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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00:00:16
Evan: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host Evan,
00:00:20
Evan: back again with another film discussion from the left.
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Evan: I am grateful for all of you who support the show, which you can do at patreon.com
00:00:29
Evan: slash leftoftheprojectorpod.
00:00:31
Evan: You can follow, rate, subscribe at leftoftheprojector.com and it would be greatly
00:00:36
Evan: appreciated if you could leave a rating and a review.
00:00:39
Evan: This week on the the show, we'll be discussing the 2006 Bong Joon-ho film, The Host.
00:00:44
Evan: If you saw his earlier work like Parasite and Snowpiercer, you're not going to want to miss this one.
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Evan: The Host, as we'll see shortly, has a very clear undertones of American imperialism
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Evan: and the impact it has on other nations, in this case, South Korea.
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Evan: My guest this week is John Greenaway.
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Evan: John is the co-ghost of the podcast, The Horror Vanguard, which if you don't
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Evan: listen to already, you should go check it out immediately.
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Evan: John is a writer based in North England whose writing includes horror,
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Evan: contemporary capitalism, and cultural theory.
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Evan: He has a new book out right now from Repeater called Capitalism,
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Evan: A Horror Story, Gothic, Marxism, and the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination.
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Evan: You can purchase it anywhere you get your books. John, thank you so much for
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Evan: joining me today. I appreciate it.
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Yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show.
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Evan: Absolutely. And so like Like I said in the intro, we're talking about the 2006 film, The Host.
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Evan: But before we get into that, I know that, John, people may know your podcast
00:01:44
Evan: and, you know, also your upcoming book.
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Evan: So, you know, before we jump in, we want to tell everyone about your book.
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Evan: And I think probably listeners of my show probably have heard of The Horror Vanguard.
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Evan: But for the few who might not know, care to share.
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Yes. So for people who don't know me, my name is John.
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You can find me on most platforms online as the liquid guy,
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that's what I started doing and yeah I am the co-ghost of the Horror Vanguard
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podcast which is a horror movie podcast where we talk about the three most important
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things in life which is friendship,
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full communism and occasionally if there's time we talk about scary movies but
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if you like horror, if you like politics and philosophy, then Horror Vanguard,
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I think, will be right up your street.
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I also have a brand new book now out.
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It's called Capitalism, A Horror Story, Gothic Marxism and the Dark Side of
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the Radical Imagination.
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You can get it from Repeater Books.
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And it's pretty great. It's a good book.
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It's about trying to put forward this conception of what I call Gothic Marxism.
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And yeah, again, thank you so much for having me on.
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Evan: Yeah, absolutely. I actually, by the time people are hearing this,
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Evan: your book will already be out, but it'll be coming out tomorrow as of the live
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Evan: time that we're recording this.
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Evan: So I'll be looking forward to checking it out.
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Evan: But I don't know. So I reached out to you, and we, you know,
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Evan: as I do with every guest really is to send them kind of a list of films, kind of an ongoing list.
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Evan: And you immediately went to The Host, which I said, came out in 2006,
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Evan: directed by Bong Joon-ho, which people probably know more recently from things
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Evan: like Snowpiercer and Parasite.
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Evan: But he had some bangers of films,
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Evan: you know, early in the 2000s that people may not have known as well.
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Evan: It was the most, most highest grossing film in South Korea ever.
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Evan: I don't know if it's been top since then but i don't know like what draw you
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Evan: to choosing it and do you have any sort of i don't know maybe your overall impressions
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Evan: before we maybe dive in a bit deeper.
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Um yeah i chose it because i think
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uh i mean in my opinion bong jin ho is one of the most interesting directors
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working today um i love uh all their films um they're like and he's He's explicitly
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making films which have a kind of class analysis to them,
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which I think is kind of so sorely needed.
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I like The Host a lot because, firstly, my first impression is it's actually
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a very beautiful movie to look at, just in terms of light, composition,
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the color grading is really good.
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It's also a really good example of early 2000s digital effects.
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I think they hold up really well um and it's a way of showing that you can do
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uh digital and practical work artfully i think um yeah what about you what is
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some of your first impressions of this.
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Evan: Yeah i mean i think it's i've i've similar so i didn't see the host first i
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Evan: think the first movie of of his i saw was snow piercer and then parasite obviously
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Evan: being you know the big uh you know kind of darling which i think maybe brought
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Evan: him more into the spotlight and then i went back and saw all of his older films.
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Evan: You know, I really liked this one. I also really like memories of murder,
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Evan: which is another, maybe his second or third one.
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Evan: All of them are really just, as you said, they have really deep class analysis
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Evan: and, you know, and not like in a cheesy way. It's very, um,
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Evan: what would I say? It's very, I mean, not subtle, but also in a way that I think
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Evan: people could probably watch these and not get it somehow, which I think is also
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Evan: interesting because I've talked to people about Snowpiercer and I did it on this podcast.
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Evan: And I read some article in some right-wing thing saying that it was actually
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Evan: a pro-capitalist movie, which is just mind-blowing.
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Evan: So I don't know. I guess watching his films always gives me hope for movies
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Evan: that do good class analysis.
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Evan: So as you said, I think the special effects do mostly hold up.
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Evan: I mean, probably better than a lot of the special effect that came around that time.
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Evan: But I love this movie. I'd seen it. I watched it just before we recorded a couple
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Evan: of days ago, and then I'd seen it a while back.
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Evan: But I think it's a great movie and really has deep-seated working class analysis.
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Evan: And I with most of his movies the story is
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Evan: always around a working class family or working
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Evan: poor family and this is you know immediately
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Evan: you see that maybe not from the opening scene but the
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Evan: uh introduction introduction of the of the family you know it's kind of impossible
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Evan: to not see the immediate you know um working class sort of poverty going through
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Evan: the uh the family the park family owning this little tiny stand and you know it's just great.
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Yeah it's it's a it's a really it's just a it's just
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good entertaining cinema as well like i
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think everyone goes oh oh you like it because
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it's left wing it's going to be very preachy and didactic and
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preachy is i think uh snowpiercer is
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the one that kind of veers closest to that
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because it's explicitly about a revolutionary struggle um
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but preachy is not what don't you know is interested in
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he's not interested in um so interested in
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convincing you really i don't think in a
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way uh the host is good mostly because it takes as kind of just givens certain
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um political realities that a lot of other films would try and retroactively
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justify so it takes as given that there is this uh you know washed up
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student protesters, it takes a given that this kind of exploitation makes into,
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uh, the retail and service industries, all of these things are just kind of
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like part of the sort of realist social fabric of life.
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Evan: Yeah, I think that's right. I think, I think I would say also in Parasite 2,
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Evan: it's very much just the kind of just the assumed kind of nature of,
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Evan: you know, the sort of hyper capitalist society in South Korea that,
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Evan: you know, pretty much well mirrors,
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Evan: you know, what, what America is like in many ways.
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Evan: And I think there's lots of subtle little lines throughout it,
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Evan: talking about the debt that they're in, the fact that they have an education but can't get a job,
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Evan: doing all these things to help the country, but they're not rewarded with any
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Evan: kind of monetary benefits.
