World-views, Ideology, and the Lumpenproletariat in Parasite (2019, dir. Bong Joon Ho)
Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019) employs the metaphor of parasitism in describing class conflict through the portrayal of ambitious and individualist world-views but unfortunately, though perhaps inevitably, arising out of a hopeless vision. Drawing upon structuralist Marxism (Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 2005), specifically Lucien Goldmann’s genetic model and Pierre Macherey’s production model (Forgacs 1986), I examine how the film manages the dialectics of class conflict with the portrayal of these world-views. I then argue that while the film exhibits an avowed anti-capitalist ideology, its ideological entry into the narrative is transformed through its depiction of class liberation as unattainable.
The film narrates the story of the Kim family, composed of father Ki-taek, mother Park Chung-sook, elder son Ki-woo, and younger daughter Ki-jung, who live in a semi-basement. The family infiltrates the life of the wealthy Park family who live in a large, modern house in an affluent neighborhood. The infiltration begins with Ki-woo who becomes the tutor of the Parks’ elder daughter, Da-hye, and through a chain of recommendations with deception and lies, the rest of his family become members of the Park household: Ki-jung (or Jessica) as the tutor of the younger child of the Parks, Da-song, Ki-taek as the family chauffeur, and Chung-sook as the housekeeper. The Kim family thus becomes the ‘parasites’ of the wealthier Parks, earning money from their work, eating from the wealthy’s table, and taking advantage of the empty house one night by drinking and eating from the Parks’ kitchen.
However, the relationship is soon threatened this same night when the Park family’s former housekeeper, Moon-gwang, comes to the house, and the Kim family soon discover that she has been keeping her husband, Geun-sae, from loan sharks by letting him hide in a secret basement. The Park family come home, and an unfortunate series of events follow, with the Kim family killing Chung-sook and their semi-basement home flooded due to heavy rain. The next day, during a party, Ki-woo attempts to kill Geun-sae who overpower him and render him unconscious, and then stabs Ki-jung. Chung-sook attacks Geun-sae, while Ki-taek tends to his daughter. However, Mr. Park orders him to drive his son, who fainted at the sight of Geun-sae, to the hospital, ignoring the bleeding Ki-jung. Angry with Mr. Park’s nonchalance and lack of concern for Ki-jung, he stabs him and disappears. Weeks later, Chung-sook and Ki-woo face charges of fraud and sentenced to probation. As Ki-woo spies on the house, he receives a secret message through the blinking of the lights following Morse code, and he discovers that his father is now hiding in the same basement as Geun-sae.
Ambitious and Individualist World-Views
The Marxist approach is guided by dialectical materialism. The dialectic approach views reality as always in flux, driven by internal contradictions, and interconnected, while the materialist approach privileges material reality over ideas in the historical development of society (Walker and Gray 2007). Through this approach, one may analyze the production of films according to the material conditions that make them possible, and examine how a text portrays or depicts change, contradictions, and connections in reality; alternatively, it also allows us to see contradictions between a text and reality. Following this, Lucien Goldmann proposes that texts arise out of social consciousness and behavior, which means that the structure of a text correlates with the ‘mental structure’ of the author’s social class or a world-view (Forgacs 1986). Accordingly, these world-views are crystallized in texts but are always in flux, “perpetually being constructed and dissolved by social groups as they adjust their mental image of the world in response to the changing reality before them” (Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 2005, 96).
Applying this to the film, I want to foreground the title, Parasite. In biology, parasitism refers to a relationship between two organisms, a parasite and a host, in which the former benefits from living in the latter’s body. In the film, the title refers to the parasitic relationship between the two families, particularly in how the poor Kim family become parasites of the wealthy Park family. Through portraying the differences between classes, the film becomes a representation of the relationship between the upper class and lower class. In Figure 1, we see siblings Ki-woo and Ki-jung as little specks against the backdrop of the Park family’s towering outside walls and their neighborhood; this shot highlights the social position of the siblings through scale. Both of them were hired as tutors of the Park children, which in turn presents a contradiction because they provide educational services at the level of professionals despite not having gone to college.
