Parasite, Bong Jong-ho's Oscar award-winning Korean film, was a movie I felt personally connected to.
It also made me think of my own family, and how our family related to both the Kims, a highly shrewd poor family, and the Parks, an extremely rich and insulated family. The Kims, over the course of the movie, con and scheme their way into being tutors, housekeepers, and drivers for the Park family, who are very painfully oblivious to the machinations of the Kims to fraudulently advance into the upper echelons of society.
I won't spoil much of the movie, but I will talk about how the movie reminds me of my own family. My mother was an adopted child of a very high-ranking member of the communist party, and after her adoption, grew up with a relatively privileged upbringing in communist China. My father grew up with a very different upbringing, growing up with his brothers in the countryside of Hunan and having to go hungry and fight for every last grain of rice.
The two of them grew up in different worlds, and yet came together to America to have myself and my brother as children. I don't know about other Asian countries, but coming to America is seen as the ultimate sign of "making it" in my father's village in China, with America as a symbol of wealth and capital unparalleled with the rest of the world.
But that perception completely neglects how much my parents struggled when they came to America. The greatest sin in my household is wasting food and I will always remember how fiercely I was reprimanded when I was a kid for not wanting to eat broccoli. Despite my mother's family's status in the Hunan province of China, that meant nothing when coming to America. Despite my father's medical degree when he was in China, that degree meant nothing when he came to America.
In Parasite, the Parks and the Kims are both depicted as the title word — parasites. The Parks, by their insulated living and complete obliviousness to the suffering of the underclass, show that they're parasites benefitting from an unequal class structure where they're at the top. But the Kims are not any better, and they're parasites by their constant con-artist behaviors, complete disregard for the welfare of others in their same class, and their mindset of doing whatever it takes to advance and do good by their own family.
What Parasite shows to many viewers, that, yes, everyone in the system is a parasite, and overthrowing the capitalism system might redistribute power and wealth but, to some degree, things will remain the same.
What I saw in Parasite, however, is a fundamental truth in a lot of Asian families: what matters most is your own. What matters most if your own family. The welfare of others always comes secondary when your family is suffering. If it takes backstabbing, lying, manipulating, and scheming to help your family survive, then so be it. It doesn't matter that you sometimes have to treat others like absolute crap — as long as your family is protected.
My non-Asian peers seem to have a greater respect for an entire neighborhood, community, and society. When incidents happen in Parasite, every single person looks out for who is their own and in their family. A person could be bleeding to death on the ground, and, still, you're going to get your family out of harm's way.
Rich and poor, upper versus lower class, these dichotomies were secondary to the notion of family, and particularly the notion of family in Southeast Asian cultures. I don't believe it was the Kims'status that made them try to con the Parks into employing their whole family — but rather that the Kims wanted every single family member to achieve prosperity they never before knew. The Parks cared substantially about their two kids, and genuinely wanted the best for them, but had no regard for the welfare of poorer people like the housekeeper or driver.
On a certain level, you can only do so much. You can only really look out for the people closest to you, and in America we often talk about the welfare of a local community, but I feel like in my observations of Asian culture, the only welfare that matters is your family and maybe one or two really close friends that are as good as family.
I don't mean it as an indictment of Southeast Asian cultures, which are the only ones I feel I have authority enough to speak to, but my girlfriend, who lived several years in South Korea, recounts a story of a man drowning, and almost every person nearby standing by and not helping save the man's life. Her friend, a foreigner, jumped in the water to save the man, and made it into the local news.
And that example isn't just a Korean thing — I have seen similar examples of self-interest in the times I've been to China, where people don't care at all for neighbors or strangers. My extended family members were often very, very kind people, but only to people in the family or people they were doing business with. I have seen my uncle curse at and mistreat serving staff for working too slowly in some of those memories.
What does it say about a culture, society, where people don't look out for each other, where all they care about is the people in their immediate family?
Look, I'm not saying it's much better in the west, but I strongly struggle with whether to align myself with the conservative values of my Chinese culture in saving face, constant self-starting upward mobility, and duty and obligation to family, versus the more western values of my friends. I have leaned on the latter as a means of survival because, in my experience, the conservative values of duty, obligation, and saving face have been suffocating.
In Parasite, the Kim family is always reaching for more, for better. You can argue that they get greedy, but my dad is the kind of person that's always reaching for more, and always reaching to do better too. I always have respected that about him, and have taken after those self-starting tendencies.
I know it's a result of his own upbringing, but I don't know if he's ever been comfortable or happy where he's at — because he's always striving to do better. Sure, he's not anything like the Kims, but when I saw how hard the family tried to advance, I saw my family, too.
The dream, for a family like ours, is for our future generation to live and grow up like the Park family. But what is a childhood without toil or struggle? That's something I wonder when I saw Crazy Rich Asians, and when I engage with international students and family members who have gone from rags to riches — while money gives luxury and resources, there's this illusion when you're poor and striving to be upwardly-mobile that money is going to solve all your problems.
The focus on the Park family shows that money clearly hasn't solved all of their problems. While they can afford a housekeeper, driver, and tutor, they still struggle with a bad marriage and unhappy children.
Sometimes, you need to have "made it" to your goal of being more wealthy and successful, much like my father has, to realize that it's not all that. Your problems aren't going away. Your family isn't going to be saved by money.
Culturally, I wonder whether it's possible for us not to be parasites. In the film, every character is a parasite, and in a Southeast Asian culture that focuses so much on family, it's clear that no one in the movie is happy. Not a single person is content with their life allotment, not the Kims, and not the Parks. All the money in the world wouldn't have changed that reality for either family.
But it is in the uninviting and uncaring nature both families have towards their neighbors that might make them function as parasites. I mean this as much of an indictment on myself and my family as much as I do any family, but this notion that life is all about your family's well-being and no one else's is extremely limiting and not prosocial.
What's the solution? I don't know, but it's not what either the Parks or the Kims aspired to. No one can blame any individual in Parasite, which makes it such a good movie because every character is morally complicated and genuinely doing what they were to conditioned to believe as right.
In most places, to survive, you have to be a parasite. The goal of having a society where everyone lives in a symbiotic relationship of collaboration and looking out for each other is what I want, but, after watching Parasite and being reminded so much of my family, I don't know if that world is possible.
