On September 17, 2021, a Korean show called Squid Game was released and quickly emerged to the number one spot on Netflix’s Top Ten on September 21.
The show follows three main protagonists Gi-hun, Sae-Byeok, and Sang-woo, along with additional “players” in the game. First, we are introduced to Gi-hun, a divorced gambler struggling with debts while also battling the harsh reality of losing his daughter to custody agreements. Soon after, we meet Sang-woo, a supposedly successful college graduate who is lying to everyone about his financial state. Then, Sae-Byeok is introduced, a young girl trying to provide for her brother, while their mother is captured in China from an unsuccessful attempt to escape North Korea.
These three players all join a contest involving six games, where if the contestant doesn’t finish or win, the consequence is death. This thrilling horror show amplifies the state of class disparity in South Korea, while making the audience question motifs like human motivation and the duality of success.
Squid Game is the first Korean drama to be on the top of the US charts with around 95% of viewers who are outside of Korea. Within days of its release, Squid Game topped Netflix charts in all 83 countries where Netflix streams. According to Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, Squid Game is set to be one of the most watched shows on Netflix, passing many popular American shows like Bridgerton and Orange Is the New Black.
The drama owes a lot of its popularity to social media. The show is massively popular on Twitter, trending with over 200,000 tweets debating the series finale. TikTok is also a big help to the show’s popularity where many of the games in the show have turned into trends. For example, many creators on Tik Tok have tried their hand at the dalgona candy challenge, seeing if they would survive the show.
The show has also been gaining a lot of popularity because of its translated subtitles. The show was originally filmed in Korean, but many viewers watch it dubbed in English (dubbing is replacing the original language with another one). Many people have noticed that the English subtitles are different from the English dubbing and that the Korean script does not translate to the English subtitles. This has caused debate as to whether or not viewers watching in English are able to feel the same emotions of the characters in the original Korean version.
Conspiracy theorists even say that the English subtitles are different to water down the anti-capitalist ideals of the show. The subtitle writers miss a lot of important character lines and simply have bad translations of the dialogue. TikTok influencers, with over 2 million likes on their translating videos, have drawn a lot of attention to this detail, thus boosting the show. The show is also immensely popular because it falls under the “death game genre”, which is very popular among younger age groups. The death game genre involves games and films like Battle Royale, Maze Runner, Hunger Games, and Fortnite. This genre is popular because the victory is so rewarding.
The popularity of Squid Game will most likely boost the popularity of other international shows. Two notable shows that have been boosted from Squid Game are Alice in Borderland and Sweet Home. Both of these shows were filmed in a language other than English. Alice in Borderland is a Japanese post-apocalyptic show that was released in December 2020, and Sweet Home was the number one Korean drama before Squid Game, released the same time as Alice in Borderland. Because Squid Game is so popular that almost everyone with Netflix, in America at least, has watched it, this may mean an incline in these same Americans now watching more international shows than before. This means that American shows will most likely have to compete with international shows for popularity.
Sources:
https://www.thecut.com/2021/10/squid-games-subtitles-arent-perfect-for-a-reason.html#comments
https://www.cbr.com/squid-game-alice-in-borderland-why-anime-fans-love-death-games/