We Are What We Tell

Squid Game lays bare South Korea’s real-life personal debt crisis

It's an allegory: North Korea website says Squid Game reflects S.Korea's 'beastly' society

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Dear Kate,

To call Squid Game a "global phenomenon" has to be a misnomer, right?

"Global" as in what?  Those who have the time and energy and money to tell stories about themselves to feel better, feel worse, feel indifferent about their life situation?  Those nations with devices plenty enough and internet infrastructure robust enough for the sorry tale to stream to the end of their "world"?

Here's another genuine question that I think is genuinely revealing, if you'd allow yourself to go down the tentacles of its many implications: Would Squid Game be a hit show in, say, South Sudan or Equatorial Guinea, the most poverty stricken countries, or, say, Eritrea or Afghanistan, the most oppressed?

The question before that, of course, is, if given the chance to tell their stories, what would these countries be telling--before telling "the world", telling themselves about themselves?

The supposition before this, of course, is that they are free and wealthy and leisured enough to do so.  And such is only one of the many many preconditions we will need to suppose before a story can go phenomenally global.

Let me help you to work your way back, from the tip of the tentacles to the core of the fleshy matter.  I shall begin by questioning our supposition: Who are we to think the poorest, the most oppressed do not have the qualifying prerequisites to tell a universally relevant story and make it a "global phenomenon"?  Ever heard of a little story called Exodus, a midget of a non-nation walking across squishy seabed and have their tall tale go viral like nothing else?

"In this universe, and this existence, where we live with this duality of whether we exist or not and who are we, the stories we tell ourselves are the stories that define the potentialities of our existence. We are the stories we tell ourselves," Shekhar Kapur, an Indian film director observes.

Any story that speaks the Truth stays true.  What sounds true to our ears now, could it not be the biggest deception?

Yours, Alex