Episode 136
The Host with Jon Greenaway (Horror Vanguard)
This week, my guest Jon Greenaway (The Horror Vanguard) and I delve into the intricate layers of Bong Joon-ho's film "The Host," appreciating its masterful storytelling and character analysis of Gang-du. We explore the film's blend of comedy and seriousness, praising its tonal shifts and expert composition for a captivating cinematic experience. Drawing from filmmakers like Scorsese and Carpenter, we admire how Bong Joon-ho combines action, tone shifts, and social commentary. The discussion touches on the film's themes of political protest, societal disillusionment, and the central importance of family in Bong Joon-ho's work. We reflect on the symbolic significance of shared meals and familial unity, challenging conventional storytelling methods and highlighting the power of metaphor in critiquing societal norms. Reflecting on anti-capitalist themes and individual agency within systemic structures, we contemplate the potential for change through acts of resistance and solidarity in a complex world.
Jon Greenaway:
Capitalism: A Horror Story: Gothic Marxism and the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination
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Transcript
Evan: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host Evan,
Speaker:Evan: back again with another film discussion from the left.
Speaker:Evan: I am grateful for all of you who support the show, which you can do at patreon.com
Speaker:Evan: slash leftoftheprojectorpod.
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Speaker:Evan: appreciated if you could leave a rating and a review.
Speaker:Evan: This week on the the show, we'll be discussing the 2006 Bong Joon-ho film, The Host.
Speaker:Evan: If you saw his earlier work like Parasite and Snowpiercer, you're not going to want to miss this one.
Speaker:Evan: The Host, as we'll see shortly, has a very clear undertones of American imperialism
Speaker:Evan: and the impact it has on other nations, in this case, South Korea.
Speaker:Evan: My guest this week is John Greenaway.
Speaker:Evan: John is the co-ghost of the podcast, The Horror Vanguard, which if you don't
Speaker:Evan: listen to already, you should go check it out immediately.
Speaker:Evan: John is a writer based in North England whose writing includes horror,
Speaker:Evan: contemporary capitalism, and cultural theory.
Speaker:Evan: He has a new book out right now from Repeater called Capitalism,
Speaker:Evan: A Horror Story, Gothic, Marxism, and the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination.
Speaker:Evan: You can purchase it anywhere you get your books. John, thank you so much for
Speaker:Evan: joining me today. I appreciate it.
Speaker:Yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show.
Speaker:Evan: Absolutely. And so like Like I said in the intro, we're talking about the 2006 film, The Host.
Speaker:Evan: But before we get into that, I know that, John, people may know your podcast
Speaker:Evan: and, you know, also your upcoming book.
Speaker:Evan: So, you know, before we jump in, we want to tell everyone about your book.
Speaker:Evan: And I think probably listeners of my show probably have heard of The Horror Vanguard.
Speaker:Evan: But for the few who might not know, care to share.
Speaker:Yes. So for people who don't know me, my name is John.
Speaker:You can find me on most platforms online as the liquid guy,
Speaker:that's what I started doing and yeah I am the co-ghost of the Horror Vanguard
Speaker:podcast which is a horror movie podcast where we talk about the three most important
Speaker:things in life which is friendship,
Speaker:full communism and occasionally if there's time we talk about scary movies but
Speaker:if you like horror, if you like politics and philosophy, then Horror Vanguard,
Speaker:I think, will be right up your street.
Speaker:I also have a brand new book now out.
Speaker:It's called Capitalism, A Horror Story, Gothic Marxism and the Dark Side of
Speaker:the Radical Imagination.
Speaker:You can get it from Repeater Books.
Speaker:And it's pretty great. It's a good book.
Speaker:It's about trying to put forward this conception of what I call Gothic Marxism.
Speaker:And yeah, again, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, absolutely. I actually, by the time people are hearing this,
Speaker:Evan: your book will already be out, but it'll be coming out tomorrow as of the live
Speaker:Evan: time that we're recording this.
Speaker:Evan: So I'll be looking forward to checking it out.
Speaker:Evan: But I don't know. So I reached out to you, and we, you know,
Speaker:Evan: as I do with every guest really is to send them kind of a list of films, kind of an ongoing list.
Speaker:Evan: And you immediately went to The Host, which I said, came out in 2006,
Speaker:Evan: directed by Bong Joon-ho, which people probably know more recently from things
Speaker:Evan: like Snowpiercer and Parasite.
Speaker:Evan: But he had some bangers of films,
Speaker:Evan: you know, early in the 2000s that people may not have known as well.
Speaker:Evan: It was the most, most highest grossing film in South Korea ever.
Speaker:Evan: I don't know if it's been top since then but i don't know like what draw you
Speaker:Evan: to choosing it and do you have any sort of i don't know maybe your overall impressions
Speaker:Evan: before we maybe dive in a bit deeper.
Speaker:Um yeah i chose it because i think
Speaker:uh i mean in my opinion bong jin ho is one of the most interesting directors
Speaker:working today um i love uh all their films um they're like and he's He's explicitly
Speaker:making films which have a kind of class analysis to them,
Speaker:which I think is kind of so sorely needed.
Speaker:I like The Host a lot because, firstly, my first impression is it's actually
Speaker:a very beautiful movie to look at, just in terms of light, composition,
Speaker:the color grading is really good.
Speaker:It's also a really good example of early 2000s digital effects.
Speaker:I think they hold up really well um and it's a way of showing that you can do
Speaker:uh digital and practical work artfully i think um yeah what about you what is
Speaker:some of your first impressions of this.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i mean i think it's i've i've similar so i didn't see the host first i
Speaker:Evan: think the first movie of of his i saw was snow piercer and then parasite obviously
Speaker:Evan: being you know the big uh you know kind of darling which i think maybe brought
Speaker:Evan: him more into the spotlight and then i went back and saw all of his older films.
Speaker:Evan: You know, I really liked this one. I also really like memories of murder,
Speaker:Evan: which is another, maybe his second or third one.
Speaker:Evan: All of them are really just, as you said, they have really deep class analysis
Speaker:Evan: and, you know, and not like in a cheesy way. It's very, um,
Speaker:Evan: what would I say? It's very, I mean, not subtle, but also in a way that I think
Speaker:Evan: people could probably watch these and not get it somehow, which I think is also
Speaker:Evan: interesting because I've talked to people about Snowpiercer and I did it on this podcast.
Speaker:Evan: And I read some article in some right-wing thing saying that it was actually
Speaker:Evan: a pro-capitalist movie, which is just mind-blowing.
Speaker:Evan: So I don't know. I guess watching his films always gives me hope for movies
Speaker:Evan: that do good class analysis.
Speaker:Evan: So as you said, I think the special effects do mostly hold up.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, probably better than a lot of the special effect that came around that time.
Speaker:Evan: But I love this movie. I'd seen it. I watched it just before we recorded a couple
Speaker:Evan: of days ago, and then I'd seen it a while back.
Speaker:Evan: But I think it's a great movie and really has deep-seated working class analysis.
