MovieChat Forums > Gisaengchung (2019) Discussion > Should Rich People Have Servants and Tut...

Should Rich People Have Servants and Tutors?


The writer-director says that he is "neutral" on the class issues in Parasite. An interesting statement and one that I think rather haunts the movie. Its like "a pox on all your houses." The rich people ignore and/or patronize the poor servants; the poor servants ruin the lives of OTHER poor people so as to take over their jobs.

Here's a question: should rich people have servants -- and tutors for their children -- at all? On the one hand, as the movie points out, the suggestion is that the rich ones can't prepare their own meals, drive their own cars, teach their own kids at home and thus are "parasites" on the poorer people who perform these chores. But on the other hand, it is a given that , in some societies, the people who take the servant jobs want them and value them(but may very well be resentful about them, day after day.) Perhaps the resentments are mutual: the rich don't like having the poor around serving them(creates guilt); the poor don't like having to wait on the rich(creates envy.) Mutual parasites. Shall we remain...neutral?

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[deleted]

If I were rich I would. So that makes me an evil capitalist.

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I thought the parasite was the guy living in the basement.

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Right. The rich family were presented as oblivious to the real world at times, but they weren’t parasitical in any sense. The only parasites in the film were the family members who smelled opportunity and got each other hired, often at the expense of others. And to a lesser extent the husband hiding in the basement who was stealing food.

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You don’t think the servants and tutors are happy to have the money?

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To quote a famous movie: “What we have here is a crusader. You gotta be rich in the first place to think like that. Everybody knows, the poor are always being f-cked over by the rich; always have and always will.”

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