Bong Joon Ho's Parasite: A Social Allegory of Class Struggle

Bong Joon Ho's 2019 film Parasite, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, is analyzed by Nicola Davide Angerame on Artribune. The film is described as a social and allegorical work that draws from Kim Ki-duk's 2004 film Iron 3, sharing the theme of house occupation but expanding into a choral narrative about three families in South Korea. Bong, born in 1969, adds suspense, horror aesthetics, and dark atmospheres to Kim's aesthetic of hidden calm, voluptuousness, tenacious intimacy, and pietas. Parasite portrays a disinherited class that elicits sympathy through its organizational capacity, contrasting with Italian neorealism's depiction of poor and ignorant classes. The film's structure resembles a scientific laboratory, with each character having a specific function within an ecosystem that collapses into a Tarantino-esque brawl. It blends noir and pulp genres, echoing Chan-wook Park's 2003 film Oldboy. The narrative addresses South Korea's societal lacerations, including the painful confrontation with North Korea, the disorientation from rapid technological change in a traditionalist culture, and moral dilemmas from class struggle. The film's climax involves a nuclear bunker as a metaphor for historical-political repression. Angerame, a philosopher, journalist, and art curator, wrote the piece.