This week, my guest Jon Greenaway (The Horror Vanguard) and I delve into the intricate layers of Bong Joon-ho's film "The Host," appreciating its masterful storytelling and character analysis of Gang-du. We explore the film's blend of comedy and seriousness, praising its tonal shifts and expert composition for a captivating cinematic experience. Drawing from filmmakers like Scorsese and Carpenter, we admire how Bong Joon-ho combines action, tone shifts, and social commentary. The discussion touches on the film's themes of political protest, societal disillusionment, and the central importance of family in Bong Joon-ho's work. We reflect on the symbolic significance of shared meals and familial unity, challenging conventional storytelling methods and highlighting the power of metaphor in critiquing societal norms. Reflecting on anti-capitalist themes and individual agency within systemic structures, we contemplate the potential for change through acts of resistance and solidarity in a complex world.

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Capitalism: A Horror Story: Gothic Marxism and the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination

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Evan: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host Evan,

Evan: back again with another film discussion from the left.

Evan: I am grateful for all of you who support the show, which you can do at patreon.com

Evan: slash leftoftheprojectorpod.

Evan: You can follow, rate, subscribe at leftoftheprojector.com and it would be greatly

Evan: appreciated if you could leave a rating and a review.

Evan: This week on the the show, we'll be discussing the 2006 Bong Joon-ho film, The Host.

Evan: If you saw his earlier work like Parasite and Snowpiercer, you're not going to want to miss this one.

Evan: The Host, as we'll see shortly, has a very clear undertones of American imperialism

Evan: and the impact it has on other nations, in this case, South Korea.

Evan: My guest this week is John Greenaway.

Evan: John is the co-ghost of the podcast, The Horror Vanguard, which if you don't

Evan: listen to already, you should go check it out immediately.

Evan: John is a writer based in North England whose writing includes horror,

Evan: contemporary capitalism, and cultural theory.

Evan: He has a new book out right now from Repeater called Capitalism,

Evan: A Horror Story, Gothic, Marxism, and the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination.

Evan: You can purchase it anywhere you get your books. John, thank you so much for

Evan: joining me today. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show.

Evan: Absolutely. And so like Like I said in the intro, we're talking about the 2006 film, The Host.

Evan: But before we get into that, I know that, John, people may know your podcast

Evan: and, you know, also your upcoming book.

Evan: So, you know, before we jump in, we want to tell everyone about your book.

Evan: And I think probably listeners of my show probably have heard of The Horror Vanguard.

Evan: But for the few who might not know, care to share.

Yes. So for people who don't know me, my name is John.

You can find me on most platforms online as the liquid guy,

that's what I started doing and yeah I am the co-ghost of the Horror Vanguard

podcast which is a horror movie podcast where we talk about the three most important

things in life which is friendship,

full communism and occasionally if there's time we talk about scary movies but

if you like horror, if you like politics and philosophy, then Horror Vanguard,

I think, will be right up your street.

I also have a brand new book now out.

It's called Capitalism, A Horror Story, Gothic Marxism and the Dark Side of

the Radical Imagination.

You can get it from Repeater Books.

And it's pretty great. It's a good book.

It's about trying to put forward this conception of what I call Gothic Marxism.

And yeah, again, thank you so much for having me on.

Evan: Yeah, absolutely. I actually, by the time people are hearing this,

Evan: your book will already be out, but it'll be coming out tomorrow as of the live

Evan: time that we're recording this.

Evan: So I'll be looking forward to checking it out.

Evan: But I don't know. So I reached out to you, and we, you know,

Evan: as I do with every guest really is to send them kind of a list of films, kind of an ongoing list.

Evan: And you immediately went to The Host, which I said, came out in 2006,

Evan: directed by Bong Joon-ho, which people probably know more recently from things

Evan: like Snowpiercer and Parasite.

Evan: But he had some bangers of films,

Evan: you know, early in the 2000s that people may not have known as well.

Evan: It was the most, most highest grossing film in South Korea ever.

Evan: I don't know if it's been top since then but i don't know like what draw you

Evan: to choosing it and do you have any sort of i don't know maybe your overall impressions

Evan: before we maybe dive in a bit deeper.

Um yeah i chose it because i think

uh i mean in my opinion bong jin ho is one of the most interesting directors

working today um i love uh all their films um they're like and he's He's explicitly

making films which have a kind of class analysis to them,

which I think is kind of so sorely needed.

I like The Host a lot because, firstly, my first impression is it's actually

a very beautiful movie to look at, just in terms of light, composition,

the color grading is really good.

It's also a really good example of early 2000s digital effects.

I think they hold up really well um and it's a way of showing that you can do

uh digital and practical work artfully i think um yeah what about you what is

some of your first impressions of this.

Evan: Yeah i mean i think it's i've i've similar so i didn't see the host first i

Evan: think the first movie of of his i saw was snow piercer and then parasite obviously

Evan: being you know the big uh you know kind of darling which i think maybe brought

Evan: him more into the spotlight and then i went back and saw all of his older films.

Evan: You know, I really liked this one. I also really like memories of murder,

Evan: which is another, maybe his second or third one.

Evan: All of them are really just, as you said, they have really deep class analysis

Evan: and, you know, and not like in a cheesy way. It's very, um,

Evan: what would I say? It's very, I mean, not subtle, but also in a way that I think

Evan: people could probably watch these and not get it somehow, which I think is also

Evan: interesting because I've talked to people about Snowpiercer and I did it on this podcast.

Evan: And I read some article in some right-wing thing saying that it was actually

Evan: a pro-capitalist movie, which is just mind-blowing.

Evan: So I don't know. I guess watching his films always gives me hope for movies

Evan: that do good class analysis.

Evan: So as you said, I think the special effects do mostly hold up.

Evan: I mean, probably better than a lot of the special effect that came around that time.

Evan: But I love this movie. I'd seen it. I watched it just before we recorded a couple

Evan: of days ago, and then I'd seen it a while back.

