Which tells a classier story?

If you have not seen these movies, I advise you to watch them before reading this article. It isn’t my intention to define the narratives of these movies before you’ve seen them, as I’m a strong believer that authentic discourse comes from having experienced the same objective reality: the source material.

Both movies are indubitably about class warfare, box office hits, and set in Asia. This sets them up as ripe for comparison. Bearing in mind that every movie (and art, in general), should be evaluated on the terms in which they were offered, I will be paying attention to the filmmakers’ intentions, as well as playing fast and loose with the definition of what it means to be classy.

Let’s get to the moral of the story.

In Crazy Rich Asians, the throwdown scene has Rachel playing mah-jong with Eleanor, her boyfriend’s mother. Even though she can win the game, she purposely loses, then makes that apparent before leaving the table. The message here is that she will end her relationship with Nick, because she loves him and does not want him to deal with this unending conflict between Eleanor and Rachel. As Rachel boards the plane to leave Singapore, Nick runs on board and dramatically proposes to her.

In reality, Rachel’s move forced Eleanor’s hand. Nick was forced to choose between his mother and her, and he chose her. Eleanor was then forced to go along with it, since she would not want to lose her son. The movie ends with them at an engagement party, and Eleanor giving a nod of respect to Rachel.

I find the psychology of this unrealistic. Realistically, Eleanor would be resentful, having been proven by Rachel that her own son would choose Rachel over her. Rachel has won not by strategic cunning, but by sheer force, putting her opponent, Eleanor into a lose-lose situation.

But let’s go with the premise of the movie’s ending. The intended moral of the story is that even though you are poor (lower middle-class), you can still gain the respect of the ultra-wealthy by displaying grace.

Parasite does not have the luxury of such an simplistic moral message, or the instant gratification of binary judgment. It ends with tragedy for every character, the Parks having lost their father, the Kims lost their daughter and sister, the Kims’ father goes into hiding, and both the housekeeper and her husband die. As Joe Haldeman writes cynically in his novel Forever Peace, “it’s always been easier to make new lives than new wealth.”

That is not to say that Crazy Rich Asians can be definitively judged as a piece of cinema, even if its plot can. Its plot has archetypal characters. Rachel and Nick are the protagonists. Rachel’s mother, Nick’s sister Astrid, and Peik Lin (played by Awkwafina) are the supporting protagonists. Eleanor and the rest of the ultra rich community are the antagonists. Seen superficially, it feels like a story a sheltered privileged person who never had to face a real moral conundrum would tell. But the story of every movie crosses the silver screen to take its place in the real world.

Intersectional Cinema

In the real world, Crazy Rich Asians was the pride of many Asian cultures because it represented Asian heritage. The rich heritage of our horticulture and cuisine are photographed with so much attention to detail and love, as was the intentional subversive use of Coldplay’s song “Yellow”.

The opening scene showed Eleanor buying a hotel from racist British people, then using her newly bought power to treat them condescendingly. It was tempting to simplistically pronounce that there is no victory in countering racism with wealth. However, this specific context calls upon the historical grievance of colonialism: its patronising presumption that all cultures were inferior to the Anglo-Saxon, their capitalising of other peoples’ wealth, using their lives in world wars that built their empires, while treating them as second-class citizens to these empires.

No wonder it is satisfying to watch a family from a former colony overpower British racists. And while the rest of the movie plays out in Singapore with the conflict between Asian characters, the movie’s impact on the real world is a gigantic selfie of a country’s wealth, the equivalent of a tourism campaign or a dick pic. Not necessarily a bad thing in context, as I’ll come to later.

There is also a scene where Astrid breaks up with her boyfriend who has been cheating on her. She’s always had to hide her expensive purchases in the house because he would get upset, but after the breakup, there is this scene symbolising her freedom where she defiantly puts on her diamond earrings. While watching this with my brother, I said out loud, “I seriously cannot relate to this.” “Me too,” he joked.

Intersectional issues are almost unavoidable in a world where pretty much everything is interlinked. Serena Joy in The Handmaid’s Tale had to struggle between feminism and her wealth privilege. Perhaps Crazy Rich Asians thought it was justifiable to show Asian power or female independence at the expense of making a movie about grotesque luxury porn to absurdist proportions. But I tend to think that if you care what the enemy thinks of you, they have already won.

A Quick Recap of Parasite’s Insane Plot

I have to do a quick recap of Parasite to analyse the garden party scene. The Kims have pretended to be elite professionals in their fields and slowly gain hire in the Park household, causing the old housekeeper (Moon) and the driver to be fired, then recommending their family members. Each time, they are recommended as acquaintances of family or a distant relative. The Kim’s son becomes the Park’s daughter’s English tutor, the Kim’s daughter becomes the Park’s son’s art therapist, the Kim’s father becomes the driver, and the Kim’s mother becomes the housekeeper.

