The secret to the success of “Squid Game”

　　In late October, just one month after the Netflix original Korean drama “Squid Game” started airing, the number of global viewers has exceeded 100 million, and it topped the “Today’s Rating List” in 94 countries, and it became popular in almost half of the global village.
　　Countless people want to know the secret to the success of “Game of Squid”. I even suspect that someone is willing to participate in a “Squid Game” in order to get this secret-the revenue of the championship can be much higher than the bonus in “Squid Game”.
　　”Squid Game” tells a standard “Battle Royale” type story. The Japanese movie “Battle Royale” came out in 2000. After 21 years of development, “Battle Royale” genre movies have accumulated a large number of film and television works. It is very difficult to make a little original in narrative skills.
　　Even its most iron fan can’t help but admit that it is difficult to find out what originality is in the plot design of “Squid Game”, and every link is familiar.
　　Actors’ fame and acting skills are naturally extra points. However, the appeal of the lead actor Lee Jung Jae is limited to South Korea after all. If he can help “Squid Game” become popular in nearly a hundred countries, it is really lacking in persuasiveness.
　　As for the impact of the camera and the bloody and violent scenes, compared with other “Battle Royale” film and television works that do everything they can, it can only be said to be nothing.
　　In this way, the background of “Squid Game” is not a surprisingly surprising dish. So, what new condiments have been added to this dish to make it behave like “renovating the old and bringing forth the new”, which is an instant hit?
　　Let’s revisit the summary of the plot: a group of desperate people who are desperate for money receive a mysterious invitation, inviting them to join a game together. In order to win a prize of 45.6 billion won, 456 contestants with different backgrounds were locked up in secret places to play games. Each round of the game is a traditional game that Koreans would play when they were young, but the consequence of failing to pass the level is death…
　　Please note that the characters in the play are labeled with various identity cards, such as unemployed workers, fallen elites, undercover criminals, illegal workers, and gangs. Bosses, elderly homeless people… But these people are not “low-level people” in the traditional sense. They have come to this point after experiencing various changes in their lives. Some of them have even had a very bright moment.
　　To sum up the common mood of these people in one word, then it should not be a “feeling of powerlessness” or “a sense of failure,” but a “sense of being deprived.”
　　In the present, the emotional resonance of powerlessness and failure is far less powerful than the feeling of deprivation.
　　I say this because the number of people who feel deprived is increasing on a global scale. This is true in South Korea, so in the United States, and so in many Western countries. From the early 1980s to the present for more than 40 years, the global economy has developed rapidly, and capital has received the best “treatment” in history on a global scale.
　　Economic development has naturally improved the living standards of the people in Western countries on the whole, but the widening gap between the rich and the poor in this major cycle has also spread with visible momentum in South Korea and the United States.
　　Failure to obtain sufficient gains from the economic development dividends will easily lead to a sense of deprivation.
　　The success of “Squid Game” is that it not only makes it easy to empathize with the potential audience with such an emotion through the plot, but also allows this empathy to have a cathartic outlet.
　　Most of the “Battle Royale” type of film and television works, if they have a critical point, are generally aimed at human nature or the so-called “human heart and ghost realm”, and rarely intervene in realistic issues. But “Squid Game” is not the case. It almost directly sets the opposite of criticism as “the rich” and even the “capitalists” in western developed countries, such as those who buy tickets to watch the game of life and death and wear masks. Big money”.
　　A person feels deprived, involved in a death game that cannot be quit halfway, of course feels very unlucky. But even the unlucky people are not necessarily willing to admit that they are unlucky. They always look for a culprit, a person who can be scolded, just like Xie Xun would scold “God of the thief” in “The Legend of the Dragon Slayer”.