed to hop until they pass the squid's waist, must tap the squid's head with their foot. Director Hwang told the Korea Herald that it was his favorite childhood game, so yes, it does seem to be real.

Other games played are fairly obviously real, including marbles, tug-of-war, and Red Light Green Light. There's one game that's obviously not real -- one in which players must cross a glass bridge and don't know which panel will shatter underfoot -- though games like hopscotch do require you to place your feet only in certain squares.

One game gives each player a tin of candy with a shape embossed into it, and they must use a sharp object to cut out the shape without breaking it. That's easy if you have a triangle shape, not so easy if you picked the umbrella.