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Evan: And it's just very, I don't know, it's both on the nose and over the top,
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Evan: but at the same time, also subtle, if that's even possible. I don't know if that makes sense.
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Yeah i i again i think
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it's this is something he famously said about
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parasite which is he was trying to make a film which
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was very specific to the social and political conditions of korea but it turned
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out everybody got it it's because the social and political conditions of korea
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are in a way the social and political conditions of us all which is as he puts
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it this this village called capitalism in which all of us live.
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Evan: Yeah, exactly. I think maybe it's also once Parasite came out,
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Evan: then people maybe, some people may re-evaluate some of these other movies and
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Evan: then can see how much it's there.
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Evan: But I think maybe just for anyone who maybe hasn't seen this movie, which I would
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Evan: urge you to, to, you know, maybe pause right now, go watch the host and come back.
00:09:21
Evan: Now that you've watched it, you know, you kind of know that the the film is
00:09:25
Evan: was inspired by a true event, you know, that happened in Korea,
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Evan: where a actual US military installation actually dumped or forcibly dumped,
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Evan: you know, formaldehyde chemicals into the Han River leading to kind of a big scandal.
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Evan: And then years later, the US basically said, Oops, sorry, you know, sorry about that.
00:09:44
Evan: We, we didn't mean to And it's very much kind of right in your face in the very
00:09:48
Evan: opening scene where the American is clearly telling the Korean to dump all these
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Evan: vials or, you know, whatever, jars,
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Evan: glass, whatever they are of a fraud right into the Han River,
00:09:59
Evan: you know, despite his very brief protest. test.
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Evan: And then we sort of skip forward ahead of time where we start to see,
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Evan: you know, fishermen seeing some weird things going on in the river and then
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Evan: flip forward a little bit further.
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Evan: And now we have this monster that's going to essentially prey on the working
00:10:17
Evan: class, the same people who are, you know, being forced to do low wage work,
00:10:23
Evan: forced to, you know, be the
00:10:26
Evan: kind of, what would you say, put their, you know, I'm blanking on what I was
00:10:31
Evan: going to say is at the mercy of kind of the mercy of capitalist exploit.
00:10:34
Evan: And they are then the first ones to be exploited as always is the case.
00:10:38
Yeah. And it's a very particular kind of capitalism or rather,
00:10:42
like, I don't, I don't know if calling it the exploitation of capitalism is
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specific enough, because this is about,
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in a way, this film is about the direct link between what usually gets That's
00:10:53
called eco-horror or eco-gothic with American imperialism.
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This is a film about the environmental degradation caused by the necessities
00:11:06
of having a military that can maintain the American empire.
00:11:10
You dump all of these chemicals in the river. Chemicals are dumped because the
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American military tells you to do it.
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There's a monster. There's this kind of horrible mutation that's caused.
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Was Wang Jinghou talks about basing the monster on a fish that was pulled out
00:11:25
of the Han River with an S-shaped spine.
00:11:29
I think you can see that in its design, which I think is excellent.
00:11:36
There's some really interesting...
00:11:37
Can I just ask, did you find this a slightly weird experience watching this
00:11:42
when we're in the kind of like, that's the peak of, you know, COVID discourse?
00:11:48
Evan: Completely. I, yeah, it was, it was not lost on me that you see the response
00:11:54
Evan: to a so-called sort of virus or, you know, something like that,
00:11:58
Evan: that's completely bumbled and, you know, just not handled correctly.
00:12:02
Evan: And there's you know misinformation the media is saying one thing people are
00:12:06
Evan: lying about it all these kind of things it was very much you know the people
00:12:10
Evan: wearing masks throughout it i think if i had seen this before 2019 or we're
00:12:15
Evan: talking about this in 2019 instead of right now i think you might have a different
00:12:19
Evan: perspective on some of it.
00:12:20
Yeah totally um but it is it's
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so there's a kind of biopolitical element to what
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the uh the antagonist of this film
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is so the antagonist is not the creature itself right the creature
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feature is always it's always kind of
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always already metaphorical so i mean obviously
00:12:40
your classic touch point here is is godzilla um
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and it's concerned around a war nuclear war nuclear annihilationism the monster
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is always a metaphor but it's a metaphor that is like d uh disconnected from
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any kind of like a concrete semantic base so you can't do that kind of like
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a one-to-one analogical reading where you go oh oh, the monster equals this.
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But really, the antagonist of this film is the US military. And so that inevitably
00:13:08
kind of puts the discussion here into the territory of biopolitics.
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Because what happens to our central protagonists, the greatest threat to them,
00:13:19
isn't really the monster, like the creature in the river.
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That's kind of like the inciting incident. The great threat is the US military,
00:13:28
right? They want to imprison you. They want to literally scoop out your brain.
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To stop you from talking about what you've seen or heard.
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You become like a fugitive from them in your own city.
00:13:41
So there are all these like biopolitical mechanisms of control that imperialism
00:13:47
and American military imperialism enacts within Korean society.
00:13:53
Evan: Yeah, and one of the things I think they try, I mean, maybe this is,
00:13:58
Evan: maybe as you're watching, as someone might watch this and say,
00:14:00
Evan: well, maybe the people that's really at fault are the Koreans for their kind
00:14:05
Evan: of bumbling of the situation after.
00:14:07
Evan: But I mean, I think in the things that Bong Jo said is, you know,
00:14:12
Evan: that was kind of his aim was to kind of show the kind of bumbling nature.
00:14:15
Evan: But as you're saying, it's really the culprit and the antagonist is the United
00:14:20
Evan: States, who forced their hand and is continuing to force their hand.
00:14:24
Evan: I mean, people may not realize that since the Korean War, the US has held anywhere
00:14:29
Evan: Anywhere from, well, going back to the 50s, half a million soldiers,
00:14:32
Evan: but throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, upwards of 50 soldiers as part of the
00:14:37
Evan: United States Forces Korea.
00:14:39
Evan: And so we are directly influencing their military through all kinds of programs,
00:14:46
Evan: aid, and making them do these things.
00:14:49
Evan: I mean, literally, we made them dump chemicals in real life and then in this
00:14:53
Evan: movie. And it's clear that the villain is the continued, you know,
00:14:58
Evan: spread of American imperialism and just making countries bend to their will.
00:15:04
Evan: And if you don't, then you face the consequences of, you know,
00:15:07
Evan: losing aid, embargoes and worse.
00:15:10
Yeah, and really like a big part of it is propaganda, which is,
00:15:14
you know, there's a relatively large unification movement in Korea that would
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like to see South Korea reunited with the DPRK.
00:15:24
Um and that's entirely antithetical to
00:15:27
what the u.s wants right and i think it's very it's very
00:15:30
notable that the two big interventions that you see
00:15:32
that the u.s military kind of enacts in this film firstly is military but second
00:15:39
is through the media like if you think just think about the movie the number
00:15:43
of times you see like uh western journalists or like american military spokesmen
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and giving interviews or giving press conferences.
00:15:52
And this is what I mean where it's a very modernist version of imperialism.