Speaker:Evan: And I with most of his movies the story is
Speaker:Evan: always around a working class family or working
Speaker:Evan: poor family and this is you know immediately
Speaker:Evan: you see that maybe not from the opening scene but the
Speaker:Evan: uh introduction introduction of the of the family you know it's kind of impossible
Speaker:Evan: to not see the immediate you know um working class sort of poverty going through
Speaker:Evan: the uh the family the park family owning this little tiny stand and you know it's just great.
Speaker:Yeah it's it's a it's a really it's just a it's just
Speaker:good entertaining cinema as well like i
Speaker:think everyone goes oh oh you like it because
Speaker:it's left wing it's going to be very preachy and didactic and
Speaker:preachy is i think uh snowpiercer is
Speaker:the one that kind of veers closest to that
Speaker:because it's explicitly about a revolutionary struggle um
Speaker:but preachy is not what don't you know is interested in
Speaker:he's not interested in um so interested in
Speaker:convincing you really i don't think in a
Speaker:way uh the host is good mostly because it takes as kind of just givens certain
Speaker:um political realities that a lot of other films would try and retroactively
Speaker:justify so it takes as given that there is this uh you know washed up
Speaker:student protesters, it takes a given that this kind of exploitation makes into,
Speaker:uh, the retail and service industries, all of these things are just kind of
Speaker:like part of the sort of realist social fabric of life.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, I think that's right. I think, I think I would say also in Parasite 2,
Speaker:Evan: it's very much just the kind of just the assumed kind of nature of,
Speaker:Evan: you know, the sort of hyper capitalist society in South Korea that,
Speaker:Evan: you know, pretty much well mirrors,
Speaker:Evan: you know, what, what America is like in many ways.
Speaker:Evan: And I think there's lots of subtle little lines throughout it,
Speaker:Evan: talking about the debt that they're in, the fact that they have an education but can't get a job,
Speaker:Evan: doing all these things to help the country, but they're not rewarded with any
Speaker:Evan: kind of monetary benefits.
Speaker:Evan: And it's just very, I don't know, it's both on the nose and over the top,
Speaker:Evan: but at the same time, also subtle, if that's even possible. I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker:Yeah i i again i think
Speaker:it's this is something he famously said about
Speaker:parasite which is he was trying to make a film which
Speaker:was very specific to the social and political conditions of korea but it turned
Speaker:out everybody got it it's because the social and political conditions of korea
Speaker:are in a way the social and political conditions of us all which is as he puts
Speaker:it this this village called capitalism in which all of us live.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, exactly. I think maybe it's also once Parasite came out,
Speaker:Evan: then people maybe, some people may re-evaluate some of these other movies and
Speaker:Evan: then can see how much it's there.
Speaker:Evan: But I think maybe just for anyone who maybe hasn't seen this movie, which I would
Speaker:Evan: urge you to, to, you know, maybe pause right now, go watch the host and come back.
Speaker:Evan: Now that you've watched it, you know, you kind of know that the the film is
Speaker:Evan: was inspired by a true event, you know, that happened in Korea,
Speaker:Evan: where a actual US military installation actually dumped or forcibly dumped,
Speaker:Evan: you know, formaldehyde chemicals into the Han River leading to kind of a big scandal.
Speaker:Evan: And then years later, the US basically said, Oops, sorry, you know, sorry about that.
Speaker:Evan: We, we didn't mean to And it's very much kind of right in your face in the very
Speaker:Evan: opening scene where the American is clearly telling the Korean to dump all these
Speaker:Evan: vials or, you know, whatever, jars,
Speaker:Evan: glass, whatever they are of a fraud right into the Han River,
Speaker:Evan: you know, despite his very brief protest. test.
Speaker:Evan: And then we sort of skip forward ahead of time where we start to see,
Speaker:Evan: you know, fishermen seeing some weird things going on in the river and then
Speaker:Evan: flip forward a little bit further.
Speaker:Evan: And now we have this monster that's going to essentially prey on the working
Speaker:Evan: class, the same people who are, you know, being forced to do low wage work,
Speaker:Evan: forced to, you know, be the
Speaker:Evan: kind of, what would you say, put their, you know, I'm blanking on what I was
Speaker:Evan: going to say is at the mercy of kind of the mercy of capitalist exploit.
Speaker:Evan: And they are then the first ones to be exploited as always is the case.
Speaker:Yeah. And it's a very particular kind of capitalism or rather,
Speaker:like, I don't, I don't know if calling it the exploitation of capitalism is
Speaker:specific enough, because this is about,
Speaker:in a way, this film is about the direct link between what usually gets That's
Speaker:called eco-horror or eco-gothic with American imperialism.
Speaker:This is a film about the environmental degradation caused by the necessities
Speaker:of having a military that can maintain the American empire.
Speaker:You dump all of these chemicals in the river. Chemicals are dumped because the
Speaker:American military tells you to do it.
Speaker:There's a monster. There's this kind of horrible mutation that's caused.
Speaker:Was Wang Jinghou talks about basing the monster on a fish that was pulled out
Speaker:of the Han River with an S-shaped spine.
Speaker:I think you can see that in its design, which I think is excellent.
Speaker:There's some really interesting...
Speaker:Can I just ask, did you find this a slightly weird experience watching this
Speaker:when we're in the kind of like, that's the peak of, you know, COVID discourse?
Speaker:Evan: Completely. I, yeah, it was, it was not lost on me that you see the response
Speaker:Evan: to a so-called sort of virus or, you know, something like that,
Speaker:Evan: that's completely bumbled and, you know, just not handled correctly.
Speaker:Evan: And there's you know misinformation the media is saying one thing people are
Speaker:Evan: lying about it all these kind of things it was very much you know the people
Speaker:Evan: wearing masks throughout it i think if i had seen this before 2019 or we're
Speaker:Evan: talking about this in 2019 instead of right now i think you might have a different
Speaker:Evan: perspective on some of it.
Speaker:Yeah totally um but it is it's
Speaker:so there's a kind of biopolitical element to what
Speaker:the uh the antagonist of this film
Speaker:is so the antagonist is not the creature itself right the creature
Speaker:feature is always it's always kind of
Speaker:always already metaphorical so i mean obviously
Speaker:your classic touch point here is is godzilla um
Speaker:and it's concerned around a war nuclear war nuclear annihilationism the monster
Speaker:is always a metaphor but it's a metaphor that is like d uh disconnected from
Speaker:any kind of like a concrete semantic base so you can't do that kind of like
Speaker:a one-to-one analogical reading where you go oh oh, the monster equals this.
Speaker:But really, the antagonist of this film is the US military. And so that inevitably
Speaker:kind of puts the discussion here into the territory of biopolitics.
Speaker:Because what happens to our central protagonists, the greatest threat to them,
Speaker:isn't really the monster, like the creature in the river.
Speaker:That's kind of like the inciting incident. The great threat is the US military,
Speaker:right? They want to imprison you. They want to literally scoop out your brain.
Speaker:To stop you from talking about what you've seen or heard.
Speaker:You become like a fugitive from them in your own city.