Mulhern (1975) further defines Goldmann’s concept of world-view (or world vision) as “the complex of ideas, feelings and aspirations that defines the consciousness of a social class”. Following this, we can surmise that in response to the reality of late-stage capitalism, the film portrays a world-view which I describe as the ambitious vision of those from the lower class. Being part of this class, one naturally aspires for social mobility, something that can be achieved through various means—education, career moves, the lottery perhaps, and, in the film, through manipulation and scams. This ambitious vision is depicted in one scene when the Kim family, while occupying the house’s living room with food and alcohol from the Park family’s refrigerator and cellar, discuss their fantasy of social mobility (Figure 2). In particular, Ki-woo tells his family about his plan of marrying his tutee Da-hye in the future, to which his family responds with derisive laughs. During this same scene, the Kim family also discuss their host, the Park family. Ki-taek calls the family gullible and Mrs. Park naive, describing her as “rich, but still nice,” to which his wife disagrees, saying that Mrs. Park is “nice because she is rich.” This scene is particularly important because it depicts the family in a momentary state of happiness while imagining a state of full happiness that could be achieved with wealth.
Aside from an ambitious vision, however, the film also depicts an individualist vision as evidenced in how the Kim family pushes out the Park family’s chauffeur and housekeeper. In the same scene, Ki-taek talks about Mr. Yoon, the chauffeur he replaced after his daughter planted her underwear in the Parks’ car. He supposes that Mr. Yoon has found another job, and Ki-woo agrees with him. On the other hand, Ki-jung tells her father, “We’re the ones who need help. Worry about us, okay?” effectively saying that one must worry about oneself and not others. Meanwhile, in the case of Moon-gwang, the Kim family exploits her medical condition, a severe allergy to pears, in order for Chung-sook to take her place; this is a manifestation of individualism that brings to mind the phrases ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘eat or be eaten.’
This individualist vision becomes more apparent when the Kim family finds out about Geun-sae, the man in the basement. During this scene (Figure 3), Chung-sook looks down at/on Moon-gwang who begs her not to call the police or inform Mrs. Park about Geun-sae. The Kim matriarch even accuses her predecessor of being a parasite who steals food to feed her husband. Consequently, Moon-gwang asks Chung-sook to keep the secret and offers payment in exchange for the current housekeeper leaving food for Geun-sae from time to time. The irony of this can be described as a ‘parasite of a parasite,’ to which Chung-sook refuses, leading to the Moon-gwang’s death later on. Moon-gwang and Geun-sae threaten the Kim family’s newfound comfort. Also, they become a danger because they can become parasites while the Kim family becomes a host.
At the risk of perverting Goldmann, I want to point out that instead of originating out of the filmmaker’s social class, the ambitious and individualist visions in Parasite are ‘raw materials’ of the narrative, following Pierre Macherey. They figure in the narrative as a response to the in-narrative (fictional) realities of the Kim family who belong to the lower class, effectively the working class, which in turn arises out of the material conditions under capitalism in the real world.
Re-Working Ideology
The Marxist critic Pierre Macherey treats the text as a production “in which disparate materials are worked over and changed in the process” (Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 2005, 98). This production model views the text as products made out of pre-existing conventions, genres, language, and ideology (Forgacs 1986). These ‘raw materials’ that enter the text, however, contend with each other, leading to the transformation of ideology through the text. If we treat ideology as “collective representation of ideas and experience as opposed to the material reality on which experience is based” (168), then we may say that in Parasite the depiction of the stark contrast between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat easily points to an anti-capitalist ideology. This means that the film exposes the experiences of the lower class under late-stage capitalist South Korea, a period characterized by joblessness and poor living conditions for this class.
The two figures below show this stark contrast. Figure 4 shows the window of the Kim family’s home, a strip that looks out onto the streets of metropolitan Seoul—gray and lifeless. Figure 5 shows the floor-to-ceiling glass window of the Park family’s home, overlooking a green landscape—verdant and lush. Especially towards the end, the film becomes more explicit in showing the disparity of the bourgeoisie’s abundance and the proletariat’s scarcity. In one scene, Mrs. Park chooses her clothes from a large walk-in closet (Figure 6), which is immediately followed by a scene where evacuees after a particularly strong rainstorm choose from a pile of likely donated clothes on the floor of the gymnasium that serves as an evacuation area (Figure 7).
