S4E6.5: Parasite
Added 2025-01-31 17:44:54 +0000 UTCThis week, you're getting a little treat here.
We've been wanting to talk about Bong Joon Ho's Parasite for some time now, but we've never felt like we could do it alone. We've always been hunting for that perfect guest to survive the KJB Gauntlet where we invite learned academics on and then absolutely refuse to let them get a word in edgewise for anywhere up to two hours.
This week, we are delighted to say that the gauntlet is being run by Olfactory Ethicist Dr Ally Louks! If you've not long since abandoned X dot com the everything app, you'll be familiar with Dr Louks and her particular area of expertise on scent as a class marker in literature, and indeed, more widely, in everything else too.
Parasite itself is a movie about a rich family and a poor family. Class relations are a difficult thing to untangle, and this resulted in some viewers having trouble figuring out who exactly the titular 'parasite' is. We... have some theories.
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Comments
This movie is Shakespeare.
James Rule
2025-03-18 20:32:28 +0000 UTCI didn't see the ending as Ki-Taek killing Rich dad because offended him, I saw that as part of it but mostly him realizing that his daughter has been stabbed and this guy does not give a fuck. Their lives are nothing to him and so he very understandably is like "ok you die now". It has been a while since I saw the movie though, pirated in the school movie club back in 2020 or something
Oh No
2025-02-23 04:27:20 +0000 UTCPink Panther season when?
Drew Flanagan
2025-02-11 02:03:50 +0000 UTCI saw a video essay years ago that compared this film with Snowpiercer and suggests that they both have a sort of middle class character who can bridge the divide of the broken system but in this film he leaves in the first ten minutes so instead of having survivors to build a better system after the old one collapses like in Snowpiercer this system collapses in this film but everyone is still trapped in it so it's more like the facade of the system collapses but there's no way out. Cheery thought. I'm trying to remember who made the video. It might have been Pop Culture Detective.
Damien Tonkin
2025-02-11 00:44:02 +0000 UTCI appreciate Abi’s perspective on this as someone who, like me, is probably far closer to the parks than to the kims lol
Ineloquent Reverie
2025-02-09 22:50:12 +0000 UTCY'all don't have stinkbugs yet? Lucky -- they smell like spoiled fruit and metal. And they get in everywhere because they're so flat
Henry Read
2025-02-08 23:30:35 +0000 UTCI'd say the film concludes that the real parasite is the capitalist system. Evidence being that not only does the film provide all these critiques of capital, it also has a small space for the rich family to show that they too are completely wasted in this system, that they are trapped in unfulfilling lives - and not that this is an equal suffering as that that the poor family faces at all but that capitalism is fundamentally an orthodoxy of waste. Wasted potential, wasted food, wasted lives, wasted time, wasted planet. Excess but also complete absence for no reason. Perhaps it's better to say that the film instead of pointing out the sadness of being ultra rich is instead pointing out the pointlessness of it and the lack of fulfillment therein. Happiness cannot be bought, but sadness can be "earned" through debt and lack of money. Absence and waste.
Amy
2025-02-08 01:05:53 +0000 UTCOh! Disney's Robin Hood is some classic Robbery Season & Heisting
Gilded Dragon
2025-02-07 07:22:49 +0000 UTCI don't know if you read these comments for recommendations, but I was re-listening to your 'The Lives of Others' episode the other day and I thought you would like 'Coming Out' (1989). It premiered the night the Berlin Wall fell and was the only film produced in the DDR to address queer identity. I saw it last year and found it super interesting, perhaps you lot would too :)
Reuben
2025-02-06 21:46:08 +0000 UTCI'm amazed that The Park Family and The Kim Family went without mention, knowing the family names of North and South Korean leadership.