Evan: But I think it's a great movie and really has deep-seated working class analysis.

Evan: And I with most of his movies the story is

Evan: always around a working class family or working

Evan: poor family and this is you know immediately

Evan: you see that maybe not from the opening scene but the

Evan: uh introduction introduction of the of the family you know it's kind of impossible

Evan: to not see the immediate you know um working class sort of poverty going through

Evan: the uh the family the park family owning this little tiny stand and you know it's just great.

Yeah it's it's a it's a really it's just a it's just

good entertaining cinema as well like i

think everyone goes oh oh you like it because

it's left wing it's going to be very preachy and didactic and

preachy is i think uh snowpiercer is

the one that kind of veers closest to that

because it's explicitly about a revolutionary struggle um

but preachy is not what don't you know is interested in

he's not interested in um so interested in

convincing you really i don't think in a

way uh the host is good mostly because it takes as kind of just givens certain

um political realities that a lot of other films would try and retroactively

justify so it takes as given that there is this uh you know washed up

student protesters, it takes a given that this kind of exploitation makes into,

uh, the retail and service industries, all of these things are just kind of

like part of the sort of realist social fabric of life.

Evan: Yeah, I think that's right. I think, I think I would say also in Parasite 2,

Evan: it's very much just the kind of just the assumed kind of nature of,

Evan: you know, the sort of hyper capitalist society in South Korea that,

Evan: you know, pretty much well mirrors,

Evan: you know, what, what America is like in many ways.

Evan: And I think there's lots of subtle little lines throughout it,

Evan: talking about the debt that they're in, the fact that they have an education but can't get a job,

Evan: doing all these things to help the country, but they're not rewarded with any

Evan: kind of monetary benefits.

Evan: And it's just very, I don't know, it's both on the nose and over the top,

Evan: but at the same time, also subtle, if that's even possible. I don't know if that makes sense.

Yeah i i again i think

it's this is something he famously said about

parasite which is he was trying to make a film which

was very specific to the social and political conditions of korea but it turned

out everybody got it it's because the social and political conditions of korea

are in a way the social and political conditions of us all which is as he puts

it this this village called capitalism in which all of us live.

Evan: Yeah, exactly. I think maybe it's also once Parasite came out,

Evan: then people maybe, some people may re-evaluate some of these other movies and

Evan: then can see how much it's there.

Evan: But I think maybe just for anyone who maybe hasn't seen this movie, which I would

Evan: urge you to, to, you know, maybe pause right now, go watch the host and come back.

Evan: Now that you've watched it, you know, you kind of know that the the film is

Evan: was inspired by a true event, you know, that happened in Korea,

Evan: where a actual US military installation actually dumped or forcibly dumped,

Evan: you know, formaldehyde chemicals into the Han River leading to kind of a big scandal.

Evan: And then years later, the US basically said, Oops, sorry, you know, sorry about that.

Evan: We, we didn't mean to And it's very much kind of right in your face in the very

Evan: opening scene where the American is clearly telling the Korean to dump all these

Evan: vials or, you know, whatever, jars,

Evan: glass, whatever they are of a fraud right into the Han River,

Evan: you know, despite his very brief protest. test.

Evan: And then we sort of skip forward ahead of time where we start to see,

Evan: you know, fishermen seeing some weird things going on in the river and then

Evan: flip forward a little bit further.

Evan: And now we have this monster that's going to essentially prey on the working

Evan: class, the same people who are, you know, being forced to do low wage work,

Evan: forced to, you know, be the

Evan: kind of, what would you say, put their, you know, I'm blanking on what I was

Evan: going to say is at the mercy of kind of the mercy of capitalist exploit.

Evan: And they are then the first ones to be exploited as always is the case.

Yeah. And it's a very particular kind of capitalism or rather,

like, I don't, I don't know if calling it the exploitation of capitalism is

specific enough, because this is about,

in a way, this film is about the direct link between what usually gets That's

called eco-horror or eco-gothic with American imperialism.

This is a film about the environmental degradation caused by the necessities

of having a military that can maintain the American empire.

You dump all of these chemicals in the river. Chemicals are dumped because the

American military tells you to do it.

There's a monster. There's this kind of horrible mutation that's caused.

Was Wang Jinghou talks about basing the monster on a fish that was pulled out

of the Han River with an S-shaped spine.

I think you can see that in its design, which I think is excellent.

There's some really interesting...

Can I just ask, did you find this a slightly weird experience watching this

when we're in the kind of like, that's the peak of, you know, COVID discourse?

Evan: Completely. I, yeah, it was, it was not lost on me that you see the response

Evan: to a so-called sort of virus or, you know, something like that,

Evan: that's completely bumbled and, you know, just not handled correctly.

Evan: And there's you know misinformation the media is saying one thing people are

Evan: lying about it all these kind of things it was very much you know the people

Evan: wearing masks throughout it i think if i had seen this before 2019 or we're

Evan: talking about this in 2019 instead of right now i think you might have a different

Evan: perspective on some of it.

Yeah totally um but it is it's

so there's a kind of biopolitical element to what

the uh the antagonist of this film

is so the antagonist is not the creature itself right the creature

feature is always it's always kind of

always already metaphorical so i mean obviously

your classic touch point here is is godzilla um

and it's concerned around a war nuclear war nuclear annihilationism the monster

is always a metaphor but it's a metaphor that is like d uh disconnected from

any kind of like a concrete semantic base so you can't do that kind of like

a one-to-one analogical reading where you go oh oh, the monster equals this.

But really, the antagonist of this film is the US military. And so that inevitably

kind of puts the discussion here into the territory of biopolitics.

Because what happens to our central protagonists, the greatest threat to them,

isn't really the monster, like the creature in the river.

That's kind of like the inciting incident. The great threat is the US military,

right? They want to imprison you. They want to literally scoop out your brain.

To stop you from talking about what you've seen or heard.

You become like a fugitive from them in your own city.

