Ludology Review: Paddington in Peru and Squid Game, Season 2.
Blatant messaging for a broken world.
I am aware that for many, the world has always been broken, harsh and hopeless, depending on where you are born.
But I feel that this year, the boundaries and borders that protected and isolated us from plight were much more blurred than ever - and I welcome that. For some, it is a constant nuisance seeing the youth protest so passionately, but I have welcomed the awareness young people are campaigning to bring into the public domain on issues that are important to them, even if I have not necessarily fully supported the way some of the causes have been followed.
Whether you are sad and angry over Palestinian children being murdered, Ukraine being invaded, if you are an Israeli feeling threatened, or a Jew scared to go out, or one of the many Muslims we know experiencing Islamophobia, this year has felt like a year of heightened insecurity for many groups.
2024 felt like 2016’s Brexit on drugs.
But 2024 was way worse than the Brexit of 2016.
We have had the heinous slaying of very young school girls in Stockport, the riots which then followed targeting any one that was “foreign” and not to mention the ongoing violence we are seeing against women and girls across most continents. Whether it be sexual violence against girls in every war zone, the pandemic of violence against women in the UK from men known to them, the callous unspeakable torture and murder of little children by their parents, and the sadistic raping of Gisele Pelicot in France, rapes which were arranged by her husband from men in the region where they lived, it is hard to end this year on a positive note. In fact the levels of depravity of humannotsokind seem to be at an all time low when it comes to murder and torture.
Outside of that realm, as a society our children are being hugely let down. Our systems are not equipped to deal with ALL children with special educational needs, children are turning up to their first day of school in their nappies, children are committing suicide due to the internet and this year in the UK alone, we have seen far too much violence from children on children and adults.
Some depraved stories that come to mind are the two UK women jailed for being part of the “monkey hate community” and who arranged for people to access content of monkey abuse, torture and killing. One of these women even set up a poll asking people how they would like to see monkeys tortured. Some of the monkeys were babies. Their interest in this sick activity started in COVID when we know that everyone was allowed to knock themselves out on the internet.
Giselle Pelicot’s fate was also determined by the internet, as her husband joined an illicit dark website which easily facilitated him offering her out to men for sex “without her knowledge.” If you do not know, Gisele Pelicot was drugged by her husband and offered to men for rape, a few times a week over many years.
Saira Sharif’s murder, a little girl killed by her father, was also facilitated by COVID and the worrying trend that followed it, of parents all too willing to homeschool their children without any regulation of their home environment. Had Saira not been homeschooled her father would have had less access to torture her.
I too was surprised to learn that the UK does not have a national register of children being homeschooled. How can that be?
Then there is the case of Bhim Kohli, an 80 year old man murdered whilst walking his dog - a 12 year old girl was charged with manslaughter, a 15 year old was charged with his murder. Kids murdering.
Politically it has been an extraordinary year. Keir Starmer has come into power, Reform is gaining traction at a rate every party should be taking seriously and over the pond, America and the Democrats obviously had a brain fart leading to a convincing Trump victory. It seems American women like that sort of thing in a man. I admit to being intrigued by the number of (mostly white sadly) women looking for a strong man grandfather to lead them. What is with that too?
And speaking of women, 2024 seems to have seen a rise in women doing things to their skin and faces. Whether it be botox, acrylic nails or young 13 year old girls with “skin care” routines, us females are now firmly into 2 camps. The ones who have the “Love Island look” or the ones who don’t.
So this brings me on to Paddington in Peru, directed by Dougal Wilson and Squid Game, Season 2, created by Hwang Dong-hyuk.
Warning spoilers ahead!
I could not have been happier that firstly, despite the alteration we are seeing in the real world of women’s faces, both Paddington and Squid Game front female characters without “that look”. There is not one fat lip in sight, not one pulled forehead, barely any make-up, a lot of frizzy hair, speckled skin, waist lines, and most importantly, both offerings seem to give older women poignant roles.
In Squid Game we have the character of Geum-Ja, played by Kang Ae-Shim, aged 60 plus who enters the game with her son, and in Paddington the show is stolen by Olivia Colman, aged 50 and simply natural.
Geum-Ja plays a strong but gentle woman with wisdom and a weakness for her son who continually puts her life at risk. Meanwhile, as head nun of the home for retired bears, Colman plays one of the best comic roles I have seen in a long time.