Speaker:So there are all these like biopolitical mechanisms of control that imperialism
Speaker:and American military imperialism enacts within Korean society.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, and one of the things I think they try, I mean, maybe this is,
Speaker:Evan: maybe as you're watching, as someone might watch this and say,
Speaker:Evan: well, maybe the people that's really at fault are the Koreans for their kind
Speaker:Evan: of bumbling of the situation after.
Speaker:Evan: But I mean, I think in the things that Bong Jo said is, you know,
Speaker:Evan: that was kind of his aim was to kind of show the kind of bumbling nature.
Speaker:Evan: But as you're saying, it's really the culprit and the antagonist is the United
Speaker:Evan: States, who forced their hand and is continuing to force their hand.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, people may not realize that since the Korean War, the US has held anywhere
Speaker:Evan: Anywhere from, well, going back to the 50s, half a million soldiers,
Speaker:Evan: but throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, upwards of 50,000 soldiers as part of the
Speaker:Evan: United States Forces Korea.
Speaker:Evan: And so we are directly influencing their military through all kinds of programs,
Speaker:Evan: aid, and making them do these things.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, literally, we made them dump chemicals in real life and then in this
Speaker:Evan: movie. And it's clear that the villain is the continued, you know,
Speaker:Evan: spread of American imperialism and just making countries bend to their will.
Speaker:Evan: And if you don't, then you face the consequences of, you know,
Speaker:Evan: losing aid, embargoes and worse.
Speaker:Yeah, and really like a big part of it is propaganda, which is,
Speaker:you know, there's a relatively large unification movement in Korea that would
Speaker:like to see South Korea reunited with the DPRK.
Speaker:Um and that's entirely antithetical to
Speaker:what the u.s wants right and i think it's very it's very
Speaker:notable that the two big interventions that you see
Speaker:that the u.s military kind of enacts in this film firstly is military but second
Speaker:is through the media like if you think just think about the movie the number
Speaker:of times you see like uh western journalists or like american military spokesmen
Speaker:and giving interviews or giving press conferences.
Speaker:And this is what I mean where it's a very modernist version of imperialism.
Speaker:You don't necessarily need a huge military presence, but what you need is media hegemony.
Speaker:You need to be able to shape and dictate the parameters of discourse.
Speaker:It's really quite funny that this was a film that even North Korea didn't mind.
Speaker:Okay i saw that yeah that was it was praised for you know it's a reflection
Speaker:of the relationship between the u.s and south korea.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah the thing the first thing i thought of when you're talking about the misinformation
Speaker:Evan: and actually the i think the very last line of
Speaker:Evan: the movie comes from the the tv or
Speaker:Evan: maybe the one of the last lines as they turn off
Speaker:Evan: the television and they're basically the american uh
Speaker:Evan: military spokesman is saying that the all of the things about the
Speaker:Evan: virus are due to misinformation you know it's
Speaker:Evan: all because of misinformation and the irony is they're the ones who
Speaker:Evan: did the fucking misinformation it's like oh i wonder who
Speaker:Evan: did that and it's you know they're just looking at themselves
Speaker:Evan: in the mirror and yeah the media throughout it is
Speaker:Evan: very interesting like the uh the scientist who comes into the kind of the little
Speaker:Evan: gym where all the people are kind of being held and he says oh i'm not going
Speaker:Evan: to tell you what happened i'm just going to turn on the tv and let you hear
Speaker:Evan: through the media what's happened because you know i can't tell you i need to
Speaker:Evan: uh filter it through all the uh misinformation and propaganda that's going to
Speaker:Evan: be on you know radio free asia or something oh.
Speaker:Yeah absolutely and actually can we talk about uh one of the things i really
Speaker:love about this film which is um its ability to do a kind of multi-tonal storytelling
Speaker:so this is a horror movie but there are also loads of bits of it which have
Speaker:like kind of a slapstick vibe to them.
Speaker:Evan: There's so many bits like there's.
Speaker:So many bits where like people just fall over or are like physically bumbling
Speaker:around um which i find sort of deeply charming but like even right at the end
Speaker:there's payoff to this though it sort of reminds me someone on twitter pointed
Speaker:this out to me that it sort of has echoes of um some early jackie chan movies where there is physical.
Speaker:Evan: But there's.
Speaker:A kind of like comedy to it it's quite light-hearted it's
Speaker:all paid off right at the end where it's going to throw the Molotov cocktail
Speaker:at the creature but it slips it just drops it but it allows his sister to finally
Speaker:have the hero moment of shooting the creature with a flaming arrow so it all
Speaker:pays off but there's this great um,
Speaker:a tendency within certain scenes and sequences for
Speaker:the tone of the film to just kind of shift very suddenly
Speaker:so it can be very funny uh it can
Speaker:be there's like some really exciting chase sequences there's
Speaker:some great jump scares in this um there
Speaker:are it has it has like a real knack
Speaker:of like so this is not like yeah there's some very sophisticated politics happening
Speaker:in this but this is not like a highbrow or you know art house this is this is
Speaker:not this is not cinema this is a movie this is like this is a movie's rock moment yeah well.
Speaker:Evan: I mean it's it's interesting you mentioned jackie chan the first film that immediately
Speaker:Evan: comes to mind is um police story which is very much that kind of early i don't
Speaker:Evan: know when that came out probably 87 or something like that jackie chan movie
Speaker:Evan: where it's like you said people are falling down or slipping.
Speaker:Evan: I think that the main character, Gangdu, is meant to be a clumsy...
Speaker:Evan: I think that the Wikipedia page refers to him as a clumsy misfit vendor in his father's shop.
Speaker:Evan: And so he's clumsy, but then you have a scene in the gym where I think that
Speaker:Evan: scientist falls down. There's a number of other scenes.
Speaker:Evan: I think it's almost very good break in the tension of the very serious attempts
Speaker:Evan: to try and, you know, locate his daughter, you know, that's kind of been captured by the monster.
Speaker:Evan: But at the same time, they're flipping back and forth to kind of,
Speaker:Evan: like you're saying, almost like different tones throughout of it.
Speaker:Evan: And I think it makes it more interesting than if it were just a straight,
Speaker:Evan: you know, serious monster kind of movie.
Speaker:Evan: And some of my favorite jump scares, as you mentioned, is when one character
Speaker:Evan: is about to open a door, but then they flip to another character opening the same door.
Speaker:Evan: Like, you know, those shots were, I think one of them is about to hide in the
Speaker:Evan: one of the little rooms and then the grandfather opens up the the door to his
Speaker:Evan: own shop and it's just it's just yeah the as you mentioned at the very beginning
Speaker:Evan: like the composition and all the different scenes are really just phenomenal filmmaking yeah.
Speaker:Absolutely and it's very typical right it's like if you've seen Parasite you've
Speaker:not really seen any other Bong
Speaker:Joon-ho movies go back and watch this and immediately you'll see that he's,
Speaker:in a way been constantly sort of refining and developing
Speaker:a particular set of concerns and style um it's
Speaker:very interesting that he's cited both scorsese and
Speaker:john carpenter as influences um and he's
Speaker:very he's a very precise filmmaker i think everything is very well planned out
Speaker:very well thought out um but he he does enjoy this like you cut on the beat
Speaker:of action and kind of shift the tone so it's like where would be the funniest
Speaker:punch line that's that's clearly how he's thinking and the construction of the film.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, it's interesting. I knew that he liked Scorsese. I didn't realize that
Speaker:Evan: Carpenter was one of his bing foo.