00:15:57
You don't necessarily need a huge military presence, but what you need is media hegemony.
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You need to be able to shape and dictate the parameters of discourse.
00:16:08
It's really quite funny that this was a film that even North Korea didn't mind.
00:16:14
Okay i saw that yeah that was it was praised for you know it's a reflection
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of the relationship between the u.s and south korea.
00:16:22
Evan: Yeah the thing the first thing i thought of when you're talking about the misinformation
00:16:25
Evan: and actually the i think the very last line of
00:16:29
Evan: the movie comes from the the tv or
00:16:31
Evan: maybe the one of the last lines as they turn off
00:16:34
Evan: the television and they're basically the american uh
00:16:37
Evan: military spokesman is saying that the all of the things about the
00:16:40
Evan: virus are due to misinformation you know it's
00:16:43
Evan: all because of misinformation and the irony is they're the ones who
00:16:46
Evan: did the fucking misinformation it's like oh i wonder who
00:16:49
Evan: did that and it's you know they're just looking at themselves
00:16:51
Evan: in the mirror and yeah the media throughout it is
00:16:54
Evan: very interesting like the uh the scientist who comes into the kind of the little
00:16:58
Evan: gym where all the people are kind of being held and he says oh i'm not going
00:17:01
Evan: to tell you what happened i'm just going to turn on the tv and let you hear
00:17:04
Evan: through the media what's happened because you know i can't tell you i need to
00:17:07
Evan: uh filter it through all the uh misinformation and propaganda that's going to
00:17:11
Evan: be on you know radio free asia or something oh.
00:17:14
Yeah absolutely and actually can we talk about uh one of the things i really
00:17:18
love about this film which is um its ability to do a kind of multi-tonal storytelling
00:17:24
so this is a horror movie but there are also loads of bits of it which have
00:17:28
like kind of a slapstick vibe to them.
00:17:32
Evan: There's so many bits like there's.
00:17:34
So many bits where like people just fall over or are like physically bumbling
00:17:38
around um which i find sort of deeply charming but like even right at the end
00:17:45
there's payoff to this though it sort of reminds me someone on twitter pointed
00:17:49
this out to me that it sort of has echoes of um some early jackie chan movies where there is physical.
00:17:56
Evan: But there's.
00:17:57
A kind of like comedy to it it's quite light-hearted it's
00:18:01
all paid off right at the end where it's going to throw the Molotov cocktail
00:18:05
at the creature but it slips it just drops it but it allows his sister to finally
00:18:10
have the hero moment of shooting the creature with a flaming arrow so it all
00:18:15
pays off but there's this great um,
00:18:18
a tendency within certain scenes and sequences for
00:18:21
the tone of the film to just kind of shift very suddenly
00:18:24
so it can be very funny uh it can
00:18:27
be there's like some really exciting chase sequences there's
00:18:30
some great jump scares in this um there
00:18:33
are it has it has like a real knack
00:18:37
of like so this is not like yeah there's some very sophisticated politics happening
00:18:42
in this but this is not like a highbrow or you know art house this is this is
00:18:47
not this is not cinema this is a movie this is like this is a movie's rock moment yeah well.
00:18:57
Evan: I mean it's it's interesting you mentioned jackie chan the first film that immediately
00:19:01
Evan: comes to mind is um police story which is very much that kind of early i don't
00:19:06
Evan: know when that came out probably 87 or something like that jackie chan movie
00:19:10
Evan: where it's like you said people are falling down or slipping.
00:19:13
Evan: I think that the main character, Gangdu, is meant to be a clumsy...
00:19:22
Evan: I think that the Wikipedia page refers to him as a clumsy misfit vendor in his father's shop.
00:19:27
Evan: And so he's clumsy, but then you have a scene in the gym where I think that
00:19:31
Evan: scientist falls down. There's a number of other scenes.
00:19:34
Evan: I think it's almost very good break in the tension of the very serious attempts
00:19:39
Evan: to try and, you know, locate his daughter, you know, that's kind of been captured by the monster.
00:19:44
Evan: But at the same time, they're flipping back and forth to kind of,
00:19:48
Evan: like you're saying, almost like different tones throughout of it.
00:19:51
Evan: And I think it makes it more interesting than if it were just a straight,
00:19:54
Evan: you know, serious monster kind of movie.
00:19:58
Evan: And some of my favorite jump scares, as you mentioned, is when one character
00:20:01
Evan: is about to open a door, but then they flip to another character opening the same door.
00:20:06
Evan: Like, you know, those shots were, I think one of them is about to hide in the
00:20:10
Evan: one of the little rooms and then the grandfather opens up the the door to his
00:20:15
Evan: own shop and it's just it's just yeah the as you mentioned at the very beginning
00:20:19
Evan: like the composition and all the different scenes are really just phenomenal filmmaking yeah.
00:20:24
Absolutely and it's very typical right it's like if you've seen Parasite you've
00:20:29
not really seen any other Bong
00:20:30
Joon-ho movies go back and watch this and immediately you'll see that he's,
00:20:37
in a way been constantly sort of refining and developing
00:20:40
a particular set of concerns and style um it's
00:20:43
very interesting that he's cited both scorsese and
00:20:46
john carpenter as influences um and he's
00:20:49
very he's a very precise filmmaker i think everything is very well planned out
00:20:54
very well thought out um but he he does enjoy this like you cut on the beat
00:20:59
of action and kind of shift the tone so it's like where would be the funniest
00:21:03
punch line that's that's clearly how he's thinking and the construction of the film.
00:21:07
Evan: Yeah, it's interesting. I knew that he liked Scorsese. I didn't realize that
00:21:10
Evan: Carpenter was one of his bing foo.
00:21:12
Evan: And so I should have, as I was doing, you know, reading about him for this,
00:21:15
Evan: and I had covered Parasite, you know, maybe a year ago.
00:21:18
Evan: I didn't realize that, but that kind of makes sense in sort of the,
00:21:21
Evan: when I think of some of the movies, like, you know, Big Trouble in Little China
00:21:24
Evan: and some of those, not because of the Asian influence, but just the simply the
00:21:28
Evan: kind of tone of some of the, you know, this and that definitely have some similarities.
00:21:34
Evan: That's one of my, I love, I've John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors.
00:21:37
Evan: So it's easy now, now that you say that it's like, I can't get that out of my mind. Yeah.
00:21:42
Oh yeah. I totally see it. I totally see the kind of links.
00:21:45
Evan: Exactly. Yeah. And I, and I think, um, I think he has a new,
00:21:48
Evan: I think is, uh, another movie he has coming out that I think was delayed.
00:21:51
Evan: I think it's an American, his second, you know, English language movie,
00:21:55
Evan: um, which I'm Mickey 17 or something.
00:21:58
I think it's based on.
