Why Squid Game isn't a Takedown of Capitalism

Because it's a takedown of narcissism. The players might be deemed narcissists--I could make a case for their narcissism--but it's desperation and denial that propel their eyes toward that golden piggy dangling from the ceiling. The game architects aren't desperate, unless you count their boredom as desperation. 

Spoilers ahead! 

Yes, the narcissists are swimming in money--so much that they don't know what to do with it, but to assume capitalism is what makes them so evil is to assume that all rich people are the same, that their money transforms them into doltish sadists who enjoy donning sparkling animal heads straight out of Suetonious to watch their version of gladiatorial combat--which is even more cruel than actual gladiatorial combats. The ancient Romans got a kick out of throwing a Christian to the lions or pitting two handsome young men against each other, but  they didn't go for the kind of mind games devised by the malignant narcissist architects of Squid Game. The sweet old man and his pals in golden animal head masks force friends to trick each other in order to survive. 

A you-tuber suggested Capitalism turns each player into a "mere number" but that's a false definition of capitalism. Capitalism creates individual success and under the right circumstances the success of a group. Capitalism promotes creativity and effort. Capitalism is what kept the Puritans and Calvinists from offing themselves; they believed in working so hard they'd get a sign from God they were saved--maybe they'd get rich, become a CEO, and feel safe from the fires of hell. 

Squid Games succeeds in making us feel sorry for the dying old man who started it all even as he reveals his horrifying inability to feel anything but a child's delight in a game. Gi Hun roars, "How could you do that to people!" and the old man--sounding like a four-year-old ignoring Mommy--asks him to play one more game. He smiles in anticipation; he seems not to remember or ever to have noticed the suffering except to be amused by it, as a child might be, not understanding the permanence of suffering and of death. 

There's no reason to assume the old man's self-centered world is the result of capitalism, or of his being so rich he doesn't know what to do with his money. To assume capitalism as the primum mobile of his sadism is to assume all rich people are all alike. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a point when he wrote in "The Rich Boy" (1926), paragraph 3: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand." Maybe. He wasn't born rich and had a natural envy of those who were, who have a natural envy of those who weren't. Even those born rich can't be assumed to be all alike. Rich people may not have to worry about how to pay the rent or buy food, but like most people they find things to worry about. Many never know who their friends are. 

If Squid Game isn't a takedown of capitalism, but a portrait of corrupt narcissists subsisting on sadistic seductions and murders, why are we all watching it? Probably to see how it ends--but also to feel, as we shiver with the players crossing the glass plates from which many tumble to their deaths, or the marble-rolling during which friends cheat friends, or any of the other horrible tricks, that "I lived through this but none of it was real! I killed with the worst and died with the best, and then I woke up, discovering my life, with all its petty frustrations, is so much better than that of either the perps or the players."

The actors are great, too.