In the first episode of Squid Game, the protagonist Seong Gi-hun , a former automobile factory worker with crippling debt and a gambling addiction, is trying and failing to get a prize from a claw machine.
Squid Game isn’t the only show about economic desperation holding down a spot in Netflix’s Top 10. Maid, which after only a month has passed The Queen’s Gambit to become the most-watched miniseries in Netflix history, sees young mother Alex walking the tightrope of economic insecurity as she attempts to forge a better life for her daughter, having fled an abusive relationship with only $18 to her name.
It’s the first of many times she will find herself up against a byzantine system of rules and regulations, ostensibly designed to lift people like her out of poverty but demonstrating how challenging it can be to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” when you have no boots to begin with.
When a mysterious organization recruits Gi-hun and 455 other cash-strapped individuals to stake their lives for a large cash prize, its masked Front Man sells it as a second chance at a fair fight: one last opportunity to for impoverished individuals to earn a way out of their dire economic circumstances and repay their crushing debts.
She may be able to earn a living through hard work and grit, but the uphill battle comes with the constant risk of a backsliding—whether in the form of the car crash that’s used against her in a custody play by her child’s abusive father, or the loss of housing that forces her to return to his trailer with Maddie before he once again goes too far.
After playing a lethal rendition of Red Light, Green Light which leaves hundreds dead, the survivors are given the opportunity to leave and end the game, but upon re-entering the outside world, most discover that their odds of survival are just as dire.
This financial scarcity, coupled with Alex’s often-precarious living situation, inserts a sense of quiet desperation into scenes where the people around her have no understanding of what’s at stake: “Six dollars for ice cream?” Alex asks with a wince, forking over half of her assets to Maddy’s preschool teacher.
Yet despite the show’s observance of this grim economic reality—one that is only getting worse, as the wealth gap continues to widen—its conclusion is surprisingly optimistic: Alex succeeds against all odds, and is able to attend college with the help of a daycare grant, student loans, and subsidized housing.
At this point, he has witnessed countless executions; the murders of his friends; husbands and wives turned against each other in the battle to survive, and demands an answer from the Front Man as to the competition’s true purpose–only to be incensed at his explanation that all his suffering served as entertainment for the rich and powerful, who gamble on the players as though they were horses.
This hollow victory is part of what makes Squid Game such a searing capitalist critique: in translating the violence of the system into a life-or-death struggle to survive, we are made to understand that the human cost of winning will never be worth the prize.