According to Bloomberg estimates, still made in 2021, Squid Game resulted in financial benefits of nearly $900 million. A figure that has since been largely exceeded, especially with the commotion around the arrival of the second season.
“Squid Game season 2”: the squid game leaves us wanting more
Modern day gladiators
What explains such success? Largely, our fascination – perverse, it must be admitted – with macabre games. Spectacle and violence – and the excitement that results from them – constitute the driving force of Squid Game. The program works on the basis of well-known mechanisms which are reminiscent of the fate of gladiators. The latter fight to survive in the hope, ultimately, of being emancipated and therefore free. In the South Korean series, the gladiators are replaced by ruined people, up to their neck in debt and desperate, who have no other solution than to compete in deadly games to try to win a huge check, synonymous new life. In a way, finding freedom by freeing themselves from their debts. This is a theme well anchored in the period we know today: that of precariousness, with our societies in which the gap between poor and very rich continues to grow.
There is no point going back to the success of films dedicated to gladiators, Gladiator 2 by Ridley Scott, released recently, bears witness to this. Just like the story of Spartacus, which has spanned the centuries.
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Crime: the winning recipe
Violence and death as a spectacle are nothing new and have always fascinated men. Just look today at the success of television shows devoted to major criminal cases and other bloody news items, such as Bring in the accuseretc. Same observation for films and series which are becoming innumerable. Some people understood this well. This is the case of RTL which, in Belgium, launched a television channel in mid-November, RTL District, “for lovers of thrills and criminal investigations”. It is exclusively devoted to questions of justice and major criminal cases.
We can also think of the phenomenal success of the books by Belgian criminologist and forensic doctor Philippe Boxho. Written down on paper, his stories of murder and death propelled him to the top of the sales charts ahead of the big names in publishing. It is true that he has no equal when it comes to telling them, both verbally and in writing.
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It is therefore not surprising that Squid Game meets his audience. On the other hand, what was surprising was that it came from a South Korean series. Strictly speaking, it is not the kind of cinema or television that is popular with the general public, at least in so-called Western countries like ours. This is to forget the political strategy that South Korea imagined to recover economically after the crisis of the 90s, which severely hit Asia, and Seoul's desire to carve out a place for itself on the international stage.
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Soft power, the formidable Korean political weapon
After going through the Asian crisis of the 90s and with gigantic China and Japan as neighbors, South Korea – North Korea, that's another story – has developed a plan to regain economic color and not be crushed. We call it soft power and it is based on seven pillars, like so many Korean ambassadors: technologies, gastronomy, lifestyle (think beauty and K-Beauty), the Korean language, but also culture, through music, cinema and… series.
Should we return to K-pop, the musical phenomenon that has filled stadiums? In 2019, BTS, the movement's flagship boy band, performed at two sold-out Stade de France venues. This is huge for a group that sings exclusively in Korean! This is not the only musical group to be talked about. We also think of its female counterpart Blackpink. Or, going back further in time, to the unexpected and dizzying success of Psy with his “Gangnam Style”.
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If cinema has not yet enjoyed the same popular success here, the Korean wave, called Hallyu, is also starting to sweep across our lands. South Korean films are multiplying and winning high-profile awards. Parasiteby Bong Joon-Ho, Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019, a first for a Korean feature film, also won the Oscar for best film the following year – the first non-English-speaking film to achieve this feat. Also winner of statuettes for best director, best original screenplay and best international film, Parasite opens the doors of Korean cinema to the general public.
“Squid Game” poised to make Emmy Awards history
And what about South Korean series? If Squid Game constitutes a somewhat special case, the wave of what we call K-Dramas, in other words the soap operas “made in Korea”, is a reality. And it was Netflix that opened the doors to Western countries. The platform acquired programs like this when South Korean productions were banned from broadcast in China (like K-pop and other cultural products) where they were very popular. The fault is the tensions between Seoul and Beijing linked, among other things, to the installation of American anti-missile systems on South Korean territory in the mid-2010s. You only need to take a look at the catalog offered by the streaming platform to measure how many of these series are present. And Netflix is not the only one to have succumbed to temptation. Whether it's Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime Video and other video on demand (VOD) companies, they can be found everywhere. This is how the Western public, not necessarily addicted to the codes of Asian productions, is gradually immersing itself in Korean culture.
