“All right,” says Player 100. “If there are no objections, let’s go ahead and vote on Player 222’s elimination.” Player 100 presents this as an entirely reasonable statement, and that’s how it’s greeted by his co-conspirators in the final game. In the tradition of the nightly decision whether or not to continue playing, they’ve agreed that a majority vote will settle the matter of whose lives to sacrifice so that the others might live. Player 100 is trying to get things on track, keep things nice and orderly according to agreed-upon precedent and procedure. No more messy arguments that are beneath our dignity as colleagues — It’s time to democratically decide whom to murder.
Taken together, Squid Game’s second and third seasons are one long allegory for sham democracies. I mean, you hear how fucked up their logic sounds when it’s presented by Player 100, right? Vote how they will, the majority can never rightfully take away the rights, or the lives, of the minority. Our inalienable human rights are just that — unseverable from our status as human beings. They are not subject to vote or plebiscite, to Supreme Court ruling or executive order. They are ours forever. You can no more vote them away than you can vote away the bones curled hard in our fists or the hearts that beat in our chests.
But that’s the version of “democracy” that the Squid Game’s sadistic creators — the in-world ones, I mean, not the very nice filmmakers — have presented their players. It’s not dissimilar from the version we’ve been largely forced to accept here in the real world. Illegitimately condemning other people to torment and death because there are more of some than there are of others, the players participate in a series of zero-sum ballots where voters can only conceive of themselves as members of opposing teams since the stakes are so high. And no amount of voting can break the cycle of violence and degradation, not as long as the loathsome, mega-rich VIPs (David Sayers, Jane Wong, Bryan Bucco, Jordan Lambertoni, and Kevin Yorn, each of them almost unbearably obnoxious) want it to continue.
And by this point in the games, it’s all been boiled down to its essence: Can you ethically vote to kill a baby, and are the results of that vote binding?
I reviewed the penultimate episode of Squid Game for Decider.
Tags: decider, squid game, TV, TV reviews