00:22:00
Evan: Which I was so excited to hear about it. And then I haven't read the book,
00:22:03
Evan: but i've heard it's quite good so i'm that would that would
00:22:06
Evan: take us on a separate tangent but i'm very you know anything he makes
00:22:09
Evan: i think is uh you know he keeps refining his
00:22:12
Evan: craft in each of these movies you can
00:22:15
Evan: look at this is an early movie that's still incredible but you
00:22:18
Evan: know just as they've gone through have really just um gotten better
00:22:21
Evan: with uh with age and i think actually one other
00:22:24
Evan: thing you briefly mentioned i think you know as one
00:22:27
Evan: of the themes throughout this is sort of the protest movement you
00:22:30
Evan: know and also maybe the the reunification movement with
00:22:33
Evan: north korea but they clearly each of the you know the the siblings you have
00:22:38
Evan: the two brothers and the sister of the park family and the kind of the youngest
00:22:43
Evan: son i believe i don't know if they say which of the two is but i guess it doesn't
00:22:47
Evan: matter but the the younger brother um nam ill was meant to,
00:22:52
Evan: be kind of uh be the stand-in for kind of this past political protest in south
00:22:57
Evan: korea and i read I had some articles with Bong Joon-ho that said he was really
00:23:01
Evan: trying to bring back that kind of fervor in this film that kind of has been
00:23:06
Evan: lost in South Korea that he probably thinks should be revitalized.
00:23:10
Evan: And they clearly show him as this character, Nam-il, as this guy who went to college.
00:23:16
Evan: Father paid for his college through this selling ramen noodles, as he said. Yeah.
00:23:22
Evan: Still can't get a job since then, which also, again, is very much on the nose
00:23:26
Evan: of people in America now and other countries where you have to pay for an education
00:23:30
Evan: and then aren't able to actually do anything with that education.
00:23:34
Evan: And that kind of cross with the political protest movement, I think, is very interesting.
00:23:41
Evan: And then, of course, you have the climax towards the end of the people protesting,
00:23:45
Evan: the agent yellow, which another military thing we should also,
00:23:50
Evan: like that was probably the most obvious, uh, line like, Oh, agent yellow.
00:23:55
Evan: Uh huh. Wink, wink, nod, nod. The American is going to test this chemical that
00:23:59
Evan: we just so happens to test on you way back when.
00:24:03
Evan: Um, but it's not like.
00:24:05
It's not, it's not like, um, uh, Namil has like specific politics though.
00:24:11
He's just, no, he doesn't really been raised in like the protest,
00:24:16
movement he knows how to make molotov cocktails he kind
00:24:18
of knows an old an old student radical who's uh
00:24:22
you know now uh selling us
00:24:25
all for a regular check and it actually kind of betrays him
00:24:28
to the authorities so it's like there is
00:24:31
there is sort of like this free political sense of things but it's already it
00:24:37
sort of feels nostalgic right um yeah you know it's not like there is an active
00:24:43
less protest it's like there's the remnants of one that kind of re-emerges for a little bit yeah.
00:24:49
Evan: That's true i think the only time that the i can't remember i'm blanking on
00:24:53
Evan: the name of his kind of old friend um.
00:24:55
Yeah who now works for the um now works for the telecommunications company right.
00:25:00
Evan: Right i think the only thing after he had sold him out and i think uh namil
00:25:04
Evan: is you know escaping from the uh the telecom building i think he actually holds
00:25:08
Evan: up his fist like in solidarity solidarity, you know, as he's running away.
00:25:11
Evan: I didn't notice that until this time. I guess it's sort of like,
00:25:14
Evan: well, you know, I wish that I was still able to, you know, to do this.
00:25:18
Evan: But unfortunately, I need money so badly that I'm willing to,
00:25:20
Evan: you know, sell my soul to work for, you know, Verizon, you know,
00:25:25
Evan: or AT&T, Google or something like that, you know, that's what I kind of it's a very clear standard.
00:25:30
Evan: And it's also interesting that they're kind of referring to to this sort of
00:25:34
Evan: corporate entity that's the evil that's on top of it.
00:25:40
Evan: So another sort of evil piece, but not any more evil than the United States,
00:25:45
Evan: just the regular run-of-the-mill evil that's controlling the information that could help them.
00:25:52
Evan: But of course, why would they help the little guy?
00:25:54
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
00:25:56
Evan: Yeah. And I think the other...
00:25:58
Evan: As you kind of mentioned the, well, I guess I briefly mentioned the agent yellow,
00:26:03
Evan: which I don't know, maybe there's not that much to say about it.
00:26:05
Evan: But clearly, the US military is using this incident and the sort of their control
00:26:10
Evan: over the situation to test a biological agent on actual human beings,
00:26:16
Evan: you know, in Korea is just, you know, kind of on the nose for,
00:26:20
Evan: you know, what America would actually do.
00:26:23
Evan: And I wrote this in my notes as I was watching only because I just listened
00:26:26
Evan: to a podcast episode on MKUltra program.
00:26:30
Evan: And, you know, during or the predecessor to that was, you know,
00:26:34
Evan: some of the Japanese tests as part of Unit 731, which were then brought into
00:26:40
Evan: the MKUltra program and all this.
00:26:41
Evan: And they did the same kind of thing, just tests on human beings without any
00:26:46
Evan: interest or care for their life. And America, you know, has a long,
00:26:50
Evan: long tradition of doing the same thing, you know, usually with Nazis behind the behind the camera.
00:26:55
Yeah, I mean, this is a question you put in the notes. Do you think this is too on the nose?
00:27:01
Evan: Yeah, I don't know.
00:27:01
I'm curious to know what you think.
00:27:02
Evan: I mean, maybe it's one of those things where as you watch it from this sort
00:27:08
Evan: of political analysis and this mindset,
00:27:12
Evan: perhaps maybe it is, but perhaps as just sort of the average person watching
00:27:18
Evan: it may realize these things, may see it as being more subtle.
00:27:23
Evan: Subtle i don't know it's hard for me to kind of put and put myself in the position
00:27:26
Evan: of watching it as kind of the standard moviegoer or just as a random person
00:27:32
Evan: in korea who watched this when it came out i would say it's probably less on
00:27:36
Evan: the nose i don't know i'm kind of torn i mean what do you think the.
00:27:40
Only thing that i would say is that subtlety is not necessarily a virtue um
00:27:44
like yes it's a metaphor but the metaphors are real right we don't we don't
00:27:49
live in particularly subtle times.
00:27:52
Yeah. You know?
00:27:54
I don't think i don't think there's i think saying something is too on the nose
00:27:58
presupposes that like we need a degree of like artifice in some ways so to serve
00:28:05
as some sort of like distancing effect,
00:28:07
um but this is something i say about horror movies all the time which is like
00:28:10
they're metaphors right but the metaphors are just true like there is there
00:28:16
is there is a monster there is something terrible lurking at the heart of korea
00:28:21
and it's completely metaphorical but
00:28:24
the metaphor is also real so i don't
00:28:27
i don't necessarily think that i don't necessarily think you
00:28:30
can be too on the nose mostly because it
00:28:34
that sort of implies a degree of political
00:28:37
hermeneutics like mainstream movies sort
00:28:41
of seek to diffuse so you know the classic example is like oh why are you pushing
00:28:46
pushing your politics into this it's like no this is very clearly a political
00:28:50
movie it's just one that's discussed it's just one that is also really fucking
00:28:55
cool monster movie and both of those things can be true at the same time right yeah.
