Inside “Squid Game”: Power, Surveillance, and the Illusion of Choice

Few series have captured the world’s imagination quite like “Squid Game”. With its second season streaming now, I was excited to return to the suspense-filled narrative of this South Korean phenomenon. “Squid Game” has become a cultural touchstone and much-debated text when it comes to discussions around capitalism and human nature. The series’ unprecedented success — becoming Netflix’s most-watched show — calls for a deeper examination of its messages and meanings.

The Power of Desire

At its core, “Squid Game” explores humanity’s complex relationship with wealth and survival. The deceptively simple premise of debt-ridden individuals competing in deadly games for a huge cash prize unveils deeper truths about human psychology. Players’ willingness to participate and even perpetuate systems they appear to condemn reflects our own societal struggles with desire and desperation.

The series signals a deep preoccupation with the nature of desire; it’s a story not only criticising capitalism but also illustrating how it’s upheld. The show demonstrates how powerful our desires can be so as viewers, we’re forced to think about how mechanisms of desire can be found in all of us.

The game itself mirrors modern capitalism’s brutal mechanics. Players are forced to compete against each other for a limited resource, while a system of power maintains order through carefully constructed rules and surveillance. This reflects the harsh realities of our societies and systems, where we’re often pitted against each other in a struggle for survival.

The Paradox

Power is used to keep order, and “Squid Game” explores the maintenance of order within competitive systems. The main character Seong Gi-hun embodies this tragic paradox. His decision to return to the game in this new season may be interpreted as an act of resistance but can also be read as a manifestation of the very desire the game system creates and sustains. Gi-hun’s participation in the game and the following of its rules ultimately still feeds into the game’s system. The game wants to create an addictive cycle where people become obsessed with it, either through playing or trying to stop it. By becoming consumed with the desire to take down the game, Gi-hun is still under its control. He can’t break free from its influence on his mind and desires. So operating within a system’s logic rather than truly challenging it means when people try to resist, they ultimately reinforce a system’s grip on society.

The power structures within “Squid Game” operate on multiple levels, each reinforcing the other. The game’s insistence on “fairness” reveals how systems of power often legitimise themselves through appeals to procedural justice rather than substantive equality. This mirrors real-world neoliberal institutions that champion “equal opportunity” while maintaining structural inequalities. The ritualistic announcement of rules and the mechanical precision of game operations all serve to naturalise the violence of the system, making it appear inevitable rather than constructed.

“Squid Game” brilliantly illustrates how power maintains itself through the cultivation of desire. The players’ voluntary return to the game after being given the option to leave demonstrates this dynamic. Even after witnessing the game’s brutality, they choose to stay because the alternative appears equally hopeless. The game’s promise of fairness and potential salvation becomes more appealing than the slow violence of everyday inequality.

The surveillance systems within the game compound this dynamic. The omnipresent cameras and monitors don’t just track the players; they create a spectacle of their struggle. The show presents a complex look at the nature of resistance in an age where even opposition can be commodified and incorporated into the system it seeks to challenge. The unease of “Squid Game” is its suggestion that escape might be impossible, as we’re all, in various ways, willing participants in systems that captivate and capture us.

The Surveillance Spectacle

Season two expands upon the exploration of surveillance capitalism. The game’s elaborate monitoring systems symbolise modern data collection practices, where human behaviour is commodified and exploited. The relationship between Squid Game’s critique of surveillance capitalism and its position within Netflix’s ecosystem is an interesting paradox. Every player movement feeds into a spectacle for the VIPs’ entertainment, much as our own viewing patterns inform Netflix’s algorithms.

As viewers of this series, our interaction with “Squid Game”, from viewing patterns to pause points, language preferences to completion rates, feed into a data collection system. The platform uses this information to shape future content, recommend shows to viewers, and influence creative decisions. In essence, while “Squid Game” critiques the commodification of human behaviour, it simultaneously participates in and benefits from that very process.

The wealthy VIPs represent more than just individual greed. Through their animal masks and detached viewing space, they embody systemic exploitation rather than just individual sadism. Their presence raises questions about our complicity as viewers consuming suffering as entertainment.

The Colosseums of Rome, modern reality TV shows and “Squid Game” share a common thread: they exploit human desire for entertainment and control. In the Colosseums, gladiators fought for survival while the wealthy watched, desensitised to violence. The games functioned as a form of social control through spectacle. Similarly, reality TV contestants perform for cameras, internalising the game’s logic. These parallels highlight how entertainment can be used to distract from real-world problems and reinforce power structures.

Netflix profiting from an anti-capitalist show reveals the irony of corporate media critiquing capitalism. It creates a condition where critique becomes a commodity, and resistance is content. This reveals what cultural critics call “capitalist realism,” the idea that capitalism has become so dominant that we can’t even imagine alternatives to it. It’s a paradigm where even anti-capitalist sentiment is absorbed into the logic it opposes. Millions of Netflix subscribers watch Squid Game’s depiction of exploitation while the platform analyses their viewing data to sell them more content.

This shows how powerful modern capitalism is. It’s so all-encompassing that even these stories end up strengthening it.

The series has made me think about the challenges of achieving meaningful systemic critique through corporate media platforms.