In fact in both Season 2 Squid Game and Paddington in Peru, you are spoiled for choice for female characters with depth of character. Squid Game has a trans character named Hyun-Ju who turns out to be pivotal to the plot and a character with a genuine authenticity to her trans experience, and in Paddington in Peru, you have Julie Walters, as Mrs Bird, whose intelligence shows no sign of retiring.
No kissing, no nudity, no sex, in both, just women being allowed to be women. For me, in both offerings sparks fly when you see Walters and Colman face off, and when you see Geum-Ja show eventual love and acceptance to the trans woman character. Geum-Ja shows that everyone wants a mother figure, even when in Squid Game!
Another takeaway from Squid Game was the parallels to politics of the year gone. In this set of games the players get to vote whether to stay or leave after each game, and the vote has to yield a majority.
Do they vote to stay and play one more game, so as to have more money to share if they eventually leave? Or do they vote to leave and share a lesser sum and guarantee their life?
Those who voted to stay on in the games want more for themselves, even if it means risking their own life and overriding the desire of those who wanted to leave and preserve their life. This reminded of Brexit and how people voted to leave as they wanted migrants out, when we now know that voting to leave has resulted in more illegal migrants coming to the UK and has been economical suicide in one’s pocket. Indeed those voting to leave the EU were happy that they or their spouse had a British passport, not caring that others, like one of my friends had a non UK spouse who was caught short.
Watching characters voting to stay in the game, and the shock of seeing characters who you thought would vote to leave but choose to stay for one more game, also reminded me of the shock of some of the people I thought I knew, who voted Brexit.
Paddington in Peru has nowhere near as much human dilemma as Squid Game, but there is one. The central theme in this film is one of a story about a Bear who has made a foreign country his home. The dialogue around his ancestry in Peru and the life he has made in London, the pull and push of home and ancestry, were powerful metaphors for the reality of many British people for whom the UK is not their place of birth. That dilemma becomes stronger at times when migration is hated. Whether that Paddington storyline intended to be political in the current climate is not clear to me, but I welcomed it nonetheless. And in the last scene you hopefully understand why some migrants, like Paddington, choose to stay in foreign lands. It is not as simple as “leave if you don’t like it,” just like Squid Game.
And one thing I think always gets drowned out when we focus on migrants and “bad people from bad countries” is a reflection on our own values systems.
And in this regard, Paddington in Peru has a delightful central theme of family. It is a family film for families. It seems to dig its heels in on family life. The table is still in the kitchen and they are still eating together.
Families are a lot more fluid today than the traditional two parents and two children, but what struck me about the story was not that this family is a perfect family, but that they are a family that goes on an adventure together. Their unit of what their family looks like, is portrayed as a unit! The siblings seem connected and it is just their family unit that matters.
How rare is that? Has anyone considered that an absence of family life is pivotal to the global pandemic of violence we are seeing? Not the issue of migration?
Having lived in a number of countries now, we have met many families and the ones that make it who raise happy children, are not the ones getting delivery food on repeat, but the ones who eat home cooked dinners on repeat, even when one person leaves through death or divorce.
Whilst Paddington in Peru left me with a warm fuzzy feeling, Squid Game Season 2 left me feeling quite sad for the world we live in.
The games are brutal, terrifying and a metaphor for how we treat each other in real life. You do wonder what your kids would do if they plummeted to such circumstances. I was a tad relieved when I saw an interview of its creator admitting that in writing season 2 he was reflecting the choices some of us are making in real life across the world.
Squid Game is the real world.
And, as the internet further polarises the world, and is slowly turning more and more people into monsters, just by their walking in to a room at night, in their own home and simply looking for darkness, much like the players resorting to depravity after voting in Squid Game, we would be wise to heed Season 2 as an ominous example of the violence that ensues in real life, from our own wild voting disagreements, and our own wild political choices protecting ourselves over the self.
In all this, Season 2 Squid Game offers the silver lining in the purity of its central character Gi-Hun, player 456, played by Lee Jung-Jae who returns to the game with a dogged determination to bring the game over for a collective good. He is frustratingly proper.
With the cliffhanger ending of Season 2 Squid Game, we have not yet seen whether Gi-Hun pulls off his desires for good, and in the current political global order, it is unlikely we will see that any time soon, in real life.
Wishing you a Happy New Year.
Thanks,
Ludology