I guess I “need” to reply to this topic, seeing as I’m traumatized by this movie. I can’t get over the shocking genre swap. But reading the above and running it through Dramatica, I’m going to try my GAS analysis, though the whiplash switch from comedy-of-errors to slasher film makes me wonder if they did something “not quite right”.
Failure/Bad; Change
Goal: Changing One’s Nature
Consequence: Obtaining
Cost: Innermost Desires
Requirements/ OS Benchmark: Playing a Role
The consequence of failure is they Obtain a loss–they succeed in killing the host, which defeats their goal of changing.
I think the MC is a change character–when he gives up the rock to the man (in hopes of giving the success to him instead; and he eventually puts the rock into the river instead of trusting in it), he STARTS depending on his own abilities rather than being a Parasite.
The MC critical flaw is Hope. It’s the big problem of the whole story. When he sees someone who needs hope, he takes the stone to the housekeeper’s husband–leading to a domino effect where Ki-woo has to change.
The MC issue is Delay…he never passes his exam, he says the forged certificate is the one he “will” have in the future. He also is in a hurry for the future to arrive, and it never arrives, or not soon enough.
His “symptom” is avoidance (avoiding his fate) and he is pursuing a new avenue (through parasitic behavior). The MC problem is the host supports his attempts, which ends up with the death of his vision, or “delays” his dream.
The OS goal is changing one’s nature (from poor to rich), continually rationalizing what they are doing–they continually focus on Considering how to better situate themselves to leech off the host family.
This means the IC would be Mr Park–whose expectations (and avoidance of ugly smells) is the final nail in his coffin. Perhaps the Parks do an IC trade-off. But Mr Park represents Hope, or rather represents the hope that the Kims want to aspire to.
RS story is, as said above, a parallel of the Park/Kim families and the Park girl/Kim boy love; also the housekeeper/husband vs Kim family commitment. All of these are compelled by different modes of morality. All attempting to “help” the other against the thing hindering them. But the problem of Support resulted in the death of loved ones–they could not kill off the thing sucking the life out of the relationship, namely the OS complications on the relationships.
Well, that’s my take. If anyone can comment, or share with this reopened topic, I’d appreciate your comments.
With a title like Parasite, it’s no surprise there was death. But the light comedy-turned dark was very disturbing. The only explanation I have is it must be an Asian two-act thing…