So there are all these like biopolitical mechanisms of control that imperialism

and American military imperialism enacts within Korean society.

Evan: Yeah, and one of the things I think they try, I mean, maybe this is,

Evan: maybe as you're watching, as someone might watch this and say,

Evan: well, maybe the people that's really at fault are the Koreans for their kind

Evan: of bumbling of the situation after.

Evan: But I mean, I think in the things that Bong Jo said is, you know,

Evan: that was kind of his aim was to kind of show the kind of bumbling nature.

Evan: But as you're saying, it's really the culprit and the antagonist is the United

Evan: States, who forced their hand and is continuing to force their hand.

Evan: I mean, people may not realize that since the Korean War, the US has held anywhere

Evan: Anywhere from, well, going back to the 50s, half a million soldiers,

Evan: but throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, upwards of 50,000 soldiers as part of the

Evan: United States Forces Korea.

Evan: And so we are directly influencing their military through all kinds of programs,

Evan: aid, and making them do these things.

Evan: I mean, literally, we made them dump chemicals in real life and then in this

Evan: movie. And it's clear that the villain is the continued, you know,

Evan: spread of American imperialism and just making countries bend to their will.

Evan: And if you don't, then you face the consequences of, you know,

Evan: losing aid, embargoes and worse.

Yeah, and really like a big part of it is propaganda, which is,

you know, there's a relatively large unification movement in Korea that would

like to see South Korea reunited with the DPRK.

Um and that's entirely antithetical to

what the u.s wants right and i think it's very it's very

notable that the two big interventions that you see

that the u.s military kind of enacts in this film firstly is military but second

is through the media like if you think just think about the movie the number

of times you see like uh western journalists or like american military spokesmen

and giving interviews or giving press conferences.

And this is what I mean where it's a very modernist version of imperialism.

You don't necessarily need a huge military presence, but what you need is media hegemony.

You need to be able to shape and dictate the parameters of discourse.

It's really quite funny that this was a film that even North Korea didn't mind.

Okay i saw that yeah that was it was praised for you know it's a reflection

of the relationship between the u.s and south korea.

Evan: Yeah the thing the first thing i thought of when you're talking about the misinformation

Evan: and actually the i think the very last line of

Evan: the movie comes from the the tv or

Evan: maybe the one of the last lines as they turn off

Evan: the television and they're basically the american uh

Evan: military spokesman is saying that the all of the things about the

Evan: virus are due to misinformation you know it's

Evan: all because of misinformation and the irony is they're the ones who

Evan: did the fucking misinformation it's like oh i wonder who

Evan: did that and it's you know they're just looking at themselves

Evan: in the mirror and yeah the media throughout it is

Evan: very interesting like the uh the scientist who comes into the kind of the little

Evan: gym where all the people are kind of being held and he says oh i'm not going

Evan: to tell you what happened i'm just going to turn on the tv and let you hear

Evan: through the media what's happened because you know i can't tell you i need to

Evan: uh filter it through all the uh misinformation and propaganda that's going to

Evan: be on you know radio free asia or something oh.

Yeah absolutely and actually can we talk about uh one of the things i really

love about this film which is um its ability to do a kind of multi-tonal storytelling

so this is a horror movie but there are also loads of bits of it which have

like kind of a slapstick vibe to them.

Evan: There's so many bits like there's.

So many bits where like people just fall over or are like physically bumbling

around um which i find sort of deeply charming but like even right at the end

there's payoff to this though it sort of reminds me someone on twitter pointed

this out to me that it sort of has echoes of um some early jackie chan movies where there is physical.

Evan: But there's.

A kind of like comedy to it it's quite light-hearted it's

all paid off right at the end where it's going to throw the Molotov cocktail

at the creature but it slips it just drops it but it allows his sister to finally

have the hero moment of shooting the creature with a flaming arrow so it all

pays off but there's this great um,

a tendency within certain scenes and sequences for

the tone of the film to just kind of shift very suddenly

so it can be very funny uh it can

be there's like some really exciting chase sequences there's

some great jump scares in this um there

are it has it has like a real knack

of like so this is not like yeah there's some very sophisticated politics happening

in this but this is not like a highbrow or you know art house this is this is

not this is not cinema this is a movie this is like this is a movie's rock moment yeah well.

Evan: I mean it's it's interesting you mentioned jackie chan the first film that immediately

Evan: comes to mind is um police story which is very much that kind of early i don't

Evan: know when that came out probably 87 or something like that jackie chan movie

Evan: where it's like you said people are falling down or slipping.

Evan: I think that the main character, Gangdu, is meant to be a clumsy...

Evan: I think that the Wikipedia page refers to him as a clumsy misfit vendor in his father's shop.

Evan: And so he's clumsy, but then you have a scene in the gym where I think that

Evan: scientist falls down. There's a number of other scenes.

Evan: I think it's almost very good break in the tension of the very serious attempts

Evan: to try and, you know, locate his daughter, you know, that's kind of been captured by the monster.

Evan: But at the same time, they're flipping back and forth to kind of,

Evan: like you're saying, almost like different tones throughout of it.

Evan: And I think it makes it more interesting than if it were just a straight,

Evan: you know, serious monster kind of movie.

Evan: And some of my favorite jump scares, as you mentioned, is when one character

Evan: is about to open a door, but then they flip to another character opening the same door.

Evan: Like, you know, those shots were, I think one of them is about to hide in the

Evan: one of the little rooms and then the grandfather opens up the the door to his

Evan: own shop and it's just it's just yeah the as you mentioned at the very beginning

Evan: like the composition and all the different scenes are really just phenomenal filmmaking yeah.

Absolutely and it's very typical right it's like if you've seen Parasite you've

not really seen any other Bong

Joon-ho movies go back and watch this and immediately you'll see that he's,

in a way been constantly sort of refining and developing

a particular set of concerns and style um it's

very interesting that he's cited both scorsese and

john carpenter as influences um and he's

very he's a very precise filmmaker i think everything is very well planned out

very well thought out um but he he does enjoy this like you cut on the beat

of action and kind of shift the tone so it's like where would be the funniest

punch line that's that's clearly how he's thinking and the construction of the film.