The Parks go on a camping trip, and the Kims have a sleepover in their home. Drunk on whiskey, they grapple with the morality of their con, the Kim’s father especially feeling bad about getting his predecessor driver fired and wondering if he has found another job. His daughter complains that they should only care about their family, since they are the ones who need the money. But there’s so much moral discomfort that has built as their con played out. Innocuously at first, the Kim’s son provided valuable English tutoring. Then, his sister diagnosed the Park’s son with schizophrenia based on his drawings, and charged extra to be a therapist, when she was initially hired as an art tutor. It’s a little funny that she used their privilege, that extreme privilege that comes with hiring an art tutor for a very young child the Parks are convinced is gifted — against them, telling them their gifted quality son is actually mentally ill. The Park’s mother’s hysterical reaction and naivety makes the scene funny. Of course, there is the morality of having been diagnosed wrongly with a mental illness at a young age, and the question of how that might affect the little boy’s life growing up. The moral discomfort escalates when they sabotage the incumbent driver and housekeeper, setting their competition up to look like threats to the family.

Suddenly, as they are all in the Park’s living room, Moon, the fired housekeeper turns up. She says she has left some of her belongings and requests to come in to collect them. When she comes in, her face is swollen from being beaten up, and she goes into the basement. In a brief horror sequence, Kim’s mother follows her down the basement and discovers that Moon’s husband Geun has been living there all along. Despite Moon’s outwardly dignified persona and pristine appearance, she has been in a worse situation than the Kims. Geun has been living in the basement for years, and she would secretly take food down to him. They are both escaping their debtors, who were the ones who beat Moon up. Geun is also mentally unstable, worshipping pictures of Mr. Park as a hero who has unknowingly kept Moon and him alive. As the rest of the Kims are eavesdropping on the basement stairs, someone trips and sends all of them tumbling down infront of Moon and Geun. Moon recognises them as the new hires and instantly pieces together that they are a family of con artists. She whips out her phone and starts recording a video of them, threatening to send it to the Parks. There is no WiFi in the basement, and she and Geun slowly make their way out of the basement, with everyone following in trepidation, where they proceed to hold the Kim family hostage. A violent scuffle ensues, and Moon and Geun end up locked back in the basement, while the Kims scramble to deal with the sudden early return of the Parks. Miraculously, they manage to leave the house without revealing themselves, but they walk home in heavy rain to find their home, a semi-basement, flooded entirely.

Waking up in a town hall with hundreds of other homeless people, they receive calls to attend a garden party at the Parks. Kim’s son decides to go to the basement and kill Moon and Geun, but ends up being knocked out by Geun, who escapes the basement and wanders onto the front lawn. Geun, at this point a psychotically comical figure, stands behind a row of immaculately dressed guests who are oblivious to his presence. His presence scares Park’s son, who had witnessed him as a ghost when he was younger, and the boy falls into a seizure. Geun then stabs Kim’s daughter in the heart, and her parents rush to her, trying desperately to stop the bleeding.

This is a chaotic scene that happens really fast. Not knowing that the Kims are a family, the Parks are confused that the Kims’s focus is on Kim’s daughter. Mr. Park shouts at at Mr. Kim to drive his son to the hospital, disregarding Kim’s daughter who is bleeding on the ground, and Kim’s mother who is being attacked by Geun. Mr. Kim throws Mr. Park the keys, which Geun rolls atop of just as he is stabbed by Kim’s mother. As Mr. Park retrieves the keys from beneath Geun, Geun looks up at his idol and says, “Respect.” Mr. Park pinches his nose in disgust when he smells Geun, who’s lived in the Park basement for years. Mr. Kim, upon witnessing this, stands up with the knife that Geun stabbed his daughter with, walks resolutely to Mr. Park, and stabs him.

Virtue

Going back to my earlier aphorism that caring what your enemy thinks of you means they have already won, this act could be seen on surface level as Mr. Kim causing his downfall by letting his pride get the better of him, having had enough of being humiliated by the relentless condescension the lower-class suffers.

However, I submit that Mr. Kim’s act was one of honour, not of pride. It wasn’t one of his family members that Park expressed disgust at, but a man who had stabbed Kim’s own daughter. In that moment though, despite the violence going on between the Kims and Moon and Geun, Moon and Geun weren’t the Kims’ actual enemy. Mr. Park was. Moon and Geun were simply their competition in a desperate need for survival.

Despite the horrific violence of it, it was the most moving and heroic moment in the entire movie, Mr. Kim risking it all to make it known that Mr. Park was the monster, the parasite, the real enemy.

Let’s contrast this to Crazy Rich Asians. In a plot twist, it is revealed that Eleanor used to be treated badly by Ah Ma, her mother-in-law. Despite having been in Rachel’s shoes, Eleanor chose not to use her experience to display compassion and behave differently from how Ah Ma did, instead perpetuating the system.