Jon W
2025-02-04 00:41:33 +0000 UTCyo I’m a caked up academic
liz future
2025-02-03 22:26:35 +0000 UTCY’al’ should do Emilia Perez, would love to hear your thoughts
VTP
2025-02-03 13:51:36 +0000 UTCSpeaking of basement living, I've heard that buildings over a certain size in Finland all have to have a civil defence shelter in the basement. It's all taxpayer funded and as long as you can move it all out of the way within half an hour in case the Russians attack or Trump presses the wrong button when he's thirsty, they have basketball courts, school rooms, skating rinks, etc. Just think under socialism you'd never be short of a place to hold your next DnD game
Damien Tonkin
2025-02-03 12:02:16 +0000 UTCSpeaking of smell and this movie's use of it, I just finished watching to prepare myself for the episode and remembered I had a vial of a perfume called Parasite by the house Moth and Rabbit. It smells very strange. It's like... Fresh grass, but fake. Like an AstroTurf lawn. It's comforting and off-putting in equal measure.
Easton Ward
2025-02-03 02:32:47 +0000 UTCThat's a great movie. The scenes with the monster rampaging through the riverside is the most realistic physical interactio s and crowd reactions I've seen - and gruesome as heck.
William Chamberlain
2025-02-02 21:54:39 +0000 UTCTo borrow a line from elsewhere, it isn't that the poor family is "bad". It's that life has "Made them smarter in a worse way"
Noblesse Oblahaj
2025-02-02 17:40:29 +0000 UTCDO THE HOST
A Tedious Returning
2025-02-02 14:25:16 +0000 UTCIt's a 0-0-1-3 for me
Inconspicuous old man and mime
2025-02-02 12:33:28 +0000 UTCI guess there's a parallel to rich kids and blue bloods knowing a few words of French for their skiing holidays
Jack Connell
2025-02-02 12:08:06 +0000 UTCLike that politeness will never be enough cause it’s not genuine and can never be genuine
Mildly invested
2025-02-01 23:41:26 +0000 UTCI think the end bit about upper middle tolerances for the poor is that it has and always will be a facade like the turning point is when the parks talk about the smells behind their backs
Mildly invested
2025-02-01 23:33:47 +0000 UTCAwesome film, really enjoyed your thoughts on it y'all, gotta say think this is the 3rd time I've heard someone mention Falling Down recently, that'd be a fun episode as I remember liking that film from awhile ago and it'd be cool to hear y'all discuss it ^^
Delta357
2025-02-01 23:30:03 +0000 UTCI don't understand how rich assholes like to pretend they speak English. Learning to speak English has only brought me mental turmoil and podcasts
Inconspicuous old man and mime
2025-02-01 19:24:51 +0000 UTCIt's gotta be a NOSE Nuance Odor Spice Evil
Gilded Dragon
2025-02-01 18:09:18 +0000 UTCAdmiral Yi in crane formation at the battle of Han Sen! To be honest, the only admiral yi battle I can describe is the battle depicted in The Admiral: Roaring Currents. And the only formation used in that battle was Yi using his own flagship as bait to successfully lure the Japanese into a trap, as seen in the Korean made motion picture The Admiral: Roaring Currents. A suggested pic for War Movie season, if such a thing were to occur.
iaguz
2025-02-01 18:04:38 +0000 UTCScholar rocks... I'm more familiar with the Chinese version of these (penjiang) & they're kinda like static bonsai. They're very about non hewn-ness (the holes are caused by the alkalinity of the lakes they are found in. The Yucatán has become a popular source for modern penjiang) very about the voids & spaces & beholding eternity So the materialism of this philosophical object... It's like a university diploma
Gilded Dragon
2025-02-01 16:49:28 +0000 UTCOh Aloeswood, Devon's fancy Smells wise I have been making Kyphi with myrrh, camphor, cedar, sandalwood, rosin, benzoin, storax, calamus, rose, galangal, cinnnamon, cassia... & gold leaf & wine
Gilded Dragon
2025-02-01 16:37:02 +0000 UTCGutted that this didn't get a SCUM score
Canvas
2025-02-01 15:05:22 +0000 UTC*Pulls out patisserie and boulangerie degree* I could be a Cakeademic.