Speaker:Evan: And so I should have, as I was doing, you know, reading about him for this,
Speaker:Evan: and I had covered Parasite, you know, maybe a year ago.
Speaker:Evan: I didn't realize that, but that kind of makes sense in sort of the,
Speaker:Evan: when I think of some of the movies, like, you know, Big Trouble in Little China
Speaker:Evan: and some of those, not because of the Asian influence, but just the simply the
Speaker:Evan: kind of tone of some of the, you know, this and that definitely have some similarities.
Speaker:Evan: That's one of my, I love, I've John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors.
Speaker:Evan: So it's easy now, now that you say that it's like, I can't get that out of my mind. Yeah.
Speaker:Oh yeah. I totally see it. I totally see the kind of links.
Speaker:Evan: Exactly. Yeah. And I, and I think, um, I think he has a new,
Speaker:Evan: I think is, uh, another movie he has coming out that I think was delayed.
Speaker:Evan: I think it's an American, his second, you know, English language movie,
Speaker:Evan: um, which I'm Mickey 17 or something.
Speaker:I think it's based on.
Speaker:Evan: Which I was so excited to hear about it. And then I haven't read the book,
Speaker:Evan: but i've heard it's quite good so i'm that would that would
Speaker:Evan: take us on a separate tangent but i'm very you know anything he makes
Speaker:Evan: i think is uh you know he keeps refining his
Speaker:Evan: craft in each of these movies you can
Speaker:Evan: look at this is an early movie that's still incredible but you
Speaker:Evan: know just as they've gone through have really just um gotten better
Speaker:Evan: with uh with age and i think actually one other
Speaker:Evan: thing you briefly mentioned i think you know as one
Speaker:Evan: of the themes throughout this is sort of the protest movement you
Speaker:Evan: know and also maybe the the reunification movement with
Speaker:Evan: north korea but they clearly each of the you know the the siblings you have
Speaker:Evan: the two brothers and the sister of the park family and the kind of the youngest
Speaker:Evan: son i believe i don't know if they say which of the two is but i guess it doesn't
Speaker:Evan: matter but the the younger brother um nam ill was meant to,
Speaker:Evan: be kind of uh be the stand-in for kind of this past political protest in south
Speaker:Evan: korea and i read I had some articles with Bong Joon-ho that said he was really
Speaker:Evan: trying to bring back that kind of fervor in this film that kind of has been
Speaker:Evan: lost in South Korea that he probably thinks should be revitalized.
Speaker:Evan: And they clearly show him as this character, Nam-il, as this guy who went to college.
Speaker:Evan: Father paid for his college through this selling ramen noodles, as he said. Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Still can't get a job since then, which also, again, is very much on the nose
Speaker:Evan: of people in America now and other countries where you have to pay for an education
Speaker:Evan: and then aren't able to actually do anything with that education.
Speaker:Evan: And that kind of cross with the political protest movement, I think, is very interesting.
Speaker:Evan: And then, of course, you have the climax towards the end of the people protesting,
Speaker:Evan: the agent yellow, which another military thing we should also,
Speaker:Evan: like that was probably the most obvious, uh, line like, Oh, agent yellow.
Speaker:Evan: Uh huh. Wink, wink, nod, nod. The American is going to test this chemical that
Speaker:Evan: we just so happens to test on you way back when.
Speaker:Evan: Um, but it's not like.
Speaker:It's not, it's not like, um, uh, Namil has like specific politics though.
Speaker:He's just, no, he doesn't really been raised in like the protest,
Speaker:movement he knows how to make molotov cocktails he kind
Speaker:of knows an old an old student radical who's uh
Speaker:you know now uh selling us
Speaker:all for a regular check and it actually kind of betrays him
Speaker:to the authorities so it's like there is
Speaker:there is sort of like this free political sense of things but it's already it
Speaker:sort of feels nostalgic right um yeah you know it's not like there is an active
Speaker:less protest it's like there's the remnants of one that kind of re-emerges for a little bit yeah.
Speaker:Evan: That's true i think the only time that the i can't remember i'm blanking on
Speaker:Evan: the name of his kind of old friend um.
Speaker:Yeah who now works for the um now works for the telecommunications company right.
Speaker:Evan: Right i think the only thing after he had sold him out and i think uh namil
Speaker:Evan: is you know escaping from the uh the telecom building i think he actually holds
Speaker:Evan: up his fist like in solidarity solidarity, you know, as he's running away.
Speaker:Evan: I didn't notice that until this time. I guess it's sort of like,
Speaker:Evan: well, you know, I wish that I was still able to, you know, to do this.
Speaker:Evan: But unfortunately, I need money so badly that I'm willing to,
Speaker:Evan: you know, sell my soul to work for, you know, Verizon, you know,
Speaker:Evan: or AT&T, Google or something like that, you know, that's what I kind of it's a very clear standard.
Speaker:Evan: And it's also interesting that they're kind of referring to to this sort of
Speaker:Evan: corporate entity that's the evil that's on top of it.
Speaker:Evan: So another sort of evil piece, but not any more evil than the United States,
Speaker:Evan: just the regular run-of-the-mill evil that's controlling the information that could help them.
Speaker:Evan: But of course, why would they help the little guy?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. And I think the other...
Speaker:Evan: As you kind of mentioned the, well, I guess I briefly mentioned the agent yellow,
Speaker:Evan: which I don't know, maybe there's not that much to say about it.
Speaker:Evan: But clearly, the US military is using this incident and the sort of their control
Speaker:Evan: over the situation to test a biological agent on actual human beings,
Speaker:Evan: you know, in Korea is just, you know, kind of on the nose for,
Speaker:Evan: you know, what America would actually do.
Speaker:Evan: And I wrote this in my notes as I was watching only because I just listened
Speaker:Evan: to a podcast episode on MKUltra program.
Speaker:Evan: And, you know, during or the predecessor to that was, you know,
Speaker:Evan: some of the Japanese tests as part of Unit 731, which were then brought into
Speaker:Evan: the MKUltra program and all this.
Speaker:Evan: And they did the same kind of thing, just tests on human beings without any
Speaker:Evan: interest or care for their life. And America, you know, has a long,
Speaker:Evan: long tradition of doing the same thing, you know, usually with Nazis behind the behind the camera.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, this is a question you put in the notes. Do you think this is too on the nose?
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker:I'm curious to know what you think.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, maybe it's one of those things where as you watch it from this sort
Speaker:Evan: of political analysis and this mindset,
Speaker:Evan: perhaps maybe it is, but perhaps as just sort of the average person watching
Speaker:Evan: it may realize these things, may see it as being more subtle.