The Interpassive Viewer

One intriguing aspect of “Squid Game” is the form of “interpassivity” it creates. Netflix knows that their audiences get satisfaction from critique without the necessity of real-world action. So the show, in a way, functions as a safety valve for systemic tensions, a strategy we’ve seen time and time again in media that explores social issues. For example, documentaries that expose corruption or inequality can be seen as a form of interpassivity. Viewers can feel like they’re active by watching the documentary and learning about the issue, but they don’t have to make any sacrifices or take risks to change it.

This type of passiveness can lead to a sense of complacency and apathy and is largely a way for media companies to profit from social issues.

The VIPs’ voyeuristic consumption of the players’ suffering mirrors our position as viewers, implicitly questioning our complicity in systems of exploitation. This meta-commentary suggests that media consumption may serve to perpetuate the status quo by transforming it into consumable entertainment.

Cultural Impact and Aesthetics

The show’s distinctive visual style employs surrealist techniques to heighten its message. Oversised playground equipment and distorted scale create unsettling effects that mirror players’ diminished agency. These artistic choices strip away reality’s pretences to reveal capitalism’s intensified truth.

The artistic DNA of Squid Game showcases techniques that elevate it, such as the placement of objects in unfamiliar contexts. This form of surrealism is about the coexistence of opposing forces. As players participate in children’s games, the apparent contrast is innocence and cruelty, survival and death.

The set design includes elements like a giant suspended piggy bank and the “Red Light, Green Light” doll to emphasise the players’ powerlessness. This surrealist scaling creates an unsettling atmosphere that reinforces their lack of control.

The Game Continues

Season two’s expansion of the game’s universe reveals more about the institutional structures supporting it. We see how the game is more than an annual event but a perpetual system of selection and grooming, much like how real-world institutions identify and cultivate individuals. This extends beyond player recruitment into a sophisticated model of surveillance, psychological manipulation, and social engineering.

This new season touches on how the identification of potential participants mirrors our world’s predatory practices, like targeted advertising, lending and data mining, which tend to exploit the most vulnerable. The uncomfortable parallels where institutions of power operate through systems of identification, cultivation, and assimilation is a complex topic.

Power and privilege are most often inherited, and the generational aspect of the game adds another layer to its critique. “Squid Game” shows us how systems of exploitation not only perpetuate themselves through immediate violence but also through the transmission of privilege and trauma across generations. Additionally, like the show, real-world systems of abuse often operate in plain sight, protected not by absolute secrecy but by a network of complicity and mutual benefit among those with power.

The Architecture of Control

The physical design of the game environment merits praise. Visually striking, the M.C. Escher-like stairways represent the deliberate disorientation of players and the labyrinthine nature of social mobility. In addition, the recurring geometric patterns suggest a chilling mathematical precision underlying the apparent chaos. Like the cold calculations behind the games themselves, these architectural elements, from the repeating shapes to the staircases, remind us that every aspect of the players’ suffering has been carefully engineered for maximum impact.

The game’s manipulation extends beyond physical spaces into psychological control. Season two’s voting process exemplifies this through manufactured consent, displaying the prize money before allowing players to “choose” whether to leave. This calculated exploitation of desperation reveals how the game’s true architecture lies in engineered psychological landscapes rather than just its striking visual design.

In “Squid Game”, the design elements work to reinforce power dynamics and heighten the players’ sense of vulnerability. The main dorms’ exposed layout subjects players to constant surveillance, stripping away privacy. Even the use of childlike bright colours creates a disturbing juxtaposition with the calamity of their predicament.

Generational Trauma

The series offers a look at gender roles within competitive systems, showing us how patriarchal structures persist even in supposedly “equal” environments. It also delves into how economic hardship creates cycles of familial trauma.

There’s no denying that economic desperation perpetuates cycles of heritable dysfunction and reinforces patriarchal power structures. This theme manifests powerfully through multiple character arcs in this series. For example, Sang-woo, from season one’s desperate attempt to maintain his mother’s illusion of his success, reveals how parental expectations can drive destructive behaviour. The old man’s calculated manipulation of younger players serves as a metaphor for how older generations exploit the vulnerable youth, while Pakistani contestant Ali’s struggle to support his family poignantly illustrates how global labour exploitation forces immigrant workers into increasingly desperate situations. Their narratives demonstrate how economic hardship creates ripple effects across generations, trapping families in patterns of trauma that prove difficult to escape.

Identity as Commodity

The dehumanisation process, from numbered tracksuits to masked guards, reduces individuals to interchangeable units. This transformation of personal identity, where childhood games become weapons of mass spectacle, is a disturbing reality for the players. The debasing of innocent childhood games into deadly pageants, the transforming of cherished memories and cultural traditions into sick entertainment, represent the final commodification of the human experience.

Technology is an enabler and witness to human brutality. Desperation corrupts morality. Ritualisation normalises violence.

“Squid Game” is a brilliant show that explores complex themes in a way that is both accessible and thought-provoking. The series touches on the dark side of human nature while reflecting the anxieties of our time. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a suspenseful, binge-worthy tale that’s gripping and meaningful.