James Cézanne-Taipale
2025-02-01 11:53:51 +0000 UTCAs someone doing research in scholar cultures of East Asia I have So Many Thoughts about the scholar stone and the ways in which it relates to ideas of class and class mobility. Wonderful episode, thanks all!
Harriet Gemmill
2025-02-01 11:28:13 +0000 UTCfor robbery szn, i have to recommend the brian de palma film, femme fatale (2002) - best to go in blind (however it does start with a heist set at the cannes film festival and it’s got antonio banderas as a photographer, i’ll say that much lol)
kinoverite
2025-02-01 08:27:21 +0000 UTCI think it’s also worth looking at Oh Geun-sae (the guy in the basement) who has hyper-internalized his deference and politeness to the point where he worships Mr Park. His bellow of “RESPECT” on the way out to the garden party to defend the object of his obsession is a key moment for me.
ann hedonia
2025-02-01 02:03:25 +0000 UTC"The only podcast that smells good" ..... official KJB perfume drop when?
Evie K
2025-02-01 00:04:44 +0000 UTCSort of confused by the 'managed politeness' criticism near the end, wish it'd been spelled out at greater length. It seems to me that sure, it's saying that if Mr. Park had acted differently things would've been different, but that part of the point is that nobody could have acted in any other way. Mr. Park could not be in his position without having that callousness. The Kims (and the housekeeper) could not be in their positions without developing the desperation/ambition/distrust that pits them against each other. I think that's the message I took: there's no prescription that could've prevented this because none of these people have true agency. It's like they're all on rails, driven by the jumble of subconscious urges and survival strategies that class society has given them. (Big part of why the smell focus is so perfect for this. As Dr. Louks points out, smell and olfactory disgust skip right over the conscious brain and into subconscious reaction like nothing else.)
Robert Jacobsen
2025-01-31 23:55:12 +0000 UTCGreat episode! Recommended movie that mostly takes place in one nice house: Hellraiser 2022
Travis
2025-01-31 21:48:29 +0000 UTCIs everybody okay? Is everything all right at home? I worry about you people.
Wolfman Jack
2025-01-31 21:21:36 +0000 UTCOh I might be sharing a very well known fact but the scene where Ki-woo and Ki-taek are rehearsing their lines about the housekeeper having tuberculosis has an additional layer of humor, because Song Kang-ho is one of the most acclaimed actors in Korea while Choi Woo-sik is comparatively pretty green, so it's very funny to have the latter giving former "acting tips" lol
Blandishments
2025-01-31 20:48:41 +0000 UTCOh this is so exciting!! A quick fun fact about the fumigation scene: Bong was so struck by the images of student protesters getting tear gassed while protesting the dictatorship in his youth that he includes scenes of people getting gassed like that in several of his movies (The Host and Barking Dogs come most quickly to mind). I heavily recommend watching movies about the 3rd republic, there are a lot of really good ones :D
Blandishments
2025-01-31 20:39:23 +0000 UTCWould you consider doing Kelly’s Hero’s for heist season? It’s technically a heist but also a war film and a satire. It also has the great late Donald Sutherland playing the best character in the film.
HappyDragon
2025-01-31 18:40:13 +0000 UTCSLUG = Smith Lesbian Until Graduation?
Spiral Ink
2025-01-31 18:03:42 +0000 UTCI remember Huxley wrote in a book that poor people have to be kind because their currency is the owing and returning of favors as opposed to rich people who just buy whatever they need, so they think less of people.
Jason Young
2025-01-31 18:00:07 +0000 UTCWe already have stink bugs in the states. They love to suck the life out of plants and smell much worse than coriander. More like rotten grapes
Joseph
2025-01-31 17:57:06 +0000 UTC
