Art, a very divergent topic that is super ambiguous. For comprehension, art is often subjected to an endless scavenger hunt of meanings. Once a certain artwork is presented, it is close to impossible that it is going to outlive its far-dug meanings that can be relevant or even irrelevant to the prior intended message from the artist. This robs the experience that was targeted to the audience, all because of the intellectual ideas that rise after these analyses. Let us consider Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019), a film that won the 2020 Academy Award for best picture. Parasite is a South Korean dark comedy thriller that was directed by Bong Joon-ho. It portrays the difference between the wealthy Park family and the struggling Kim family. Kim’s son Ki-woo manages to get a job in Park’s household and later helps his whole family infiltrate Park’s house, posing as skilled workers with a hidden identity. Their secrets are soon to be revealed by a former housekeeper, and this tension leads to a severe manslaughter on the birthday of Park’s son. Once films are released, the races between the people interested in watching them and the intellectuals trying to give reviews and analyses that are far from the
film’s genuine experience they offer begins. The political views and social commentary call it the lesson of the film. As a result of these analyses, art gets tamed by these critiques and becomes prone to not being felt as it should. In the film Parasite, the greatness of the story is not found in decoding its social commentary but deeply rooted in the overall experience it shadows through its tonal shifts and visual elements. By capturing viewers in the vivid reality instead of confining it into a moral lesson, the film illustrates Susan Sontag’s principle that art should be experienced rather than interpreted intellectually (8).
Parasite presents power in its sensory design. The arrangement of the sound effects and the presentation of feeling and chaos communicate emotions before even any interpretations are birthed. For example, in the scene where Kim’s family is rushing home through the storm, a tremendous amount of tension is felt. Besides the pouring rain, water flooding the whole place, and all the disorientation, there lies grief and complete devastation in Kim’s eyes. This moment in the movie is built with very little dialogue, and its magic is found in the feeling of despair and vulnerability conveyed to the viewers through the sensory impulses generated not by words but by the scene’s sound of rain pouring, cold tones, and the low positioning of the camera. The sensory indications in the above case are emphasized when it is implied, “What is important now is to recover our senses” (Sontag 9). In this case, there is a call for a need to focus on the sensory feelings that art offers, and Parasite truly exemplifies this cause. It has an ability to make the audience experience the feeling of poverty and lack of comfort in the physical realm.
The call to avoid confining art into a box of meanings is then noticed in the always shifting narratives of Parasite. The portrayal of the film does not offer any serenity to the audience, leaving them in a confused state of mind. This sense of ambiguity is found around different points. First, Kim’s family set up every worker of Park’s household to land their jobs and constantly deceives everyone to get out of their trouble without any hint of their true identity. Then the conflict rises when the former housekeeper tries to expose the identity of Kim’s family, which leads to a lot of intense and surprising events happening, like the sudden slaughters on Park’s son’s birthday.
The critics of this film label it as a satire, thriller, and even a social allegory. But Bong Joon, the director himself, says that all his films challenge the classifications of particular rules of genres by staying between lines of social reality (Chow). All this claiming that his art should not be confined in tidy categories.
Sontag implies that to interpret is to impoverish art and create a world full of meanings (4). The director of Parasite ensured that the film creates a lot of confusion in its narrative and the whole plot. Tensions are left unresolved, and not even a clear resolution is seen at the end. At one end the intellectuals find their way into deriving meanings for the film even after its crazy confusing ending, but at the same time the ending also creates no room for a variety of audiences to interpret but instead leaves them in a void of frustration and emptiness from all the confusion the film puts them under. By saying this, Parasite plays a significant role in supporting Sontag’s principle of leaving art to keep its value open to experience and not crafting it into a certain definition according to one’s wishes and understanding (9).
The director of Parasite, Bong Joon-ho, conceptualizes Susan Sontag’s idea of “erotics of art” (10) by the use of different forms of art representation. This is strongly rooted in the most vivid form of the film; that is, the visual representation throughout the light and color framing that all contribute to the viewers’ feeling of life inequality. The setting of the film is one way of visually representing the diversity of the two families. The wealthy Park family lives in a very decent building designed by a renowned architect, and Kim’s poor family lives in an underground basement. This physical metaphor is felt through the navigation of these two very diverse places, by which the movements of the camera down the stairs and levels make class difference an experience felt within somebody rather than a mere symbol of class that just passes. In this case too, contrast is turned into a sensation by Parasite. It is witnessed through diverse lenses; for example, the way Park’s home is a very light and warm place that offers comfort and serene peace, while Kim’s place is seen as a dull, cold, and desperate place that is associated with discomfort. Also, the difference extends to the way the similar things are felt differently in both settings; for example, when rain is seen pouring peacefully outside the windows of Park’s house but is very devastating in Kim’s case. Both beauty and disaster here are demonstrated by the same thing.
In Sontag’s statement “In place of a hermeneutics, we need an erotics of art” (10), there is a clear connection with the direction of Bong in Parasite. The value of Parasite is not found in the process of decoding the symbolic ideas that are presented but instead in experiencing the visual language found in the images, movements, and light. This creates a liberation of art from its meaning and gives it a chance to be felt in its form and makes perception stay true and far from understanding.
As Parasite ends, viewers are left without any immediate interpretations but with heartfelt emotions that were instilled in them throughout the whole course of the film. This reaction complements the visions of Sontag as she calls for erotics of art: “Allow yourself to recover your senses and experience art before dissecting it” (9). The striking visuals, tonal shifts, and movements draw us to feel before explaining. In this case Sontag would call us to not reduce Parasite into a social allegory but to embrace its impact on our emotions and senses (9).
Works Cited
Sontag, Susan. “Against Interpretation.” 1966, pp. 1-10.
Chow, Andrew R. “Bong Joon-Ho on Violence in Film and the Influences Behind Parasite.” TIME, 11 Oct. 2019, https://time.com/5697795/bong-joon-ho-parasite-interview/.
Bong, Joon-ho, director. Parasite. CJ Entertainment, 2019.