Evan: Yeah, it's interesting. I knew that he liked Scorsese. I didn't realize that

Evan: Carpenter was one of his bing foo.

Evan: And so I should have, as I was doing, you know, reading about him for this,

Evan: and I had covered Parasite, you know, maybe a year ago.

Evan: I didn't realize that, but that kind of makes sense in sort of the,

Evan: when I think of some of the movies, like, you know, Big Trouble in Little China

Evan: and some of those, not because of the Asian influence, but just the simply the

Evan: kind of tone of some of the, you know, this and that definitely have some similarities.

Evan: That's one of my, I love, I've John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors.

Evan: So it's easy now, now that you say that it's like, I can't get that out of my mind. Yeah.

Oh yeah. I totally see it. I totally see the kind of links.

Evan: Exactly. Yeah. And I, and I think, um, I think he has a new,

Evan: I think is, uh, another movie he has coming out that I think was delayed.

Evan: I think it's an American, his second, you know, English language movie,

Evan: um, which I'm Mickey 17 or something.

I think it's based on.

Evan: Which I was so excited to hear about it. And then I haven't read the book,

Evan: but i've heard it's quite good so i'm that would that would

Evan: take us on a separate tangent but i'm very you know anything he makes

Evan: i think is uh you know he keeps refining his

Evan: craft in each of these movies you can

Evan: look at this is an early movie that's still incredible but you

Evan: know just as they've gone through have really just um gotten better

Evan: with uh with age and i think actually one other

Evan: thing you briefly mentioned i think you know as one

Evan: of the themes throughout this is sort of the protest movement you

Evan: know and also maybe the the reunification movement with

Evan: north korea but they clearly each of the you know the the siblings you have

Evan: the two brothers and the sister of the park family and the kind of the youngest

Evan: son i believe i don't know if they say which of the two is but i guess it doesn't

Evan: matter but the the younger brother um nam ill was meant to,

Evan: be kind of uh be the stand-in for kind of this past political protest in south

Evan: korea and i read I had some articles with Bong Joon-ho that said he was really

Evan: trying to bring back that kind of fervor in this film that kind of has been

Evan: lost in South Korea that he probably thinks should be revitalized.

Evan: And they clearly show him as this character, Nam-il, as this guy who went to college.

Evan: Father paid for his college through this selling ramen noodles, as he said. Yeah.

Evan: Still can't get a job since then, which also, again, is very much on the nose

Evan: of people in America now and other countries where you have to pay for an education

Evan: and then aren't able to actually do anything with that education.

Evan: And that kind of cross with the political protest movement, I think, is very interesting.

Evan: And then, of course, you have the climax towards the end of the people protesting,

Evan: the agent yellow, which another military thing we should also,

Evan: like that was probably the most obvious, uh, line like, Oh, agent yellow.

Evan: Uh huh. Wink, wink, nod, nod. The American is going to test this chemical that

Evan: we just so happens to test on you way back when.

Evan: Um, but it's not like.

It's not, it's not like, um, uh, Namil has like specific politics though.

He's just, no, he doesn't really been raised in like the protest,

movement he knows how to make molotov cocktails he kind

of knows an old an old student radical who's uh

you know now uh selling us

all for a regular check and it actually kind of betrays him

to the authorities so it's like there is

there is sort of like this free political sense of things but it's already it

sort of feels nostalgic right um yeah you know it's not like there is an active

less protest it's like there's the remnants of one that kind of re-emerges for a little bit yeah.

Evan: That's true i think the only time that the i can't remember i'm blanking on

Evan: the name of his kind of old friend um.

Yeah who now works for the um now works for the telecommunications company right.

Evan: Right i think the only thing after he had sold him out and i think uh namil

Evan: is you know escaping from the uh the telecom building i think he actually holds

Evan: up his fist like in solidarity solidarity, you know, as he's running away.

Evan: I didn't notice that until this time. I guess it's sort of like,

Evan: well, you know, I wish that I was still able to, you know, to do this.

Evan: But unfortunately, I need money so badly that I'm willing to,

Evan: you know, sell my soul to work for, you know, Verizon, you know,

Evan: or AT&T, Google or something like that, you know, that's what I kind of it's a very clear standard.

Evan: And it's also interesting that they're kind of referring to to this sort of

Evan: corporate entity that's the evil that's on top of it.

Evan: So another sort of evil piece, but not any more evil than the United States,

Evan: just the regular run-of-the-mill evil that's controlling the information that could help them.

Evan: But of course, why would they help the little guy?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Evan: Yeah. And I think the other...

Evan: As you kind of mentioned the, well, I guess I briefly mentioned the agent yellow,

Evan: which I don't know, maybe there's not that much to say about it.

Evan: But clearly, the US military is using this incident and the sort of their control

Evan: over the situation to test a biological agent on actual human beings,

Evan: you know, in Korea is just, you know, kind of on the nose for,

Evan: you know, what America would actually do.

Evan: And I wrote this in my notes as I was watching only because I just listened

Evan: to a podcast episode on MKUltra program.

Evan: And, you know, during or the predecessor to that was, you know,

Evan: some of the Japanese tests as part of Unit 731, which were then brought into

Evan: the MKUltra program and all this.

Evan: And they did the same kind of thing, just tests on human beings without any

Evan: interest or care for their life. And America, you know, has a long,

Evan: long tradition of doing the same thing, you know, usually with Nazis behind the behind the camera.

Yeah, I mean, this is a question you put in the notes. Do you think this is too on the nose?

Evan: Yeah, I don't know.

I'm curious to know what you think.

Evan: I mean, maybe it's one of those things where as you watch it from this sort

Evan: of political analysis and this mindset,

Evan: perhaps maybe it is, but perhaps as just sort of the average person watching

Evan: it may realize these things, may see it as being more subtle.