00:29:00
Evan: And i think i mean it can i think it even can it obviously extends beyond
00:29:03
Evan: horror you know genre but i think for sure a
00:29:06
Evan: lot of uh you know films like that you'd say you
00:29:10
Evan: know especially more recent horror movies that often have
00:29:13
Evan: a more anti maybe it's a more deeper anti-capitalist
00:29:17
Evan: sort of bend to them i think of um i guess
00:29:21
Evan: this is more of a fairly new one i think
00:29:24
Evan: of like the menu is very clearly you know what they're trying to do in the film
00:29:28
Evan: at the same time as you know also having it be kind of uh attempting to be kind
00:29:33
Evan: of interesting horror movie but then you have the same thing in action movies
00:29:36
Evan: throughout time i mean rambo um predator all these movies are clear satires and And, you know,
00:29:43
Evan: skewering American military, you know, and at the same time is also just a pretty badass action movie.
00:29:50
Evan: It can be both of those things at the same time. And I think I have a friend
00:29:54
Evan: who I don't know if he listens to my podcast anymore, you know,
00:29:58
Evan: very in the liberal end of the scale.
00:29:59
Evan: He told me when he listened to my episode on Robocop, they kind of ruined the
00:30:03
Evan: movie for him because I sort of put politics into it.
00:30:06
Evan: But I'm thinking, can it can I ruin it? I mean, can't it still just be a fun
00:30:11
Evan: action movie if you don't want to look beyond the first layer?
00:30:15
Yeah, I mean, I remember talking to a guy called Andy Sharp who writes about horror movies a lot.
00:30:21
And he said to me, you know, we didn't go to horror movies because we wanted
00:30:25
to do like sophisticated political discourse.
00:30:28
We go to horror movies because horror movies are fucking cool.
00:30:33
But what they offer is a set of conceptual and hermeneutic tools that actually
00:30:40
help us to make sense of the world that we inhabit right?
00:30:44
I don't know if it I don't know if we like, Bong Joon-ho is,
00:30:50
is making films about the world. But I would not go so far as to say he's a
00:30:54
kind of revolutionary filmmaker, right?
00:30:56
Because he works predominantly in horror or crime, where the entire sort of
00:31:01
generic point is resolution, not revolution.
00:31:04
But you can't necessarily have revolution. Like Parasite, for example,
00:31:09
ends on a very bleak note, right?
00:31:11
A re-inscription of the capitalist realism that drives people into extracting
00:31:16
as much money as they can, right?
00:31:19
To building their own wealth to being to being the titular
00:31:22
parasite um like you can't you
00:31:25
can't have a revolutionary kind of rupture there because that only emerges as
00:31:29
violence it's true in the host as well so you can have a description of the
00:31:35
kind of like terrain of capitalist realism as it's enacted in 2006 korea but
00:31:40
you can't necessarily have like any sort of revolutionary change there yeah.
00:31:44
Evan: I mean i i mean I think you could probably make a pretty good argument at the
00:31:47
Evan: end of the host is still just as parasite is also a very bleak,
00:31:51
Evan: you know, look, I mean, you have, you know, some of the, the grandfather and, you know, the,
00:31:56
Evan: the daughter have died and now, you know, he's taken on sort of the, this, this,
00:32:02
Evan: gang do is sort of taken on this boy as kind of his own child.
00:32:07
Evan: And again, he's still living in this small little shack, you know,
00:32:10
Evan: and he's still going to have to sell noodles. And that's kind of where he's resigned to.
00:32:15
Evan: He's never there's no, there's no climbing to any kind of different social strata for him.
00:32:20
Evan: That's, that's as high as it goes. And just despite the fact that he's went
00:32:23
Evan: through this horrible ordeal, the government sort of lied to him,
00:32:26
Evan: they did brain surgery on him without his uh his you know his uh against his
00:32:31
Evan: will and he gets nothing except maybe this uh a new little shack for his uh
00:32:36
Evan: his store it's you know that's still it's it's going to keep going the perpetuation
00:32:40
Evan: of this uh this you know what.
00:32:42
You get is you get an excellent diagnosis right but you don't necessarily get
00:32:47
the options for like what is the alternative here.
00:32:50
Evan: Yeah and i think that's my i mean you could probably be a criticism even
00:32:53
Evan: of snow piercer and a lot of movies that attempt a more
00:32:56
Evan: sort of revolutionary tone or in you
00:32:59
Evan: know they try and say i think of things
00:33:02
Evan: like the hunger games where there's obviously this this evil
00:33:05
Evan: or this fascism or whatever it is that has to be overcome but there's
00:33:08
Evan: never any uh description of oh
00:33:11
Evan: well now that we've overthrown it what do we do
00:33:14
Evan: and that's you know that's often my criticism of mine
00:33:17
Evan: of so many of those kinds of movies and it's just kind of left to the viewer
00:33:21
Evan: to create its own your own narrative like oh well i guess it could be you know
00:33:26
Evan: just a slightly different flavor of capitalism or we could do something completely
00:33:29
Evan: different and have a uh socialist you know structure and they're all they always
00:33:34
Evan: leave you one of the big things in.
00:33:36
In bung joo ho's films is an emphasis on the family um.
00:33:40
Evan: Yeah which raises.
00:33:41
Like that's the kind of specter of a certain sort of politics in a way it's
00:33:45
slightly uh you know for in in kind of marxist circles this is now slightly
00:33:49
old-fashioned this notion
00:33:51
that the family is the space in which you defend the realm
00:33:54
of autonomy and unalienated or
00:33:57
unexploited relationships right it's right
00:34:00
at the end of the the host for example it's like that's the place of
00:34:03
surplus right you create a new family structure and that's the place where everyone
00:34:07
sits down to a great meal um but i i don't i don't know if that gives you enough
00:34:13
right i don't know if that and of course in the host you can construct a new
00:34:18
family right the family perishes and it's in the attempt to save itself.
00:34:21
But you can find somebody who has none of those networks of support and bring them in.
00:34:27
He adopts a child that he's not biologically related to.
00:34:32
So I think
00:34:34
If you want to try and identify the nexus of what Bong Joon-ho's kind of anti-capitalist
00:34:38
politics are, you have to start with what he thinks the family is capable of doing.
00:34:44
It's certainly, in the host, it's certainly capable of doing more than the Korean state is, right?
00:34:49
Evan: Right. Yeah, it'd be hard not to. That's not a, you know.
00:34:54
It's a pretty low bar.
00:34:56
Evan: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think you're right.
00:34:59
Evan: I think the family is very important in all of his, well, many of his movies, obviously Parasite.
00:35:07
Evan: And this one too is very much, there's always these scenes in both of those
00:35:12
Evan: films of the family sitting around eating,
00:35:15
Evan: usually just instant noodles and those kinds of things. and that's what they have to eat.
00:35:22
Evan: Not that those aren't delicious, but that's kind of what they have available
00:35:25
Evan: based on what they can afford.
