Squid Game, the New Orleans Massacre, and Debt Slavery
The coincidence of beginninng to watch Season 2 of the Korean series Squid Game and the horrifying events of last week in New Orleans has caused me to reflect more on the phenomenon of debt slavery in our culture. Like the indebted Asians recruited for the cynical amusement of billionaires in the series, the driver of the vehicle that mowed down mirth-makers on Bourbon Street was himself a victim of financial disaster and just as desperate to escape, in his own bloody way, as the game players. Shamsud-D had made choices as bad, perhaps worse than the Korean characters. Despite a six figure salary, he had plunged through three marriages and apparently numerous other relationships that not only depleted his impressive funds, but sank him deeper in the pit of borrowing that is even more alluring in our country than in Korea. In Asia, most banks and credit institutions tend to be more circumspect about loaning money to bad risk clients. Though the sums quoted in Squid Game seem astronomical, one must remember that the value of the local currency, the won, resembles the Japanese yen in that it is far below the dollar, so millions of won translate into thousands of US dollars. Nevertheless, the process is essentially the same. Jabbar was, moreover, assaulted daily on ubiquitous media by endless possibilities for credit cards, rollovers, payday loans, second and third mortgages, automobile-secured cash handouts, store accounts, margin trading, and betting come-ons. It is not surprising that the one-time savvy Shamsud-Din was thus enticed to fall into the pit of marketable debt that increasing drives our "good economy." Now even the corporations seeking ostensibly to alleviate and manage household debt are openly admitting that twenty-first century America runs more on what citizens owe than what they actually earn.
The New Orleans killer reacted in desperation, determined to try to rescue his existence as a success, even when it meant killing and being killed. Like the Korean game players, he was trying to reassert himself against fate, and like them, he could think of no alternative. Squid Game's second season emphasizes this point by including a character who, himself, had been a crooked debt manager, luring unsuspecting dupes into get-rich-quick schemes that stripped them of their assets, before falling for just such a trap himself. Jabbar may not have been lurking in alleys like some of the Koreans, but he surely faced the same menace of homelessness, as his three wives quarreled over the properties he had previously amassed and squandered. In some ways, he was even more rootless. While serving the shady "auditing and counseling" aims of his employer, he drifted between cities and states, rootless amid the gaudy exteriors, seemingly unaided by social agencies or the military he once idolized. Korea, like the USA, is a success-driven system, bombarding the rising successful people with spiritual and material glory, but quickly overlooking those who get tangled in the web of finance or deluded by their own dreams. There is little emphasis on balance, regardless of the time-honored concept of yin and yang embodied in the flag. It's strictly put up or shut up. Earn, spend, or get out of the way, and Devil (or geometrically disguised soldiers) take the hindmost.
One is forced to wonder if debt slavery is a paradigm for humanity's future. Will governments condone the exploitation of the debtors and allow them to be carted away in anonymous coffins to some obscure crematorium? Certainly the police commandoes in Squid Game seem outgunned, out-witted and hopeless against the hordes of mercenaries defended by the game-masters. I can recall from my past in Louisiana that chemical companies with their own "security" routinely blocked police or even firemen from coming onto their property and interfering with their private business. As in The Magnificent Seven, guns can be expensive, but humans to shoot them are cheap. Jabbar and the Las Vegas bomber Livelsberger experienced this for themselves in Afghanistan as they were moved around like pawns in the "Great Game" of geopolitics.
And yet, both men chose to try to solve their problems and reassert their identity and importance by means of violence, even if their primary weapons were the vehicles they drove rather than the handguns and automatic long weapons they brought along. This seems counter-intuitive and paradoxical on the surface. But on further examination, both men (like the ex-ROK Marines and Air Force fighters in Squid Game, carried with them another feature of military and corporate life in both the USA and Korea, compartmentalization of thought and value. It is all about targeting a reified goal. When one is taught to shoot a rifle, one is usually discouraged from thinking of the potential victim as another human being. Instead, one is urged to imagine the target as an inanimate object, a pumpkin on a fence post or a juicy wataermelon that will naturally splatter its contents when hit. Should the human shape be specified in the target, it is usually hidden behind a menacing mask, making the shooting of an enemy a legitimate "solution" to any problem. Any qualms about eliminating a human life are compartmentalized, hidden away in a mental "hurt locker" that fills up with more and more relegated guilt until it eventually bursts open in a crisis of PTSD. Any successful soldier goes through this process. One not need be a sadist who actually enjoys killing. Training allows even the reluctant to become complicit to the system. It is more efficient than most people can imagine.
Therefore, we should not be surprised if there are more and more developments that drive the failures of a debt-obsessed society to break out in violence. Squid Game shows conclusively that. whether individually or collectively, humans have a great deal resisting the erosive effects of compartmentalization. When game players are told that they take part according to their own free will and are free to abandon the games if they vote to do so, enough of them buckle because of the force of greed, pride, guilt, or any of a dozen other weaknesses, that they allow the games to go on. Nay, they demand it. They rant and cheer for the certain slaughter to continue. Debt fuels depression, self-accusation, abandonment, desperation.
Can our future Earth-based societies or society devise a way to defuse the smoldering time-bomb of indebtedness? Examples like that of Finland or Iceland offer some hope that humans can re-engineer economics in such a way to create a more balanced and humane environment. It will mean getting rid of many of the imperatives of geopolitics and corporate thinking. Yet that is not impossible. I yearn for a new kind of "solution" to appear in Squid Game, not just a "solution" that involves someone being shot or run over or exploded. There is still time.
MARSCON IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER
We've received our scheduling for panels at the Marscon conference in Virginia Beach - Norfolk for Jan. 17-19 and the schedule looks like a lot of fun. Jim and John will be serving together on sessions, as follows:
Friday Jan 17, 4-5 PM Speculative Poetry; 8-9 PM Reboots
Saturday Jan 18, 12-1PM Songwriting 101; 2-3PM Editing Hows and Whys; 3-4PM RPGs As Collaborative Storytelling
All events take place at the Holiday Inn Virginia Beach - Norfolk. Hope to see you there!