Speaker:Evan: Subtle i don't know it's hard for me to kind of put and put myself in the position
Speaker:Evan: of watching it as kind of the standard moviegoer or just as a random person
Speaker:Evan: in korea who watched this when it came out i would say it's probably less on
Speaker:Evan: the nose i don't know i'm kind of torn i mean what do you think the.
Speaker:Only thing that i would say is that subtlety is not necessarily a virtue um
Speaker:like yes it's a metaphor but the metaphors are real right we don't we don't
Speaker:live in particularly subtle times.
Speaker:Yeah. You know?
Speaker:I don't think i don't think there's i think saying something is too on the nose
Speaker:presupposes that like we need a degree of like artifice in some ways so to serve
Speaker:as some sort of like distancing effect,
Speaker:um but this is something i say about horror movies all the time which is like
Speaker:they're metaphors right but the metaphors are just true like there is there
Speaker:is there is a monster there is something terrible lurking at the heart of korea
Speaker:and it's completely metaphorical but
Speaker:the metaphor is also real so i don't
Speaker:i don't necessarily think that i don't necessarily think you
Speaker:can be too on the nose mostly because it
Speaker:that sort of implies a degree of political
Speaker:hermeneutics like mainstream movies sort
Speaker:of seek to diffuse so you know the classic example is like oh why are you pushing
Speaker:pushing your politics into this it's like no this is very clearly a political
Speaker:movie it's just one that's discussed it's just one that is also really fucking
Speaker:cool monster movie and both of those things can be true at the same time right yeah.
Speaker:Evan: And i think i mean it can i think it even can it obviously extends beyond
Speaker:Evan: horror you know genre but i think for sure a
Speaker:Evan: lot of uh you know films like that you'd say you
Speaker:Evan: know especially more recent horror movies that often have
Speaker:Evan: a more anti maybe it's a more deeper anti-capitalist
Speaker:Evan: sort of bend to them i think of um i guess
Speaker:Evan: this is more of a fairly new one i think
Speaker:Evan: of like the menu is very clearly you know what they're trying to do in the film
Speaker:Evan: at the same time as you know also having it be kind of uh attempting to be kind
Speaker:Evan: of interesting horror movie but then you have the same thing in action movies
Speaker:Evan: throughout time i mean rambo um predator all these movies are clear satires and And, you know,
Speaker:Evan: skewering American military, you know, and at the same time is also just a pretty badass action movie.
Speaker:Evan: It can be both of those things at the same time. And I think I have a friend
Speaker:Evan: who I don't know if he listens to my podcast anymore, you know,
Speaker:Evan: very in the liberal end of the scale.
Speaker:Evan: He told me when he listened to my episode on Robocop, they kind of ruined the
Speaker:Evan: movie for him because I sort of put politics into it.
Speaker:Evan: But I'm thinking, can it can I ruin it? I mean, can't it still just be a fun
Speaker:Evan: action movie if you don't want to look beyond the first layer?
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, I remember talking to a guy called Andy Sharp who writes about horror movies a lot.
Speaker:And he said to me, you know, we didn't go to horror movies because we wanted
Speaker:to do like sophisticated political discourse.
Speaker:We go to horror movies because horror movies are fucking cool.
Speaker:But what they offer is a set of conceptual and hermeneutic tools that actually
Speaker:help us to make sense of the world that we inhabit right?
Speaker:I don't know if it I don't know if we like, Bong Joon-ho is,
Speaker:is making films about the world. But I would not go so far as to say he's a
Speaker:kind of revolutionary filmmaker, right?
Speaker:Because he works predominantly in horror or crime, where the entire sort of
Speaker:generic point is resolution, not revolution.
Speaker:But you can't necessarily have revolution. Like Parasite, for example,
Speaker:ends on a very bleak note, right?
Speaker:A re-inscription of the capitalist realism that drives people into extracting
Speaker:as much money as they can, right?
Speaker:To building their own wealth to being to being the titular
Speaker:parasite um like you can't you
Speaker:can't have a revolutionary kind of rupture there because that only emerges as
Speaker:violence it's true in the host as well so you can have a description of the
Speaker:kind of like terrain of capitalist realism as it's enacted in 2006 korea but
Speaker:you can't necessarily have like any sort of revolutionary change there yeah.
Speaker:Evan: I mean i i mean I think you could probably make a pretty good argument at the
Speaker:Evan: end of the host is still just as parasite is also a very bleak,
Speaker:Evan: you know, look, I mean, you have, you know, some of the, the grandfather and, you know, the,
Speaker:Evan: the daughter have died and now, you know, he's taken on sort of the, this, this,
Speaker:Evan: gang do is sort of taken on this boy as kind of his own child.
Speaker:Evan: And again, he's still living in this small little shack, you know,
Speaker:Evan: and he's still going to have to sell noodles. And that's kind of where he's resigned to.
Speaker:Evan: He's never there's no, there's no climbing to any kind of different social strata for him.
Speaker:Evan: That's, that's as high as it goes. And just despite the fact that he's went
Speaker:Evan: through this horrible ordeal, the government sort of lied to him,
Speaker:Evan: they did brain surgery on him without his uh his you know his uh against his
Speaker:Evan: will and he gets nothing except maybe this uh a new little shack for his uh
Speaker:Evan: his store it's you know that's still it's it's going to keep going the perpetuation
Speaker:Evan: of this uh this you know what.
Speaker:You get is you get an excellent diagnosis right but you don't necessarily get
Speaker:the options for like what is the alternative here.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah and i think that's my i mean you could probably be a criticism even
Speaker:Evan: of snow piercer and a lot of movies that attempt a more
Speaker:Evan: sort of revolutionary tone or in you
Speaker:Evan: know they try and say i think of things
Speaker:Evan: like the hunger games where there's obviously this this evil
Speaker:Evan: or this fascism or whatever it is that has to be overcome but there's
Speaker:Evan: never any uh description of oh
Speaker:Evan: well now that we've overthrown it what do we do
Speaker:Evan: and that's you know that's often my criticism of mine
Speaker:Evan: of so many of those kinds of movies and it's just kind of left to the viewer
Speaker:Evan: to create its own your own narrative like oh well i guess it could be you know
Speaker:Evan: just a slightly different flavor of capitalism or we could do something completely
Speaker:Evan: different and have a uh socialist you know structure and they're all they always
Speaker:Evan: leave you one of the big things in.
Speaker:In bung joo ho's films is an emphasis on the family um.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah which raises.
Speaker:Like that's the kind of specter of a certain sort of politics in a way it's
Speaker:slightly uh you know for in in kind of marxist circles this is now slightly
Speaker:old-fashioned this notion
Speaker:that the family is the space in which you defend the realm
Speaker:of autonomy and unalienated or
Speaker:unexploited relationships right it's right
Speaker:at the end of the the host for example it's like that's the place of
Speaker:surplus right you create a new family structure and that's the place where everyone
Speaker:sits down to a great meal um but i i don't i don't know if that gives you enough
Speaker:right i don't know if that and of course in the host you can construct a new
Speaker:family right the family perishes and it's in the attempt to save itself.
Speaker:But you can find somebody who has none of those networks of support and bring them in.