00:35:27
Evan: And they're always, in this movie, there's less scheming, I guess you could say,
00:35:32
Evan: than in Parasite, but they do come together to kind of rejuvenate their spirits
00:35:36
Evan: as they're hunting the monster and they all sit together and they're all eating
00:35:40
Evan: and then they have this sort of fantasy or this,
00:35:42
Evan: I don't know what you would call it, maybe it's kind of a image of the girl sitting next to them,
00:35:47
Evan: each of them feeding her because she's now you know she's lost to them and they're
00:35:52
Evan: trying to find her and she's obviously hungry and they're all trying to give
00:35:55
Evan: her what she needs because they all care for her deeply despite the fact that
00:35:59
Evan: you know shit's bad shit's real bad and.
00:36:02
Of course that that scene is then juxtaposed with this like the creature coming
00:36:06
back to its pantry to drop a new body in right.
00:36:09
Evan: There's lots of things about feeding.
00:36:10
Here um i mean even snowpiercer right the final revelation of what happens to
00:36:17
the bodies of children that use this, it's very soil and green.
00:36:22
Like there's always this thing of like,
00:36:24
what what does it what does it mean is is
00:36:27
there such a thing as like a revolutionary unit that
00:36:29
is bound together by these sort of familial ties that are
00:36:32
not necessarily biological or kind of
00:36:35
normative um and i think this makes makes the politics of these films kind of
00:36:40
like interestingly ambiguous because in some ways uh in some ways you could
00:36:44
kind of like say that these are films that are just representing capitalist
00:36:49
realism without the necessity of a critique that could could sublate it.
00:36:53
But at the same time, there is definitely the hunger for something different within them.
00:36:59
And this is what I mean when I say that he's not like a didactic filmmaker.
00:37:02
He's not kind of trying to impart a moral lesson to you. And I think that's
00:37:06
what makes the films sort of engaging.
00:37:09
Evan: Yeah, I think if you beat someone over the head with that kind of direct messaging,
00:37:13
Evan: it kind of ruins what you've done to get to that point.
00:37:18
Evan: So I mean, I guess I should say that some of the movies where you kind of don't
00:37:21
Evan: get a sense of what maybe the director is kind of saying could be the next step.
00:37:28
Evan: And it should be ambiguous in that way.
00:37:31
Evan: Yeah. But I guess, you know, it doesn't hurt the film. I guess maybe in his movies, it's not quite.
00:37:36
Evan: I think I do enjoy the sort of maybe bleak and open-endedness of them,
00:37:41
Evan: whereas some others maybe have, you know, more of, I guess you could call like the Hollywood.
00:37:46
Evan: You know, this is not really what I would say is, you know, a big Hollywood
00:37:50
Evan: type of movie, even though it
00:37:52
Evan: has kind of this grand monster and cool special effects and all of that.
00:37:56
Evan: I don't see it in the same, obviously it's not an American film,
00:37:58
Evan: but it doesn't have that same necessity to give you answers.
00:38:03
Evan: You know, you really don't get any answers. They're watching the TV in the last
00:38:06
Evan: scene and they just turn it off. You don't get the full explanation of what happens.
00:38:09
Evan: You just assume, okay, well, the US is really, really horrible and they did something.
00:38:13
Evan: They lied about there being a virus so they could test chemicals on human beings.
00:38:18
Evan: I mean, what more do you need to know?
00:38:21
Evan: Absolutely absolutely yeah and i think um what
00:38:24
Evan: was the other thing i was going to mention it was about family but
00:38:27
Evan: i'm trying to to uh was blanking on
00:38:29
Evan: it but yeah oh actually this is one thing that i i didn't i've seen this now
00:38:32
Evan: i guess three or four times and i didn't notice until the most recent watch
00:38:36
Evan: is in the very opening scene following the you know the time jump when you're
00:38:41
Evan: in the uh there the park sort of uh food stand there's a couple he uh gang do
00:38:47
Evan: is sort of taking a nap you know on the uh at the at his job and then a couple
00:38:53
Evan: of kids are trying to grab some candy i didn't realize that it was the same two kids that are then,
00:38:59
Evan: in the later scene captured by the monster and then the little boy at the end
00:39:04
Evan: so the little boy that's grabbing kind of like a candy something or other is
00:39:09
Evan: the boy he ends up adopting at the end i feel stupid that i didn't notice that
00:39:13
Evan: until this time there's a.
00:39:14
Nice kind of unity to it right it It all, it all joins together.
00:39:18
Everything, everything has a payoff, which is something that I really like.
00:39:22
There's, and again, this is just, this is just on, on one level,
00:39:26
this is just a really well-made monster movie. Um, and,
00:39:30
and if you want to enjoy it just on that level i think that's fine but it also
00:39:35
kind of raises all of these questions of like what do we take the monster to
00:39:38
mean where does the monster come from like what what does the monster do beyond
00:39:44
just being this kind of mechanism for triggering certain action yeah.
00:39:49
Evan: And you have and i think all a lot of those um sort of things that you know
00:39:54
Evan: you seem inconsequential that end up being very important like the Nam-il not Nam-il,
00:40:01
Evan: Nam-ju the sister is a national archer
00:40:04
Evan: and you kind of see her you know fail
00:40:08
Evan: because of you know I guess you could say she chokes and she ends
00:40:11
Evan: up getting a bronze medal which her brother then makes fun of
00:40:13
Evan: her for but then at the very you know climax because of
00:40:16
Evan: her having clearly you know keeping her arrow her bow this entire time is able
00:40:21
Evan: to then kill well almost kill the monster you know at the end is all these you
00:40:27
Evan: know very uh you know the circular nature of all these things which are just
00:40:30
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.
00:40:34
Absolutely everything just pays off everything has its kind of unity and um
00:40:39
it's just a rock solid movie and one thing that i actually really like is that
00:40:44
it makes kind of environmental horror a lot more explicitly political um so
00:40:50
a lot of the time in kind of
00:40:53
like eco-gothic or eco-horror you have that you
00:40:56
people go to a place and there's oh no
00:40:59
the place is fucked up and cursed or you go
00:41:02
to a place oh no there's like a weird creature
00:41:05
that's evil there but actually this one politicizes like it's what what is the
00:41:12
monster the monster is pollution courts like there is an explicit um political
00:41:17
and ecological line in the film without which which the entire film as a whole just doesn't happen.
00:41:25
Evan: Yeah, that's true. I'm just trying to think of other, you know,
00:41:29
Evan: I think of other eco kind of horror films that, you know, I think,
00:41:34
Evan: don't always have that same, you know, note to them.
00:41:39
Evan: Actually, I've just watched this movie recently, because I'm reading the book
00:41:43
Evan: on it is the Jeff Vandermeer trilogy.
00:41:46
Evan: The first book, I think, in the movie is called Annihilation,
00:41:49
Evan: where you kind of have this a very similar also kind of subtle idea that lots
00:41:55
Evan: of pollution and lots of things cause this weird area to kind of become to start
00:42:01
Evan: swallowing up parts of, you know, the coast where it happens.
00:42:04
Evan: And then throughout the book, and also I think in the movie,
00:42:06
Evan: they imply like, oh, well, even though that happened, they didn't actually stop
00:42:09
Evan: polluting or doing anything, right?
