Blog #2: Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite (2019): Why people resort to deviant behavior
Parasite (2019). Dir. Bong Joon-Ho Most people want to move up in society to achieve financial success and material wealth, and live an affluent life. But the means and opportunities to achieve social mobilization are often unavailable to lower-class communities. This lack of opportunity is most felt in poor communities, where the primary goal is to escape poverty. Poor people are caught in a poverty trap, that is, "a mechanism that makes it very difficult for people to escape poverty" (Chen, 2022). Chen points out that poverty traps exist in economic systems that require significant capital to escape poverty. When people lack the capital and the opportunity to acquire capital via the prescribed means, they turn to illegitimate (and mostly deviant) means (Mehlum et al., 2005). We see this in the Korean film Parasite (2019), which centers around the Kim family trying to escape from the 'basement' of society. Parasite (2019): Escaping the basement Parasite, directed ...