Speaker:He adopts a child that he's not biologically related to.
Speaker:So I think
Speaker:If you want to try and identify the nexus of what Bong Joon-ho's kind of anti-capitalist
Speaker:politics are, you have to start with what he thinks the family is capable of doing.
Speaker:It's certainly, in the host, it's certainly capable of doing more than the Korean state is, right?
Speaker:Evan: Right. Yeah, it'd be hard not to. That's not a, you know.
Speaker:It's a pretty low bar.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker:Evan: I think the family is very important in all of his, well, many of his movies, obviously Parasite.
Speaker:Evan: And this one too is very much, there's always these scenes in both of those
Speaker:Evan: films of the family sitting around eating,
Speaker:Evan: usually just instant noodles and those kinds of things. and that's what they have to eat.
Speaker:Evan: Not that those aren't delicious, but that's kind of what they have available
Speaker:Evan: based on what they can afford.
Speaker:Evan: And they're always, in this movie, there's less scheming, I guess you could say,
Speaker:Evan: than in Parasite, but they do come together to kind of rejuvenate their spirits
Speaker:Evan: as they're hunting the monster and they all sit together and they're all eating
Speaker:Evan: and then they have this sort of fantasy or this,
Speaker:Evan: I don't know what you would call it, maybe it's kind of a image of the girl sitting next to them,
Speaker:Evan: each of them feeding her because she's now you know she's lost to them and they're
Speaker:Evan: trying to find her and she's obviously hungry and they're all trying to give
Speaker:Evan: her what she needs because they all care for her deeply despite the fact that
Speaker:Evan: you know shit's bad shit's real bad and.
Speaker:Of course that that scene is then juxtaposed with this like the creature coming
Speaker:back to its pantry to drop a new body in right.
Speaker:Evan: There's lots of things about feeding.
Speaker:Here um i mean even snowpiercer right the final revelation of what happens to
Speaker:the bodies of children that use this, it's very soil and green.
Speaker:Like there's always this thing of like,
Speaker:what what does it what does it mean is is
Speaker:there such a thing as like a revolutionary unit that
Speaker:is bound together by these sort of familial ties that are
Speaker:not necessarily biological or kind of
Speaker:normative um and i think this makes makes the politics of these films kind of
Speaker:like interestingly ambiguous because in some ways uh in some ways you could
Speaker:kind of like say that these are films that are just representing capitalist
Speaker:realism without the necessity of a critique that could could sublate it.
Speaker:But at the same time, there is definitely the hunger for something different within them.
Speaker:And this is what I mean when I say that he's not like a didactic filmmaker.
Speaker:He's not kind of trying to impart a moral lesson to you. And I think that's
Speaker:what makes the films sort of engaging.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, I think if you beat someone over the head with that kind of direct messaging,
Speaker:Evan: it kind of ruins what you've done to get to that point.
Speaker:Evan: So I mean, I guess I should say that some of the movies where you kind of don't
Speaker:Evan: get a sense of what maybe the director is kind of saying could be the next step.
Speaker:Evan: And it should be ambiguous in that way.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. But I guess, you know, it doesn't hurt the film. I guess maybe in his movies, it's not quite.
Speaker:Evan: I think I do enjoy the sort of maybe bleak and open-endedness of them,
Speaker:Evan: whereas some others maybe have, you know, more of, I guess you could call like the Hollywood.
Speaker:Evan: You know, this is not really what I would say is, you know, a big Hollywood
Speaker:Evan: type of movie, even though it
Speaker:Evan: has kind of this grand monster and cool special effects and all of that.
Speaker:Evan: I don't see it in the same, obviously it's not an American film,
Speaker:Evan: but it doesn't have that same necessity to give you answers.
Speaker:Evan: You know, you really don't get any answers. They're watching the TV in the last
Speaker:Evan: scene and they just turn it off. You don't get the full explanation of what happens.
Speaker:Evan: You just assume, okay, well, the US is really, really horrible and they did something.
Speaker:Evan: They lied about there being a virus so they could test chemicals on human beings.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, what more do you need to know?
Speaker:Evan: Absolutely absolutely yeah and i think um what
Speaker:Evan: was the other thing i was going to mention it was about family but
Speaker:Evan: i'm trying to to uh was blanking on
Speaker:Evan: it but yeah oh actually this is one thing that i i didn't i've seen this now
Speaker:Evan: i guess three or four times and i didn't notice until the most recent watch
Speaker:Evan: is in the very opening scene following the you know the time jump when you're
Speaker:Evan: in the uh there the park sort of uh food stand there's a couple he uh gang do
Speaker:Evan: is sort of taking a nap you know on the uh at the at his job and then a couple
Speaker:Evan: of kids are trying to grab some candy i didn't realize that it was the same two kids that are then,
Speaker:Evan: in the later scene captured by the monster and then the little boy at the end
Speaker:Evan: so the little boy that's grabbing kind of like a candy something or other is
Speaker:Evan: the boy he ends up adopting at the end i feel stupid that i didn't notice that
Speaker:Evan: until this time there's a.
Speaker:Nice kind of unity to it right it It all, it all joins together.
Speaker:Everything, everything has a payoff, which is something that I really like.
Speaker:There's, and again, this is just, this is just on, on one level,
Speaker:this is just a really well-made monster movie. Um, and,
Speaker:and if you want to enjoy it just on that level i think that's fine but it also
Speaker:kind of raises all of these questions of like what do we take the monster to
Speaker:mean where does the monster come from like what what does the monster do beyond
Speaker:just being this kind of mechanism for triggering certain action yeah.
Speaker:Evan: And you have and i think all a lot of those um sort of things that you know
Speaker:Evan: you seem inconsequential that end up being very important like the Nam-il not Nam-il,
Speaker:Evan: Nam-ju the sister is a national archer
Speaker:Evan: and you kind of see her you know fail
Speaker:Evan: because of you know I guess you could say she chokes and she ends
Speaker:Evan: up getting a bronze medal which her brother then makes fun of
Speaker:Evan: her for but then at the very you know climax because of
Speaker:Evan: her having clearly you know keeping her arrow her bow this entire time is able
Speaker:Evan: to then kill well almost kill the monster you know at the end is all these you
Speaker:Evan: know very uh you know the circular nature of all these things which are just
Speaker:Evan: you know just perfect i mean i don't know i don't know i don't know what else i would say about it.
Speaker:Absolutely everything just pays off everything has its kind of unity and um
Speaker:it's just a rock solid movie and one thing that i actually really like is that
Speaker:it makes kind of environmental horror a lot more explicitly political um so
Speaker:a lot of the time in kind of
Speaker:like eco-gothic or eco-horror you have that you
Speaker:people go to a place and there's oh no
Speaker:the place is fucked up and cursed or you go
Speaker:to a place oh no there's like a weird creature
Speaker:that's evil there but actually this one politicizes like it's what what is the
Speaker:monster the monster is pollution courts like there is an explicit um political
Speaker:and ecological line in the film without which which the entire film as a whole just doesn't happen.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, that's true. I'm just trying to think of other, you know,
Speaker:Evan: I think of other eco kind of horror films that, you know, I think,
Speaker:Evan: don't always have that same, you know, note to them.