Evan: Subtle i don't know it's hard for me to kind of put and put myself in the position

Evan: of watching it as kind of the standard moviegoer or just as a random person

Evan: in korea who watched this when it came out i would say it's probably less on

Evan: the nose i don't know i'm kind of torn i mean what do you think the.

Only thing that i would say is that subtlety is not necessarily a virtue um

like yes it's a metaphor but the metaphors are real right we don't we don't

live in particularly subtle times.

Yeah. You know?

I don't think i don't think there's i think saying something is too on the nose

presupposes that like we need a degree of like artifice in some ways so to serve

as some sort of like distancing effect,

um but this is something i say about horror movies all the time which is like

they're metaphors right but the metaphors are just true like there is there

is there is a monster there is something terrible lurking at the heart of korea

and it's completely metaphorical but

the metaphor is also real so i don't

i don't necessarily think that i don't necessarily think you

can be too on the nose mostly because it

that sort of implies a degree of political

hermeneutics like mainstream movies sort

of seek to diffuse so you know the classic example is like oh why are you pushing

pushing your politics into this it's like no this is very clearly a political

movie it's just one that's discussed it's just one that is also really fucking

cool monster movie and both of those things can be true at the same time right yeah.

Evan: And i think i mean it can i think it even can it obviously extends beyond

Evan: horror you know genre but i think for sure a

Evan: lot of uh you know films like that you'd say you

Evan: know especially more recent horror movies that often have

Evan: a more anti maybe it's a more deeper anti-capitalist

Evan: sort of bend to them i think of um i guess

Evan: this is more of a fairly new one i think

Evan: of like the menu is very clearly you know what they're trying to do in the film

Evan: at the same time as you know also having it be kind of uh attempting to be kind

Evan: of interesting horror movie but then you have the same thing in action movies

Evan: throughout time i mean rambo um predator all these movies are clear satires and And, you know,

Evan: skewering American military, you know, and at the same time is also just a pretty badass action movie.

Evan: It can be both of those things at the same time. And I think I have a friend

Evan: who I don't know if he listens to my podcast anymore, you know,

Evan: very in the liberal end of the scale.

Evan: He told me when he listened to my episode on Robocop, they kind of ruined the

Evan: movie for him because I sort of put politics into it.

Evan: But I'm thinking, can it can I ruin it? I mean, can't it still just be a fun

Evan: action movie if you don't want to look beyond the first layer?

Yeah, I mean, I remember talking to a guy called Andy Sharp who writes about horror movies a lot.

And he said to me, you know, we didn't go to horror movies because we wanted

to do like sophisticated political discourse.

We go to horror movies because horror movies are fucking cool.

But what they offer is a set of conceptual and hermeneutic tools that actually

help us to make sense of the world that we inhabit right?

I don't know if it I don't know if we like, Bong Joon-ho is,

is making films about the world. But I would not go so far as to say he's a

kind of revolutionary filmmaker, right?

Because he works predominantly in horror or crime, where the entire sort of

generic point is resolution, not revolution.

But you can't necessarily have revolution. Like Parasite, for example,

ends on a very bleak note, right?

A re-inscription of the capitalist realism that drives people into extracting

as much money as they can, right?

To building their own wealth to being to being the titular

parasite um like you can't you

can't have a revolutionary kind of rupture there because that only emerges as

violence it's true in the host as well so you can have a description of the

kind of like terrain of capitalist realism as it's enacted in 2006 korea but

you can't necessarily have like any sort of revolutionary change there yeah.

Evan: I mean i i mean I think you could probably make a pretty good argument at the

Evan: end of the host is still just as parasite is also a very bleak,

Evan: you know, look, I mean, you have, you know, some of the, the grandfather and, you know, the,

Evan: the daughter have died and now, you know, he's taken on sort of the, this, this,

Evan: gang do is sort of taken on this boy as kind of his own child.

Evan: And again, he's still living in this small little shack, you know,

Evan: and he's still going to have to sell noodles. And that's kind of where he's resigned to.

Evan: He's never there's no, there's no climbing to any kind of different social strata for him.

Evan: That's, that's as high as it goes. And just despite the fact that he's went

Evan: through this horrible ordeal, the government sort of lied to him,

Evan: they did brain surgery on him without his uh his you know his uh against his

Evan: will and he gets nothing except maybe this uh a new little shack for his uh

Evan: his store it's you know that's still it's it's going to keep going the perpetuation

Evan: of this uh this you know what.

You get is you get an excellent diagnosis right but you don't necessarily get

the options for like what is the alternative here.

Evan: Yeah and i think that's my i mean you could probably be a criticism even

Evan: of snow piercer and a lot of movies that attempt a more

Evan: sort of revolutionary tone or in you

Evan: know they try and say i think of things

Evan: like the hunger games where there's obviously this this evil

Evan: or this fascism or whatever it is that has to be overcome but there's

Evan: never any uh description of oh

Evan: well now that we've overthrown it what do we do

Evan: and that's you know that's often my criticism of mine

Evan: of so many of those kinds of movies and it's just kind of left to the viewer

Evan: to create its own your own narrative like oh well i guess it could be you know

Evan: just a slightly different flavor of capitalism or we could do something completely

Evan: different and have a uh socialist you know structure and they're all they always

Evan: leave you one of the big things in.

In bung joo ho's films is an emphasis on the family um.

Evan: Yeah which raises.

Like that's the kind of specter of a certain sort of politics in a way it's

slightly uh you know for in in kind of marxist circles this is now slightly

old-fashioned this notion

that the family is the space in which you defend the realm

of autonomy and unalienated or

unexploited relationships right it's right

at the end of the the host for example it's like that's the place of

surplus right you create a new family structure and that's the place where everyone

sits down to a great meal um but i i don't i don't know if that gives you enough

right i don't know if that and of course in the host you can construct a new

family right the family perishes and it's in the attempt to save itself.

But you can find somebody who has none of those networks of support and bring them in.

