Squid Game's Spatial Dialectics, Its Withering Mass Ornaments, and Other Large Objects in the Frame

• In Event: Production Aesthetics and Criticism & Sports Divisions - Paper Presentations
  In Paper Competition: Production Aesthetics and Criticism - Top Paper Presentations

Abstract

Abstract
In this paper I draw on Zizek’s reading of Hitchcock in order to tease out the three types of subjectivities that are featured in each of Hitchcock’s three phases, and then link these subjectivities to what is happening in Squid Game. I also link these distinct subjectivities to a number of aesthetic elements in the series—especially, volume duality as a form of spatial dialectics and color. I then make further distinctions between the city and the island by addressing objects of exchange (city) versus the massive and oppressive, immovable objects on the island. I also connect these modes of exchange with modes of subjectivities that oscillate between city and island. In the city, objects circulate between and among subjects, on the island, massive objects signify the mute embodiment of an impossible goal. Finally, I work Siegfried Kracauer’s notion of the Mass Ornament into the mix in order to show how the aestheticization of political life is articulated in the series and how these line up with different
phases of capitalism. Ultimately, I argue that new Mass Ornaments have gathered together, but its form (often virtual) is difficult to decipher and we only see it in staged spectacles like Jan 6 and Charlottesville. Squid Game allows us to see where Mass Ornaments comes from, even as we are blind to it in our own milieu.

Author

• Charles R. Metts, California State University San Bernardino