In 2019 and 2020, Director Bong Joon Ho seized notoriety and attention worldwide with his first Korean feature film in a decade. With unanimous shattering acclaim from popular and commercial to professional and critical, Parasite torched its fiery path across the globe throughout the film awards season with growing box office success. Though the social commentary of the film is often given honorable mention, the more complicated nuances of the struggle and power dynamics between and within two polarized economic classes in Parasite has not received great attention or in-depth analysis in popular reception and review. Drawing from Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, the thesis will further develop the complications in solidarity and violence portrayed in Parasite and raise questions about the possibility of genuine social resistance.