A good friend told me that a good movie makes invisible workings of society visible. In class warfare, there is hidden violence in the competition within the working class.

Both of these movies manifest that in the story. However, Parasite ends by reminding the audience that this ugliness is systemically enforced by the wealthy, while Crazy Rich Asians ends by satisfying the audience with a nod of respect and approval from Eleanor, who now embodies the wealthy.

That same friend also told me that at the end of a good movie, everybody is in the wrong. He told me this five years ago, and it was only upon watching Parasite that I was convinced by what he meant.

Even as Park is the enemy, he hasn’t directly committed moral wrongdoing in the movie. It’s that he embodies the type of person who benefits from and continues to perpetuate a system that widens the wealth gap between classes, the type of person that defines class as wealth, education and connections, looks, and status, the type of person to argue that wealth is not a zero-sum game and that his wealth and superiority is well-earned and well-deserved, without realising that wealth is not a finite resource, and that neither is humanity.

Poverty Porn

Anyone watching Parasite in hopes of enjoying poverty porn will not be able to, because the filmmakers make use of all our senses to understand the Kim family’s life. When the plot device of the poor person’s smell is first introduced, many would instantly recall and imagine such a smell.

Even privileged people must have passed homeless people on the streets, or driven past neighbourhoods with dank alleyways. Even the most sheltered of people would be able to recall a bad smell from somewhere, urine, rotting food from trash cans, unventilated spaces.

Poverty porn is when people watch a movie or theatre, or read a book about people living in poverty, and romanticise their lives. They feel envy at that romantic version of the life, especially when it is photographed beautifully and described sentimentally. It is described sentimentally because for poor people, that is everything they have in the world, material possessions and each other.

The outside observers of this are able to hold on to the poetic while missing the desperate reality of its context. They are able to remain voyeurs without the physical suffering or emotional torment of the poor, and their fantasy is untethered in the dailiness of poverty, the hardship that cannot be described, only experienced.

When shit is being regurgitated from the Kim’s toilet during the flood, poverty porn connoisseurs would have a hard time smoking a cigarette like Kim’s daughter did in stoic resignation.

Judgment is expensive.

I frequently hear people complain about poor people, saying that they can’t be that poor if they can afford cigarettes or smartphones. To many, cigarettes are a strong addiction, the sort that is too strong to quit, and produce no immediate behavioural changes or consequences strong enough to quit. The fact that one could smoke a cigarette in a mud-flooded toilet with shit splashing everywhere highlights that it isn’t an activity of indulgence, but of comfort and addiction.

As for smartphones, the movie begins with the Kims in their home looking for a free WiFi connection. At first, it appears to be a first world problem, but soon we understand that they need it to acquire jobs. In South Korea, where 95% of the population own smartphones, it would be flippant of us to denounce smartphones as a luxury, not a necessity.

WiFi appears again late in Parasite, in the basement scene with the Kims, Moon and Geun. Moon is about to send the evidence to the Parks, dooming them all, including herself and Geun, when she realises there is no reception in the basement. After the delay, she is prevented from doing so. It is poetic that the same lack of WiFi that disadvantaged the Kims saved them in this situation. It prevents Moon from sending the video which would have been a Pyrrhic victory. The lack of WiFi represents their poverty, and being in poverty together results in an unintentional solidarity. This detracts from our reality, where the super rich divide the working class while they reap its benefits.

Evolution

Evolution is defined as the survival of the fittest.

That definition was first coined in 1869, over two and a half centuries ago, by Charles Darwin in his book Origin of the Species. It meant beings better suited for an immediate local environment.

However, in this context, applied to humans, who are already at the top of the food chain, where our most immediate threats are other humans, this definition contains multitudes.

Being wealthy means having resources: to basic needs, to healthcare, to education, to employment, and access to connections who provide them with further entrenchment of their status. As a species, we are further broken down into tribes, protecting our own. Through the virtues of self-sufficiency and hustle, the Kims managed to con their way into the Park family.

It reminds me of two sayings I often hear when people speak of hustling for the jobs they want. The first is, “Dress for the job you want.” The second is, “Fake it till you make it.” There is an innate understanding that our appearance and behaviour can create a sense of class even if we do not have the social status or wealth that they imply we do.

In an evolutionary sense, they adapting to the environment they are in, seeing no way but to outsmart the Parks with camouflage, much like many animals do.

They cover the basics by using Photoshop skills to forge educational certificates. They innately understand the psychology of the wealthy, and use their language to con them. Kim’s daughter goes by the English name of Jessica, who claims to have studied art psychology and art in America. Kim’s son entices the Park’s wife by talking about her special reputation in her field and her elusivity. Kim’s daughter describes a familial relationship to a mild-mannered driver. Kim’s father recommends his wife as the new housekeeper by describing the hoax company as providing “veteran grade services to VIPs.”