Granted however that while the contrasting images allow the viewer to see the realities of life under capitalism, it does not necessarily mean that Parasite is anti-capitalist. To this end, I point out that Macherey also treats the text as incomplete, which prompts the critic to look for “what is unspoken and inevitably repressed” (Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 2005, 98) in the text. Following this, I have two arguments as to why I see the film as anti-capitalist. First, parasitism in the film can be read the other way around. That is, instead of the Kim family as parasites, they serve as the host to the parasitic Park family. For one, the Park family cannot function without their staff and tutors for the children. Their wealth affords them comfort through the labor of the Kim family.
Second, while the Kim family belongs to the proletariat in the narrative, which Marx characterized as a liberatory force because of their class-conscious collectivism, they exhibit an individualist world-view in the film. This contradiction can be explained by further stratification of the proletariat class. Accordingly, the proletariat may be divided between the bourgeois stratum, hereon ‘bourgeois’ proletariat, and the lumpenproletariat stratum, dubbed the proletariat of the proletariat which includes those “without work, education or vocational training” (Bradley and Lee 2018). While Marx sees the lumpenproletariat as devoid of revolutionary potential because they lack class consciousness, Mikhail Bakunin argues that the lumpenproletariat is an “externality to capitalist relations” (Thoburn 2002, 445), which is to say that they exist outside and away from capitalism. As such, they hold “all the germs of the socialism of the future” (in Bradley and Lee 2018, 640).
In the film, the Kim family is part of the ‘bourgeois’ proletariat and the basement couple is part of the lumpenproletariat. The latter, as lumpenproletariat, serves as a threat to the order of capital, indeed to the ‘sanity’ of the bourgeoisie. Suppose we consider the Park family home as a stand-in for society, then we may relate the levels of the houses to the different social classes. There is the ground level which consists of the living room, kitchen, and dining room, and the upper level which consists of the family members’ rooms. There is a basement that serves as a storage room and cellar; in this basement, there is a hidden door to the secret basement where Geun-sae lives. The two upper levels correspond to the bourgeoisie and the elite, while the two lower levels correspond to the proletariat, with the secret basement further correlating with the lumpenproletariat. Since the Kim family work as members of the Park household, it is easy to categorize them under the ‘bourgeois’ proletariat, while the fact that Moon-gwang is hiding Geun-sae from the loan sharks and the law means that they exist outside of the law as lumpenproletariat.
However, it must be noted that both strata threaten the affluent Park family. This is evident in the final scene when Ki-taek kills his own boss and Mrs. Park faints; this threat is physical danger, with a corresponding threat to the psyche, that of fear and trauma. In addition, the shot below (Figure 8), which I realize is one of the more familiar shots of the film, shows a similar psychological and symbolic threat. When Geun-sae peeks out of the basement, Da-song sees him and becomes traumatized, falling into a seizure which Mrs. Park says could have killed him. The psychological trauma inflicted on both Mrs. Park and Da-song corresponds with how the proletariat threatens the supposed ‘sanity’ of the order of capital wherein the wealthy gets wealthier and impoverished becomes poorer.
Class Liberation and the Lumpenproletariat
In Parasite, the matter of class conflict arises out of the relationship between the Kim family, the Park family, and the basement couple. The contradiction I pointed out earlier about the Kim family-as-proletariat exhibiting an individualist world-view means that they lack class solidarity, a characteristic that the lumpenic Geun-sae and Moon-gwang exhibit. In Figure 3, Moon-gwang calls her husband and herself “fellow members of the needy” in relation to Chung-sook, saying that they all belong to the same class. This exhibits class consciousness, a characteristic of the ‘bourgeois’ proletariat rather than the lumpenproletariat, which makes this scene ironic. This also subverts the categorization of the Kim family as bourgeois proletariat and the basement couple as lumpenproletariat; perhaps it is the other way around. Another evidence of the lumpenic affinity of the Kim family is their commission of crimes of fraud, homicide, and attempted murder, all in the name of social mobility.