He adopts a child that he's not biologically related to.

So I think

If you want to try and identify the nexus of what Bong Joon-ho's kind of anti-capitalist

politics are, you have to start with what he thinks the family is capable of doing.

It's certainly, in the host, it's certainly capable of doing more than the Korean state is, right?

Evan: Right. Yeah, it'd be hard not to. That's not a, you know.

It's a pretty low bar.

Evan: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think you're right.

Evan: I think the family is very important in all of his, well, many of his movies, obviously Parasite.

Evan: And this one too is very much, there's always these scenes in both of those

Evan: films of the family sitting around eating,

Evan: usually just instant noodles and those kinds of things. and that's what they have to eat.

Evan: Not that those aren't delicious, but that's kind of what they have available

Evan: based on what they can afford.

Evan: And they're always, in this movie, there's less scheming, I guess you could say,

Evan: than in Parasite, but they do come together to kind of rejuvenate their spirits

Evan: as they're hunting the monster and they all sit together and they're all eating

Evan: and then they have this sort of fantasy or this,

Evan: I don't know what you would call it, maybe it's kind of a image of the girl sitting next to them,

Evan: each of them feeding her because she's now you know she's lost to them and they're

Evan: trying to find her and she's obviously hungry and they're all trying to give

Evan: her what she needs because they all care for her deeply despite the fact that

Evan: you know shit's bad shit's real bad and.

Of course that that scene is then juxtaposed with this like the creature coming

back to its pantry to drop a new body in right.

Evan: There's lots of things about feeding.

Here um i mean even snowpiercer right the final revelation of what happens to

the bodies of children that use this, it's very soil and green.

Like there's always this thing of like,

what what does it what does it mean is is

there such a thing as like a revolutionary unit that

is bound together by these sort of familial ties that are

not necessarily biological or kind of

normative um and i think this makes makes the politics of these films kind of

like interestingly ambiguous because in some ways uh in some ways you could

kind of like say that these are films that are just representing capitalist

realism without the necessity of a critique that could could sublate it.

But at the same time, there is definitely the hunger for something different within them.

And this is what I mean when I say that he's not like a didactic filmmaker.

He's not kind of trying to impart a moral lesson to you. And I think that's

what makes the films sort of engaging.

Evan: Yeah, I think if you beat someone over the head with that kind of direct messaging,

Evan: it kind of ruins what you've done to get to that point.

Evan: So I mean, I guess I should say that some of the movies where you kind of don't

Evan: get a sense of what maybe the director is kind of saying could be the next step.

Evan: And it should be ambiguous in that way.

Evan: Yeah. But I guess, you know, it doesn't hurt the film. I guess maybe in his movies, it's not quite.

Evan: I think I do enjoy the sort of maybe bleak and open-endedness of them,

Evan: whereas some others maybe have, you know, more of, I guess you could call like the Hollywood.

Evan: You know, this is not really what I would say is, you know, a big Hollywood

Evan: type of movie, even though it

Evan: has kind of this grand monster and cool special effects and all of that.

Evan: I don't see it in the same, obviously it's not an American film,

Evan: but it doesn't have that same necessity to give you answers.

Evan: You know, you really don't get any answers. They're watching the TV in the last

Evan: scene and they just turn it off. You don't get the full explanation of what happens.

Evan: You just assume, okay, well, the US is really, really horrible and they did something.

Evan: They lied about there being a virus so they could test chemicals on human beings.

Evan: I mean, what more do you need to know?

Evan: Absolutely absolutely yeah and i think um what

Evan: was the other thing i was going to mention it was about family but

Evan: i'm trying to to uh was blanking on

Evan: it but yeah oh actually this is one thing that i i didn't i've seen this now

Evan: i guess three or four times and i didn't notice until the most recent watch

Evan: is in the very opening scene following the you know the time jump when you're

Evan: in the uh there the park sort of uh food stand there's a couple he uh gang do

Evan: is sort of taking a nap you know on the uh at the at his job and then a couple

Evan: of kids are trying to grab some candy i didn't realize that it was the same two kids that are then,

Evan: in the later scene captured by the monster and then the little boy at the end

Evan: so the little boy that's grabbing kind of like a candy something or other is

Evan: the boy he ends up adopting at the end i feel stupid that i didn't notice that

Evan: until this time there's a.

Nice kind of unity to it right it It all, it all joins together.

Everything, everything has a payoff, which is something that I really like.

There's, and again, this is just, this is just on, on one level,

this is just a really well-made monster movie. Um, and,

and if you want to enjoy it just on that level i think that's fine but it also

kind of raises all of these questions of like what do we take the monster to

mean where does the monster come from like what what does the monster do beyond

just being this kind of mechanism for triggering certain action yeah.

Evan: And you have and i think all a lot of those um sort of things that you know

Evan: you seem inconsequential that end up being very important like the Nam-il not Nam-il,

Evan: Nam-ju the sister is a national archer

Evan: and you kind of see her you know fail

Evan: because of you know I guess you could say she chokes and she ends

Evan: up getting a bronze medal which her brother then makes fun of

Evan: her for but then at the very you know climax because of

Evan: her having clearly you know keeping her arrow her bow this entire time is able

Evan: to then kill well almost kill the monster you know at the end is all these you

Evan: know very uh you know the circular nature of all these things which are just

Evan: you know just perfect i mean i don't know i don't know i don't know what else i would say about it.

Absolutely everything just pays off everything has its kind of unity and um

it's just a rock solid movie and one thing that i actually really like is that

it makes kind of environmental horror a lot more explicitly political um so

a lot of the time in kind of

like eco-gothic or eco-horror you have that you

people go to a place and there's oh no

the place is fucked up and cursed or you go

to a place oh no there's like a weird creature

that's evil there but actually this one politicizes like it's what what is the

monster the monster is pollution courts like there is an explicit um political

and ecological line in the film without which which the entire film as a whole just doesn't happen.