By promising a professional with an elite reputation, they con their way into all being hired by the Parks. They know that the wealthy covet status and access to rarity to buffer their wealth — for many, there is no joy to be had in having money if their money does not make them superior to others.

There is a scene in Crazy Rich Asians where Rachel has wealthy friends help her dress up for a wedding, where she becomes the object of envy. This isn’t an act of camouflage, given her enemies know and dislike her for not being wealthy, but an act of defiance, to prove that she can look better than them if she chooses to. Of course, Rachel has the luxury of waging a visible war with the wealthy because there are low consequences for it. The worst that could happen is the end of her relationship with Nick.

The Kims don’t mean to wage war, they simply mean to survive, in fact, in one scene, Mr. Kim unironically comments to his daughter that she could be a professional con-artist, because their family doesn’t view their con primarily as such, but a means to survive. In that sense, they are the parasites in the movie, invisible hosts that attack another species’ health and resources. Despite the derogatory term, it became clear to me the real tragedy is that the family was so poor they were subjugated to act as though they belonged to another species; non-human.

Progress

As Henry David Thoreau said, “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

The cosiest moments in Parasite are when Moon and Geun are drinking tea in the Park’s living room, and when the Kims celebrate by ordering pizza in their own home. In Crazy Rich Asians, the cosiest moment is when Astrid and Rachel are sitting on the beach, confiding in each other. Both the Danish concept of hygge and the Japanese concept of minimalism have gained tremendous popularity in the West. The idea of happiness in each other’s company and cherishing one’s home in its simplicity and intentional personal choices instead of materialism.

Of course, there are people who miss the point entirely, making minimalism a brand or using it to indulge in poverty porn.

Between these two movies, Parasite moved me tremendously, its sentiment earned through its complex characters. But I am grateful for them both, on the grounds on which they have been made.

I’m proud of being a Singaporean whose parents were born shortly before its independence from the British. Our country was chosen to film scenes in Crazy Rich Asians that put our unique blend of futuristic and traditional architecture, carefree and traditional culture, and our country’s wealth on display in homes that look like palaces, a party atop the iconic Marina Bay Sands building: an infinity pool and bar on a surfboard balancing upon three pillars of hotels, another party in Gardens by the Bay: an indoor garden that looks like a scifi movie set. I’m proud of my country because on a land area as large as New York alone, despite having been an independent nation for only 55 years, we have managed to run a country that embodies futurism so much that Westworld decided to shoot part of its third season here.

But, seeing as we also have a gini-coefficient ranking (measurement of efforts to tackle wealth inequality) lower than the US, the UK, and most of Europe, ranked 149 out of 157 countries measured, I can’t help but feel ashamed of the display of abominable wealth while those in poverty in our country are completely invisible in the movie.

“A whopping 2.18 million Singaporeans were among the world’s richest 10 per cent, with wealth over US$109,400. This is almost half the 5 million adults living here, according to the report.” Business Insider

With half the population extremely rich, and half the population in poverty, or a job loss away from poverty, we have an eccentric economy where the middle class hardly exists, even though most will convince themselves that they belong to it because of the high cost of living, the same high cost of living which also applies to the poor.

Hope

“When you come to think of it, almost all human behaviour and activity is not essentially any different from animal behaviour… Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeros? No greater values have developed.”

This quote is from Waking Life, a movie made by Richard Linklater in 2001. While I see his point in capitalism, increasing wealth inequality, consumerism — the tireless quantification of our individual human value in terms of net worth and social capital, I disagree that no greater values have developed. The hierarchy within any species will always exist, but will class always be determined by who owns the excess of the excesses?

I submit not.

In Rome, the once-private gardens of cardinals are now mostly public gardens, where they had previously been the battlegrounds in which cardinals competed to build extravagant gardens for status. Not only are they public grounds, they were also most recently filmed in the Netflix documentary Monty Don’s Italian Gardens, for those who don’t have the luxury of travelling to see them in person.

And when beauty in reality is lovingly photographed, it becomes a friend who holds your hand and walks you through the world, telling you a story while directing your attention to the beautiful things. Like when Kim’s daughter films her brother having a fight with the drunk outside their window, the bucket of water and the drunk’s urine spraying into the sky in slow-motion in both transcendental comedy and beauty.

Class

And so it is, that a class of our own is forged.

E.O. Wilson, the founder of sociobiology says in On Human Nature, that the human predisposition to assemble into families asserts itself even in some abnormal circumstances.

In a society which runs under unnatural diseased conditions, with 1% of the world’s population owning 45% of the world’s wealth, the old evolutionary paradigm no longer applies.

Our considerations of kinship and tribe are now crossing the boundaries of blood, race and country to become something far more human: