Lost in Aestheticization: Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite

Abstract

Winning more than 300 awards and overachieving at the box office worldwide, Parasite remains a perfect marriage of arthouse and mainstream, social commentary and entertainment. However, the rapturous reception of the film belies the odd paucity of critical conversation, eclipsed by an explosion of "opinions." This article examines the way Parasite, by offering unlimited pleasures of interpretation of its elaborate cinematic details, leaves the theme of social disparity unchallenged: a process that would be best illuminated by Walter Benjamin's phrase, "the aestheticization of politics." The first part borrows from David Harvey and Bruno Latour and examines the film's spatialization of social inequality within two opposite dwellings. The second part analyzes Parasite's merging of smell and poverty, using Jacques Ranciere's term, "the distribution of the sensible." The last part delves into the things abundant in Parasite, how the exotic Korean objects designed to supplement action and characterization overpower the film and thus erase sociopolitical potentialities. The fact that Parasite was financed by a South Korean chaebol, which ironically created the film's artistic aura, shows that contemporary filmmaking cannot break free from neoliberalism but has become a cultural "parasite."