00:42:11
Evan: Like in this movie, too. Two, after this, you'd say, okay, well,
00:42:14
Evan: maybe we should have more strict regulations around dumping of chemicals,
00:42:19
Evan: but they definitely will not, and they'll do it again.
00:42:23
Evan: We'll have a bigger monster next time because we're going to dump worse chemicals.
00:42:27
Evan: You have that accident that the US military had in Hawaii not that long ago,
00:42:31
Evan: maybe last year, where they contaminated all their drinking water,
00:42:35
Evan: and it's just another big oopsie.
00:42:36
Evan: Oops. Yeah. Oops, we did it.
00:42:39
Yeah. Oh, no. Now, the only sort of grounds for hope is like,
00:42:43
what do they say right at the end when they're eating?
00:42:45
It's like, oh, let's let's turn it off and we'll find something else to watch.
00:42:48
And it's this idea of, you know, there's a slow weakening of the the media is
00:42:55
essentially like a fool for American biopolitics. Right.
00:43:00
The media is an exercise in legitimating. right the
00:43:03
purpose of media is to legitimate a kind of sovereign
00:43:06
authority um and to give to give that legitimacy to particularly the american
00:43:12
military but this throughout the film our characters have been directly uh they
00:43:17
directly realize that the not only is the korean state just wildly corrupt and
00:43:22
incompetent so is america.
00:43:28
Evan: Yeah i mean there's all of the scenes where
00:43:31
Evan: you show the in the hospitals you see
00:43:34
Evan: like a mixture of just complete incompetence like
00:43:37
Evan: i've another one of those slapstick moments that i think is maybe
00:43:40
Evan: a good other example is when they have their first escape
00:43:43
Evan: of the hospital and they run down the elevator and some
00:43:46
Evan: people are falling and they jump into the van and you
00:43:49
Evan: know he pushes like he stiff arms the uh the police
00:43:52
Evan: officer as he's like driving five miles per
00:43:55
Evan: hour in the parking lot and it's one of the like you just
00:43:58
Evan: see the incompetence of the police you see the incompetence of the the doctors
00:44:03
Evan: in the hospital they're all just kind of being directed as we see later by this
00:44:07
Evan: one american doctor who's just controlling the narrative and limiting who knows
00:44:11
Evan: it and i don't know if that's actually directly related to what you're saying
00:44:15
Evan: i just kind of i just love that scene too i just have to bring it up.
00:44:18
No i totally right so it's about
00:44:21
securing and legitimating a regime or a kind
00:44:23
of like an authority that has no legitimacy right so by the end like in a way
00:44:30
i sort of relate to this because what does everybody do when they see like politicians
00:44:33
on the news you sort of roll your eyes and you're like oh fine like can we turn
00:44:37
it over can we watch something else and it's because like we know that there is a lack of legitimacy,
00:44:42
We know that there's a sort of ideological cynicism, where we don't believe anything that they say.
00:44:48
We don't believe that they have any real authority or they have any kind of
00:44:52
serious political legitimacy, but we pretend as if they do, because the alternative
00:44:57
raises too many difficult questions.
00:45:00
Evan: Yeah, I mean, I think that brings back the comparison to the COVID pandemic,
00:45:07
Evan: especially in the beginning, where obviously they didn't have all the answers.
00:45:11
Evan: Things are kind of unknown but even as things were coming out you
00:45:13
Evan: know you're many people are saying okay well fauci's on tv he's telling me this
00:45:18
Evan: you know i guess i have to believe him because what what else do i have and
00:45:21
Evan: then your your choices are really okay i can believe what the scientists and
00:45:24
Evan: the government is saying or i can go the complete other way and go down a rabbit
00:45:28
Evan: hole of conspiracy theories there's no real kind of middle ground i mean.
00:45:32
It's and it's so kind of telling that so many governments with all who went
00:45:36
oh we have experts but yeah we also want to open and the economy as quickly as possible.
00:45:41
Oh, yeah. We also, yeah, all of these things that kind of cut,
00:45:45
there was so much kind of dissonance.
00:45:48
And it was incredibly difficult for people to actually work out what was true,
00:45:52
mostly because any exercise in mitigation was seen as a threat to the smooth
00:45:57
and kind of day-to-day functioning of capitalist economies, right?
00:46:02
It's very telling that, you know, certain kinds of jobs were furloughed and
00:46:06
you got to work from home and that's fine and good.
00:46:08
Uh certain kinds of we very quickly found out
00:46:11
who's essential right during covid and in
00:46:14
the uk the message was very much all of these
00:46:17
people who told you were essential yeah probably not but
00:46:20
the people who uh stack supermarket shelves uh
00:46:24
the people who collect bins the people who work
00:46:26
in customer facing roles on the railways all
00:46:29
of these people were like deeply essential none of them were paid properly none
00:46:33
of them were given um the chance to work from home none of that so So it was
00:46:37
like this friction within how was the capitalist state supposed to handle a
00:46:45
viral crisis is very revealing.
00:46:49
Like thinking of the host as a kind of like COVID cinema, I think opens some
00:46:55
really interesting questions.
00:46:57
Evan: Yeah, no, I think that, I mean, I think it was very telling.
00:47:00
Evan: I mean, those essential workers, after whatever, six months,
00:47:05
Evan: eight months, many of them died, many of them got sick.
00:47:09
Evan: And then they just kind of went back to pretending that everything was as normal.
00:47:13
Evan: They just have to go back to work, got to reopen the economy.
00:47:17
Evan: As you said, it's very telling of what a future response looks like.
00:47:22
Evan: Maybe it's not just a pandemic, but maybe as we see the actual collapse of our natural,
00:47:29
Evan: environment and all of that, which will lead to catastrophic other things,
00:47:34
Evan: we already know how the American and the West will handle it.
00:47:39
Evan: They'll say, okay, well, you still have to go to Walmart and do whatever you
00:47:44
Evan: have to do because someone needs to buy this little widget instead of you staying
00:47:49
Evan: at home, we give you some money, we send some food to your house.
00:47:52
Evan: I think everyone probably knew that that's how the American government or the
00:47:59
Evan: UK government would react, but it's worse to actually see it happen in real
00:48:04
Evan: time and just think, fuck, they don't give a shit.
00:48:06
Yeah, absolutely. You got to go back to your convenience hub because people
00:48:13
need their of squid pretty.
00:48:15
Evan: Much yeah
00:48:18
Evan: and it's uh yeah and the one thing that
00:48:21
Evan: i going back to maybe that very early moment where
00:48:24
Evan: you see the monster for the very first time and they you know go out to give
00:48:29
Evan: the the little you know mat for their their squid that doesn't have a missing
00:48:34
Evan: leg on it and you see immediately you know these other people who are being
00:48:38
Evan: served are not necessarily wealthy
00:48:42
Evan: people, they're just maybe – I hate to say the word middle class, but middle,
00:48:48
Evan: upper working class –,
00:48:52
Evan: I don't know how you might describe them, but you have the park family is kind of this working poor.