Evan: Yeah, that's true. I'm just trying to think of other, you know,

Evan: I think of other eco kind of horror films that, you know, I think,

Evan: don't always have that same, you know, note to them.

Evan: Actually, I've just watched this movie recently, because I'm reading the book

Evan: on it is the Jeff Vandermeer trilogy.

Evan: The first book, I think, in the movie is called Annihilation,

Evan: where you kind of have this a very similar also kind of subtle idea that lots

Evan: of pollution and lots of things cause this weird area to kind of become to start

Evan: swallowing up parts of, you know, the coast where it happens.

Evan: And then throughout the book, and also I think in the movie,

Evan: they imply like, oh, well, even though that happened, they didn't actually stop

Evan: polluting or doing anything, right?

Evan: Like in this movie, too. Two, after this, you'd say, okay, well,

Evan: maybe we should have more strict regulations around dumping of chemicals,

Evan: but they definitely will not, and they'll do it again.

Evan: We'll have a bigger monster next time because we're going to dump worse chemicals.

Evan: You have that accident that the US military had in Hawaii not that long ago,

Evan: maybe last year, where they contaminated all their drinking water,

Evan: and it's just another big oopsie.

Evan: Oops. Yeah. Oops, we did it.

Yeah. Oh, no. Now, the only sort of grounds for hope is like,

what do they say right at the end when they're eating?

It's like, oh, let's let's turn it off and we'll find something else to watch.

And it's this idea of, you know, there's a slow weakening of the the media is

essentially like a fool for American biopolitics. Right.

The media is an exercise in legitimating. right the

purpose of media is to legitimate a kind of sovereign

authority um and to give to give that legitimacy to particularly the american

military but this throughout the film our characters have been directly uh they

directly realize that the not only is the korean state just wildly corrupt and

incompetent so is america.

Evan: Yeah i mean there's all of the scenes where

Evan: you show the in the hospitals you see

Evan: like a mixture of just complete incompetence like

Evan: i've another one of those slapstick moments that i think is maybe

Evan: a good other example is when they have their first escape

Evan: of the hospital and they run down the elevator and some

Evan: people are falling and they jump into the van and you

Evan: know he pushes like he stiff arms the uh the police

Evan: officer as he's like driving five miles per

Evan: hour in the parking lot and it's one of the like you just

Evan: see the incompetence of the police you see the incompetence of the the doctors

Evan: in the hospital they're all just kind of being directed as we see later by this

Evan: one american doctor who's just controlling the narrative and limiting who knows

Evan: it and i don't know if that's actually directly related to what you're saying

Evan: i just kind of i just love that scene too i just have to bring it up.

No i totally right so it's about

securing and legitimating a regime or a kind

of like an authority that has no legitimacy right so by the end like in a way

i sort of relate to this because what does everybody do when they see like politicians

on the news you sort of roll your eyes and you're like oh fine like can we turn

it over can we watch something else and it's because like we know that there is a lack of legitimacy,

We know that there's a sort of ideological cynicism, where we don't believe anything that they say.

We don't believe that they have any real authority or they have any kind of

serious political legitimacy, but we pretend as if they do, because the alternative

raises too many difficult questions.

Evan: Yeah, I mean, I think that brings back the comparison to the COVID pandemic,

Evan: especially in the beginning, where obviously they didn't have all the answers.

Evan: Things are kind of unknown but even as things were coming out you

Evan: know you're many people are saying okay well fauci's on tv he's telling me this

Evan: you know i guess i have to believe him because what what else do i have and

Evan: then your your choices are really okay i can believe what the scientists and

Evan: the government is saying or i can go the complete other way and go down a rabbit

Evan: hole of conspiracy theories there's no real kind of middle ground i mean.

It's and it's so kind of telling that so many governments with all who went

oh we have experts but yeah we also want to open and the economy as quickly as possible.

Oh, yeah. We also, yeah, all of these things that kind of cut,

there was so much kind of dissonance.

And it was incredibly difficult for people to actually work out what was true,

mostly because any exercise in mitigation was seen as a threat to the smooth

and kind of day-to-day functioning of capitalist economies, right?

It's very telling that, you know, certain kinds of jobs were furloughed and

you got to work from home and that's fine and good.

Uh certain kinds of we very quickly found out

who's essential right during covid and in

the uk the message was very much all of these

people who told you were essential yeah probably not but

the people who uh stack supermarket shelves uh

the people who collect bins the people who work

in customer facing roles on the railways all

of these people were like deeply essential none of them were paid properly none

of them were given um the chance to work from home none of that so So it was

like this friction within how was the capitalist state supposed to handle a

viral crisis is very revealing.

Like thinking of the host as a kind of like COVID cinema, I think opens some

really interesting questions.

Evan: Yeah, no, I think that, I mean, I think it was very telling.

Evan: I mean, those essential workers, after whatever, six months,

Evan: eight months, many of them died, many of them got sick.

Evan: And then they just kind of went back to pretending that everything was as normal.

Evan: They just have to go back to work, got to reopen the economy.

Evan: As you said, it's very telling of what a future response looks like.

Evan: Maybe it's not just a pandemic, but maybe as we see the actual collapse of our natural,

Evan: environment and all of that, which will lead to catastrophic other things,

Evan: we already know how the American and the West will handle it.

Evan: They'll say, okay, well, you still have to go to Walmart and do whatever you

Evan: have to do because someone needs to buy this little widget instead of you staying

Evan: at home, we give you some money, we send some food to your house.

Evan: I think everyone probably knew that that's how the American government or the

Evan: UK government would react, but it's worse to actually see it happen in real

Evan: time and just think, fuck, they don't give a shit.

Yeah, absolutely. You got to go back to your convenience hub because people

need their of squid pretty.