Speaker:Evan: Actually, I've just watched this movie recently, because I'm reading the book
Speaker:Evan: on it is the Jeff Vandermeer trilogy.
Speaker:Evan: The first book, I think, in the movie is called Annihilation,
Speaker:Evan: where you kind of have this a very similar also kind of subtle idea that lots
Speaker:Evan: of pollution and lots of things cause this weird area to kind of become to start
Speaker:Evan: swallowing up parts of, you know, the coast where it happens.
Speaker:Evan: And then throughout the book, and also I think in the movie,
Speaker:Evan: they imply like, oh, well, even though that happened, they didn't actually stop
Speaker:Evan: polluting or doing anything, right?
Speaker:Evan: Like in this movie, too. Two, after this, you'd say, okay, well,
Speaker:Evan: maybe we should have more strict regulations around dumping of chemicals,
Speaker:Evan: but they definitely will not, and they'll do it again.
Speaker:Evan: We'll have a bigger monster next time because we're going to dump worse chemicals.
Speaker:Evan: You have that accident that the US military had in Hawaii not that long ago,
Speaker:Evan: maybe last year, where they contaminated all their drinking water,
Speaker:Evan: and it's just another big oopsie.
Speaker:Evan: Oops. Yeah. Oops, we did it.
Speaker:Yeah. Oh, no. Now, the only sort of grounds for hope is like,
Speaker:what do they say right at the end when they're eating?
Speaker:It's like, oh, let's let's turn it off and we'll find something else to watch.
Speaker:And it's this idea of, you know, there's a slow weakening of the the media is
Speaker:essentially like a fool for American biopolitics. Right.
Speaker:The media is an exercise in legitimating. right the
Speaker:purpose of media is to legitimate a kind of sovereign
Speaker:authority um and to give to give that legitimacy to particularly the american
Speaker:military but this throughout the film our characters have been directly uh they
Speaker:directly realize that the not only is the korean state just wildly corrupt and
Speaker:incompetent so is america.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i mean there's all of the scenes where
Speaker:Evan: you show the in the hospitals you see
Speaker:Evan: like a mixture of just complete incompetence like
Speaker:Evan: i've another one of those slapstick moments that i think is maybe
Speaker:Evan: a good other example is when they have their first escape
Speaker:Evan: of the hospital and they run down the elevator and some
Speaker:Evan: people are falling and they jump into the van and you
Speaker:Evan: know he pushes like he stiff arms the uh the police
Speaker:Evan: officer as he's like driving five miles per
Speaker:Evan: hour in the parking lot and it's one of the like you just
Speaker:Evan: see the incompetence of the police you see the incompetence of the the doctors
Speaker:Evan: in the hospital they're all just kind of being directed as we see later by this
Speaker:Evan: one american doctor who's just controlling the narrative and limiting who knows
Speaker:Evan: it and i don't know if that's actually directly related to what you're saying
Speaker:Evan: i just kind of i just love that scene too i just have to bring it up.
Speaker:No i totally right so it's about
Speaker:securing and legitimating a regime or a kind
Speaker:of like an authority that has no legitimacy right so by the end like in a way
Speaker:i sort of relate to this because what does everybody do when they see like politicians
Speaker:on the news you sort of roll your eyes and you're like oh fine like can we turn
Speaker:it over can we watch something else and it's because like we know that there is a lack of legitimacy,
Speaker:We know that there's a sort of ideological cynicism, where we don't believe anything that they say.
Speaker:We don't believe that they have any real authority or they have any kind of
Speaker:serious political legitimacy, but we pretend as if they do, because the alternative
Speaker:raises too many difficult questions.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, I mean, I think that brings back the comparison to the COVID pandemic,
Speaker:Evan: especially in the beginning, where obviously they didn't have all the answers.
Speaker:Evan: Things are kind of unknown but even as things were coming out you
Speaker:Evan: know you're many people are saying okay well fauci's on tv he's telling me this
Speaker:Evan: you know i guess i have to believe him because what what else do i have and
Speaker:Evan: then your your choices are really okay i can believe what the scientists and
Speaker:Evan: the government is saying or i can go the complete other way and go down a rabbit
Speaker:Evan: hole of conspiracy theories there's no real kind of middle ground i mean.
Speaker:It's and it's so kind of telling that so many governments with all who went
Speaker:oh we have experts but yeah we also want to open and the economy as quickly as possible.
Speaker:Oh, yeah. We also, yeah, all of these things that kind of cut,
Speaker:there was so much kind of dissonance.
Speaker:And it was incredibly difficult for people to actually work out what was true,
Speaker:mostly because any exercise in mitigation was seen as a threat to the smooth
Speaker:and kind of day-to-day functioning of capitalist economies, right?
Speaker:It's very telling that, you know, certain kinds of jobs were furloughed and
Speaker:you got to work from home and that's fine and good.
Speaker:Uh certain kinds of we very quickly found out
Speaker:who's essential right during covid and in
Speaker:the uk the message was very much all of these
Speaker:people who told you were essential yeah probably not but
Speaker:the people who uh stack supermarket shelves uh
Speaker:the people who collect bins the people who work
Speaker:in customer facing roles on the railways all
Speaker:of these people were like deeply essential none of them were paid properly none
Speaker:of them were given um the chance to work from home none of that so So it was
Speaker:like this friction within how was the capitalist state supposed to handle a
Speaker:viral crisis is very revealing.
Speaker:Like thinking of the host as a kind of like COVID cinema, I think opens some
Speaker:really interesting questions.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, no, I think that, I mean, I think it was very telling.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, those essential workers, after whatever, six months,
Speaker:Evan: eight months, many of them died, many of them got sick.
Speaker:Evan: And then they just kind of went back to pretending that everything was as normal.
Speaker:Evan: They just have to go back to work, got to reopen the economy.
Speaker:Evan: As you said, it's very telling of what a future response looks like.
Speaker:Evan: Maybe it's not just a pandemic, but maybe as we see the actual collapse of our natural,
Speaker:Evan: environment and all of that, which will lead to catastrophic other things,
Speaker:Evan: we already know how the American and the West will handle it.
Speaker:Evan: They'll say, okay, well, you still have to go to Walmart and do whatever you
Speaker:Evan: have to do because someone needs to buy this little widget instead of you staying
Speaker:Evan: at home, we give you some money, we send some food to your house.
Speaker:Evan: I think everyone probably knew that that's how the American government or the
Speaker:Evan: UK government would react, but it's worse to actually see it happen in real
Speaker:Evan: time and just think, fuck, they don't give a shit.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. You got to go back to your convenience hub because people
Speaker:need their of squid pretty.