00:48:59
Evan: They have a little business scraping to get by, and they're still having to
00:49:03
Evan: serve other people. But then when the monster comes out of the water, it's eating them both.
00:49:08
Evan: The cruel evils of these monsters doesn't discriminate, except for the fact
00:49:13
Evan: that the rich people are going to stay in their towers and their hills and their
00:49:18
Evan: fancy homes while the poor people die, just like in COVID. yeah.
00:49:22
Absolutely absolutely um any any other kind of final points you wanted to to make sure we we hit.
00:49:29
Evan: Um i think those are all of
00:49:32
Evan: the ones i had i mean i i
00:49:35
Evan: guess i the only thing i would say about sort of the end of this
00:49:38
Evan: is that it's you know it's pretty it's kind
00:49:41
Evan: of a depressing end to uh to the movie
00:49:44
Evan: and you know you don't have very much you know
00:49:47
Evan: hope i guess you're kind of given in a little bit of glimmer you know that they
00:49:50
Evan: now back have their little their little shop and you know the the one little
00:49:55
Evan: boy lives but it's also kind of bleak which i think makes sense i don't think
00:50:01
Evan: you could have this be a happy ending you know it's the the cycle is just going to repeat itself yeah.
00:50:06
I i uh there's one question that you put in the notes i think it's interesting
00:50:10
which is like, what do you think the title refers to?
00:50:15
Evan: Yeah. Oh, sorry. I mean, I'll, I'm curious.
00:50:18
Evan: So in the movie, they basically are referring to like the, the,
00:50:21
Evan: the monster is sort of the, you know, patient zero, the host of this virus,
00:50:26
Evan: which is kind of the obvious way to look at it.
00:50:29
Evan: But I'm wondering if, if it could be something else. I'm wondering what you think.
00:50:32
I think the host is, um, the host is, is, is Korean society, right? Right.
00:50:40
What is it the host to? It's it's the host to a the host to a monster.
00:50:47
Where did the monster come from or what is the root cause of the monster is
00:50:50
the pollution of an occupying military imperial force. Right.
00:50:55
To me, this the host title of the film is actually where you see the politics
00:51:01
of the movie most clearly.
00:51:02
Because you go, oh, well, the monster is the host. and then actually you simply
00:51:06
have to kind of like follow that train of thought and talk about where did this
00:51:10
monster come from what is being hosted the monster is kind of like,
00:51:18
is this is the product of a symbiotic relationship and
00:51:21
an exploitative and harmful symbiosis at that right
00:51:24
because uh the korean and
00:51:26
american uh state apparatus are
00:51:29
both kind of enmeshed within each other they are both in in in a sense the hosting
00:51:35
one another and keeping them alive but it's these this one of like uh the the
00:51:41
the monster is the symptom right and if you stop there that's only gives you
00:51:47
a limited understanding of the film.
00:51:49
If you actually follow the monster as metaphor, you realize that the host is,
00:51:55
always with the monster.
00:51:56
The host is the society that produced the monster in the first place.
00:51:59
Evan: Exactly. I actually think of a very similar type,
00:52:04
Evan: although it's not a man-made monster in the same way, but I think of the movie
00:52:08
Evan: Jaws with a similar situation where you could look at the shark as the capitalist
00:52:15
Evan: capitalist, you know, exploitation.
00:52:16
Evan: And people are the mayor, whoever is going to send people out there,
00:52:20
Evan: no matter what, they could kill that one shark, that one monster,
00:52:24
Evan: but there's still going to be another one lurking because nothing has actually been solved.
00:52:28
Evan: You've only just, you know, cut off, you know, one of the limbs of this,
00:52:32
Evan: you know, ever growing, you know, horror that continues to come out of Korean society.
00:52:39
Evan: Nothing was actually changed. changed as i said before no new regulations are
00:52:43
Evan: going to be brought about it's all going to just end up in the same situation
00:52:47
Evan: over and over again until there's actually you know i guess till the actual
00:52:51
Evan: host of the korean society as you're saying is actually dealt with yeah.
00:52:55
Absolutely absolutely the monster will be bigger next time actually it'll be
00:52:59
worse because the symptoms will be worse right the the um eco ecological imperialism is cumulative uh,
00:53:07
so it won't just be there won't be just one monster like the the symptoms will
00:53:13
get worse and worse which is precisely what is born out in the real world.
00:53:16
Evan: Yeah i guess you could say that would be very well shown in
00:53:19
Evan: you know godzilla movies you have initially you have godzilla
00:53:23
Evan: but then you have all these other creatures and horrors that lurk
00:53:26
Evan: because of all of the uh you know nuke nuclear testing and all the things they've
00:53:30
Evan: done it's just gonna it's gonna cycle through again um but yeah i think that
00:53:35
Evan: was that was the last real question i had i don't know if you had any final
00:53:39
Evan: thoughts on on the movie itself or anything you didn't get a chance to uh to mention just.
00:53:45
To emphasize that it's just a really good time uh it's again again you know
00:53:50
it's not some highfalutin uh abstract or didactic piece of cinema this is like
00:53:58
really exciting very popular
00:54:01
media this is like this is a this is a good this is a good ass movie that's my big takeaway.
00:54:09
Evan: Yeah i mean i i think uh you know um i was telling a friend that i was watching
00:54:13
Evan: he hadn't seen this and i said you know you know because he knows about the
00:54:17
Evan: podcast he's like oh i assume you're going to be talking about you know political
00:54:20
Evan: aspects of them and i said well you can also just enjoy this as a really good
00:54:24
Evan: fun movie and that's it you know you don't have to as i think I said before.
00:54:29
Evan: It can just be that. It really is just that. It's a really good fucking movie.
00:54:34
Evan: Anyone listening...
00:54:35
It's about a weird big fish.
00:54:38
Evan: Yep, pretty much. If you've listened to this whole thing and you still haven't
00:54:42
Evan: seen it, I mean, we obviously spoiled bits of it, but I think you can still
00:54:47
Evan: watch this movie over and over and still get very much a good...
00:54:52
Evan: You'll enjoy it. Yep.
00:54:56
That's a good place to wrap.
00:54:58
Evan: Yeah but john um i really appreciate you uh
00:55:01
Evan: coming on and um people should go check out your uh your book and if you haven't
00:55:07
Evan: listened to your podcast you should listen to that which i assume they can get
00:55:11
Evan: on your uh i guess i'll link it in here but i guess they can also follow on
00:55:16
Evan: any podcast yeah you can get us at.
00:55:20
Whatever local independent artsy little podcast maker to get your books from.
00:55:25
You can find me on pretty much all platforms. He's a really great guy.
00:55:29
And yeah, please do check out Capitalism Horror Story, Gothic Nox,
00:55:34
Even with the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination, which is now with Repeater Books.
00:55:39
Evan: Yes, you can click the link in the thing down there, which will send you to
00:55:44
Evan: the place that is available for purchase because as you're listening, the book is out now.
00:55:50
Evan: And you can also follow this podcast and all the same online internet podcasting
00:55:55
Evan: places and uh thanks again john and we'll catch you all next time.