Evan: Much yeah

Evan: and it's uh yeah and the one thing that

Evan: i going back to maybe that very early moment where

Evan: you see the monster for the very first time and they you know go out to give

Evan: the the little you know mat for their their squid that doesn't have a missing

Evan: leg on it and you see immediately you know these other people who are being

Evan: served are not necessarily wealthy

Evan: people, they're just maybe – I hate to say the word middle class, but middle,

Evan: upper working class –,

Evan: I don't know how you might describe them, but you have the park family is kind of this working poor.

Evan: They have a little business scraping to get by, and they're still having to

Evan: serve other people. But then when the monster comes out of the water, it's eating them both.

Evan: The cruel evils of these monsters doesn't discriminate, except for the fact

Evan: that the rich people are going to stay in their towers and their hills and their

Evan: fancy homes while the poor people die, just like in COVID. yeah.

Absolutely absolutely um any any other kind of final points you wanted to to make sure we we hit.

Evan: Um i think those are all of

Evan: the ones i had i mean i i

Evan: guess i the only thing i would say about sort of the end of this

Evan: is that it's you know it's pretty it's kind

Evan: of a depressing end to uh to the movie

Evan: and you know you don't have very much you know

Evan: hope i guess you're kind of given in a little bit of glimmer you know that they

Evan: now back have their little their little shop and you know the the one little

Evan: boy lives but it's also kind of bleak which i think makes sense i don't think

Evan: you could have this be a happy ending you know it's the the cycle is just going to repeat itself yeah.

I i uh there's one question that you put in the notes i think it's interesting

which is like, what do you think the title refers to?

Evan: Yeah. Oh, sorry. I mean, I'll, I'm curious.

Evan: So in the movie, they basically are referring to like the, the,

Evan: the monster is sort of the, you know, patient zero, the host of this virus,

Evan: which is kind of the obvious way to look at it.

Evan: But I'm wondering if, if it could be something else. I'm wondering what you think.

I think the host is, um, the host is, is, is Korean society, right? Right.

What is it the host to? It's it's the host to a the host to a monster.

Where did the monster come from or what is the root cause of the monster is

the pollution of an occupying military imperial force. Right.

To me, this the host title of the film is actually where you see the politics

of the movie most clearly.

Because you go, oh, well, the monster is the host. and then actually you simply

have to kind of like follow that train of thought and talk about where did this

monster come from what is being hosted the monster is kind of like,

is this is the product of a symbiotic relationship and

an exploitative and harmful symbiosis at that right

because uh the korean and

american uh state apparatus are

both kind of enmeshed within each other they are both in in in a sense the hosting

one another and keeping them alive but it's these this one of like uh the the

the monster is the symptom right and if you stop there that's only gives you

a limited understanding of the film.

If you actually follow the monster as metaphor, you realize that the host is,

always with the monster.

The host is the society that produced the monster in the first place.

Evan: Exactly. I actually think of a very similar type,

Evan: although it's not a man-made monster in the same way, but I think of the movie

Evan: Jaws with a similar situation where you could look at the shark as the capitalist

Evan: capitalist, you know, exploitation.

Evan: And people are the mayor, whoever is going to send people out there,

Evan: no matter what, they could kill that one shark, that one monster,

Evan: but there's still going to be another one lurking because nothing has actually been solved.

Evan: You've only just, you know, cut off, you know, one of the limbs of this,

Evan: you know, ever growing, you know, horror that continues to come out of Korean society.

Evan: Nothing was actually changed. changed as i said before no new regulations are

Evan: going to be brought about it's all going to just end up in the same situation

Evan: over and over again until there's actually you know i guess till the actual

Evan: host of the korean society as you're saying is actually dealt with yeah.

Absolutely absolutely the monster will be bigger next time actually it'll be

worse because the symptoms will be worse right the the um eco ecological imperialism is cumulative uh,

so it won't just be there won't be just one monster like the the symptoms will

get worse and worse which is precisely what is born out in the real world.

Evan: Yeah i guess you could say that would be very well shown in

Evan: you know godzilla movies you have initially you have godzilla

Evan: but then you have all these other creatures and horrors that lurk

Evan: because of all of the uh you know nuke nuclear testing and all the things they've

Evan: done it's just gonna it's gonna cycle through again um but yeah i think that

Evan: was that was the last real question i had i don't know if you had any final

Evan: thoughts on on the movie itself or anything you didn't get a chance to uh to mention just.

To emphasize that it's just a really good time uh it's again again you know

it's not some highfalutin uh abstract or didactic piece of cinema this is like

really exciting very popular

media this is like this is a this is a good this is a good ass movie that's my big takeaway.

Evan: Yeah i mean i i think uh you know um i was telling a friend that i was watching

Evan: he hadn't seen this and i said you know you know because he knows about the

Evan: podcast he's like oh i assume you're going to be talking about you know political

Evan: aspects of them and i said well you can also just enjoy this as a really good

Evan: fun movie and that's it you know you don't have to as i think I said before.

Evan: It can just be that. It really is just that. It's a really good fucking movie.

Evan: Anyone listening...

It's about a weird big fish.

Evan: Yep, pretty much. If you've listened to this whole thing and you still haven't

Evan: seen it, I mean, we obviously spoiled bits of it, but I think you can still

Evan: watch this movie over and over and still get very much a good...

Evan: You'll enjoy it. Yep.

That's a good place to wrap.

Evan: Yeah but john um i really appreciate you uh

Evan: coming on and um people should go check out your uh your book and if you haven't

Evan: listened to your podcast you should listen to that which i assume they can get

Evan: on your uh i guess i'll link it in here but i guess they can also follow on

Evan: any podcast yeah you can get us at.

Whatever local independent artsy little podcast maker to get your books from.

You can find me on pretty much all platforms. He's a really great guy.

And yeah, please do check out Capitalism Horror Story, Gothic Nox,

Even with the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination, which is now with Repeater Books.

Evan: Yes, you can click the link in the thing down there, which will send you to

Evan: the place that is available for purchase because as you're listening, the book is out now.

Evan: And you can also follow this podcast and all the same online internet podcasting

Evan: places and uh thanks again john and we'll catch you all next time.