The more Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece is regarded, the more it seems to vanish in the spectacle of its acclaim. --- The emphasis on universality is achieved through a negation of the particular in a typical display of liberal chauvinism. Consequently, the more Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece is regarded, the more it seems to vanish in the spectacle of its acclaim. Parasite has made history; never mind how history has made Parasite. This is not a charge against any attempt to relate Parasite to other contexts. Bong’s social critique concerns the international conditions of globalized capitalism, but particular to Korea’s neoliberal and neocolonial present. Examining the film as a story of class in the neocolony shifts it from a decontextualized tale of rich and poor to one of compradors and the colonized. This lens takes Parasite from an allegory of “class conflict” to one of imperialism, and illuminates the film’s recurring motifs of English, militarization and appropriated Indigenous material culture. […] The specter of war represented by Geun-sae and the space of the bunker are crucial to interpreting the film’s climax. The ongoing war in the Korean peninsula, sometimes called the Forgotten War, is often narrativized as “over” in a manner reminiscent of how the colonization of the Americas is regarded as complete. The recognition of either process as unfinished undermines the solvency of ruling class power, even as that power is sustained by an endless cycle of colonial violence. There is more than simple analogy at work here; there is a direct genealogy that links the US invasion of Korea to its invasions of Indigenous nations. […] Faced with the impossible situation of division and occupation, the only solution Ki-woo can imagine is rooted in the neoliberal ethos of hard work and constant striving. He pledges to miraculously become rich and buy the Parks’ house one day, so he can reunite with his father. Ki-woo’s solution is not only deeply unrealistic; it does not address the fundamental problem at hand. Even in this fantasy scenario, Ki-taek would still be contained in the house by a legal system that would seek his prosecution and imprisonment. The forces that created and upheld the Kim family’s separation would not be undone, merely adapted to. The class system and the war enabling it would continue unchanged. Bong’s final shot, which clarifies that the solution Ki-woo envisions is just a dream, seems to dare us to dream harder. Media narratives that spin Parasite’s acclaim through the lens of liberal assimilation miss the mark; a Hollywood that is more open to Asians or other people of color is no more of a solution than Ki-woo’s dream of buying the house that imprisons his father. The promise of inclusion is a distraction from the wars that haunt Parasite, Korea and this continent. As I write this, Wet’suwet’en land defenders are protecting their unceded territory from an invasion by Canada, which seeks to steal land for the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Rahawa Haile considers how, by sliding between the real and unreal, Black Panther frees us to imagine the possibilities — and the limitations — of an Africa that does not yet exist. --- How then does one criticize what is unquestionably the best Marvel movie to date by every conceivable metric known to film criticism? How best to explain that Black Panther can be a celebration of blackness, yes; a silencing of whiteness, yes; a meshing of African cultures and signifiers — all this! — while also feeling like an exercise in sustained forgetting? That the convenience of having a fake country within a real continent is the way we can take inspiration from the latter without dwelling on its losses, or the causes of them. Black Panther is an American film through and through, one heavily invested in white America’s political absence from its African narrative. When Killmonger goads a museum curator early on in the film, calling out a history of looting, it is condemnation that falls squarely on Britain’s shoulders. Rarely must the audience think about the C.I.A.’s very real history in Africa. The fact that viewers were steered, at any point, into rooting for Martin Freeman, a British actor playing an American C.I.A. operative who attempts to purchase stolen resources from a white South African arms dealer, means that even a cinematic turducken of imperialist history gets a pass. [...] The convenience of having a fake country within a real continent is the way we can take inspiration from Africa without dwelling on its losses.