Speaker:Evan: Much yeah
Speaker:Evan: and it's uh yeah and the one thing that
Speaker:Evan: i going back to maybe that very early moment where
Speaker:Evan: you see the monster for the very first time and they you know go out to give
Speaker:Evan: the the little you know mat for their their squid that doesn't have a missing
Speaker:Evan: leg on it and you see immediately you know these other people who are being
Speaker:Evan: served are not necessarily wealthy
Speaker:Evan: people, they're just maybe – I hate to say the word middle class, but middle,
Speaker:Evan: upper working class –,
Speaker:Evan: I don't know how you might describe them, but you have the park family is kind of this working poor.
Speaker:Evan: They have a little business scraping to get by, and they're still having to
Speaker:Evan: serve other people. But then when the monster comes out of the water, it's eating them both.
Speaker:Evan: The cruel evils of these monsters doesn't discriminate, except for the fact
Speaker:Evan: that the rich people are going to stay in their towers and their hills and their
Speaker:Evan: fancy homes while the poor people die, just like in COVID. yeah.
Speaker:Absolutely absolutely um any any other kind of final points you wanted to to make sure we we hit.
Speaker:Evan: Um i think those are all of
Speaker:Evan: the ones i had i mean i i
Speaker:Evan: guess i the only thing i would say about sort of the end of this
Speaker:Evan: is that it's you know it's pretty it's kind
Speaker:Evan: of a depressing end to uh to the movie
Speaker:Evan: and you know you don't have very much you know
Speaker:Evan: hope i guess you're kind of given in a little bit of glimmer you know that they
Speaker:Evan: now back have their little their little shop and you know the the one little
Speaker:Evan: boy lives but it's also kind of bleak which i think makes sense i don't think
Speaker:Evan: you could have this be a happy ending you know it's the the cycle is just going to repeat itself yeah.
Speaker:I i uh there's one question that you put in the notes i think it's interesting
Speaker:which is like, what do you think the title refers to?
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. Oh, sorry. I mean, I'll, I'm curious.
Speaker:Evan: So in the movie, they basically are referring to like the, the,
Speaker:Evan: the monster is sort of the, you know, patient zero, the host of this virus,
Speaker:Evan: which is kind of the obvious way to look at it.
Speaker:Evan: But I'm wondering if, if it could be something else. I'm wondering what you think.
Speaker:I think the host is, um, the host is, is, is Korean society, right? Right.
Speaker:What is it the host to? It's it's the host to a the host to a monster.
Speaker:Where did the monster come from or what is the root cause of the monster is
Speaker:the pollution of an occupying military imperial force. Right.
Speaker:To me, this the host title of the film is actually where you see the politics
Speaker:of the movie most clearly.
Speaker:Because you go, oh, well, the monster is the host. and then actually you simply
Speaker:have to kind of like follow that train of thought and talk about where did this
Speaker:monster come from what is being hosted the monster is kind of like,
Speaker:is this is the product of a symbiotic relationship and
Speaker:an exploitative and harmful symbiosis at that right
Speaker:because uh the korean and
Speaker:american uh state apparatus are
Speaker:both kind of enmeshed within each other they are both in in in a sense the hosting
Speaker:one another and keeping them alive but it's these this one of like uh the the
Speaker:the monster is the symptom right and if you stop there that's only gives you
Speaker:a limited understanding of the film.
Speaker:If you actually follow the monster as metaphor, you realize that the host is,
Speaker:always with the monster.
Speaker:The host is the society that produced the monster in the first place.
Speaker:Evan: Exactly. I actually think of a very similar type,
Speaker:Evan: although it's not a man-made monster in the same way, but I think of the movie
Speaker:Evan: Jaws with a similar situation where you could look at the shark as the capitalist
Speaker:Evan: capitalist, you know, exploitation.
Speaker:Evan: And people are the mayor, whoever is going to send people out there,
Speaker:Evan: no matter what, they could kill that one shark, that one monster,
Speaker:Evan: but there's still going to be another one lurking because nothing has actually been solved.
Speaker:Evan: You've only just, you know, cut off, you know, one of the limbs of this,
Speaker:Evan: you know, ever growing, you know, horror that continues to come out of Korean society.
Speaker:Evan: Nothing was actually changed. changed as i said before no new regulations are
Speaker:Evan: going to be brought about it's all going to just end up in the same situation
Speaker:Evan: over and over again until there's actually you know i guess till the actual
Speaker:Evan: host of the korean society as you're saying is actually dealt with yeah.
Speaker:Absolutely absolutely the monster will be bigger next time actually it'll be
Speaker:worse because the symptoms will be worse right the the um eco ecological imperialism is cumulative uh,
Speaker:so it won't just be there won't be just one monster like the the symptoms will
Speaker:get worse and worse which is precisely what is born out in the real world.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i guess you could say that would be very well shown in
Speaker:Evan: you know godzilla movies you have initially you have godzilla
Speaker:Evan: but then you have all these other creatures and horrors that lurk
Speaker:Evan: because of all of the uh you know nuke nuclear testing and all the things they've
Speaker:Evan: done it's just gonna it's gonna cycle through again um but yeah i think that
Speaker:Evan: was that was the last real question i had i don't know if you had any final
Speaker:Evan: thoughts on on the movie itself or anything you didn't get a chance to uh to mention just.
Speaker:To emphasize that it's just a really good time uh it's again again you know
Speaker:it's not some highfalutin uh abstract or didactic piece of cinema this is like
Speaker:really exciting very popular
Speaker:media this is like this is a this is a good this is a good ass movie that's my big takeaway.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i mean i i think uh you know um i was telling a friend that i was watching
Speaker:Evan: he hadn't seen this and i said you know you know because he knows about the
Speaker:Evan: podcast he's like oh i assume you're going to be talking about you know political
Speaker:Evan: aspects of them and i said well you can also just enjoy this as a really good
Speaker:Evan: fun movie and that's it you know you don't have to as i think I said before.
Speaker:Evan: It can just be that. It really is just that. It's a really good fucking movie.
Speaker:Evan: Anyone listening...
Speaker:It's about a weird big fish.
Speaker:Evan: Yep, pretty much. If you've listened to this whole thing and you still haven't
Speaker:Evan: seen it, I mean, we obviously spoiled bits of it, but I think you can still
Speaker:Evan: watch this movie over and over and still get very much a good...
Speaker:Evan: You'll enjoy it. Yep.
Speaker:That's a good place to wrap.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah but john um i really appreciate you uh
Speaker:Evan: coming on and um people should go check out your uh your book and if you haven't
Speaker:Evan: listened to your podcast you should listen to that which i assume they can get
Speaker:Evan: on your uh i guess i'll link it in here but i guess they can also follow on
Speaker:Evan: any podcast yeah you can get us at.
Speaker:Whatever local independent artsy little podcast maker to get your books from.
Speaker:You can find me on pretty much all platforms. He's a really great guy.
Speaker:And yeah, please do check out Capitalism Horror Story, Gothic Nox,
Speaker:Even with the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination, which is now with Repeater Books.
Speaker:Evan: Yes, you can click the link in the thing down there, which will send you to
Speaker:Evan: the place that is available for purchase because as you're listening, the book is out now.
Speaker:Evan: And you can also follow this podcast and all the same online internet podcasting
Speaker:Evan: places and uh thanks again john and we'll catch you all next time.