However, I also hesitate to categorize the Kim family under the lumpenproletariat because they do not exist outside of capital relations. In fact, the Kims are subject to capitalist relations in their vision of social mobility. That is, they also aim to participate in the exchange of capital: they dream of becoming wealthy. These contradictions exhibit the changing realities and aspirations of social classes, and so I call into question the film’s world-view: whose world-view is this?
To answer this, I want to return to Goldmann’s thesis about texts arising from the social consciousness of a certain class. In order to counter the earlier perversion I have made, I now point to a different world-view that characterizes the film: a hopeless vision that arises out of all classes that can see the internal contradictions of late-stage capitalism. Seen through this world-view, ‘escape’ or social mobility remains an impossibility for those on the lower rungs of society. There is no class liberation. Here I recall Macherey’s thesis that the text transforms whatever ideology enters it. In Parasite, the ideology of anti-capitalism does not necessarily result in an ideology of class liberation, an internal contradiction that springs from its plot. Instead, the film implies that the proletariat cannot be liberated, or that it is nearly impossible. Aside from the lack of class consciousness, the film also implies that the proletariat necessarily possesses lumpenic tendencies, such that the Kim family’s crimes mean that Ki-woo has to be content with viewing the house (Figure 9) and the ‘gorgeous’ upper class (Figure 10) from afar, and that Ki-taek has to hide away in the secret basement for eternity (Figure 11), that is, to become a perpetual parasite.
As a final point, I want to point out that the film engages in what Williams (2015) calls the indicative mode of realism, a mode that shows “what reality is like” for people living in metropolitan Seoul and capitalist South Korea. The film ends with another shot of the Kim family’s semi-basement window, and a shot of Ki-woo staring into the camera, as if to say that this is the end of the story, nothing else follows. In Figure 12, we see another shot of the semi-basement window. Here, it is already winter which Northrop Frye relates to irony and satire: “In the winter myth, what is normal and what is hoped for are inverted. The depicted world is hopeless, fearful, frustrated, even dead. There is no hero to bring salvation, no happy endings to innocent adventures” (Dobie 2012, 67).
As an alternative, Williams proposes a subjunctive mode of realism, one that imagines “if we did this, what would happen next?” That is, how else might the story have ended so that both the Kim family and the basement couple achieve class liberation? Failing this, how might they have achieved social mobility? Failing this too, how could the film have portrayed class consciousness and class solidarity? Notwithstanding this, however, the coherence of the film as a critique threatens the logic of the capitalist order in spite of its hopelessness. Parasite exposes the internal contradictions of late-stage capitalism wherein inequality reigns, privilege spells success, and class liberation remains elusive.
References
Bong, Joon Ho, director. 2019. Parasite. CJ Entertainment.
Bradley, Joff P.N. and Alex Taek-Gwang Lee. 2018. “On the Lumpen-Precariat-To-Come.” tripleC 16 (2): 639-46.
Dobie, Ann. 2012. Theory Into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism, 3rd ed. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Forgacs, David. 1986. “Marxist Literary Theories.” In Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction, 2nd ed., 166-203. B.T. Basford.
Mulhern, Francis. 1975. “Introduction to Goldmann.” New Left Review 92, July-August 1975. Accessed May 1, 2025. https://newleftreview.org/issues/i92/articles/francis-mulhern-introduction-to-goldmann.
Selden, Raman, Peter Widdowson and Peter Brooker. 2005. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 5th edition. Pearson Longman.
Thoburn, Nicholas. 2002. “Difference in Marx: The Lumpenproletariat and the Proletarian Unnamable.” Economy and Society 31 (3): 434-60. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140220151882.
Walker, David and Daniel Gray. 2007. Historical Dictionary of Marxism. Scarecrow Press.
Williams, Raymond. 2015. Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review, 3rd ed. Verso.