In the era of Capitalism, who is God?

[WARNING]

1. Entire article is a spoiler.

2. Not for the faint-hearted: The film is R18 and so is the analysis. (Graphic themes - nudity and violence)

So, everyone knows Freud said you want to do your mom.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For Sigmund Freud, the human psyche is separated into the conscious and the unconscious. The desire to do your mother is buried deep in the unconscious. What prevents this incestuous desire from surfacing in the conscious is the internalisation of paternal authority.

In other words, your mind has in place a protective mechanism that prevents your hidden desire for your mom, aka your dad’s wife, from materialising because it knows your big bad daddy will most definitely smoke your tiny lil dick.

If you are abhorred to the core by what you just read, Congratulations! You are not crazy! According to Freud, this revulsion against incest is the sign of a successfully contained unconscious, which is the basis of a sane mind. The repression of this desire is also key for the formation of a hetero-normative family which, for Freud, is the foundation of a sane and functional society.

It is what distinguishes us as civilised humans from animals (hamsters, I’m looking at you) and barbarians.

Freud's "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex" was inspired by Sophocles’ OG controversial play, Oedipus the King. Long story short, Oedipus was abandoned as a kid because of a prophecy that he would kill his dad and marry his mom.

Lucky for him, he struck gold and became king because he solved a sphinx's riddle. The crux of the play follows Oedipus's quest to find out who killed the previous king in order to lift the curse of the plague that has fallen on his kingdom.

As the Gods would have it, turns out the ex-king was his dad, he was the killer (although he didn't know), his mom/wife commits suicide and he gouges his eyes out on finding out he fucked his mom.

Capitalism: A Global Religion?

In Park Chan Wook's Oldboy, the Rich are the Gods.

We first meet Park's distinctly unlikeable protagonist, Oh Dae Soo, on the night of his daughter's birthday as he drunkenly causes a commotion at a police station. Soon after he is bailed out by his friend, Oh disappears mysteriously.

The next time we meet Oh he is again kicking up a ruckus; but this time he is painfully alone in a dingy motel room. One year into his imprisonment, Oh finds out that his wife has been murdered and that he is the prime suspect through the TV in his room. He continues to be confined in the same room for 15 years without knowing who did this to him or why he is locked up.

Locked up in this claustrophobia-inducing motel room and made to subsist on a diet consisting solely of Chinese dumplings, Oh is quite literally driven to the brink of madness.

And then one day, he is released back into the world.

The entire premise of the film from then on up to the climax is predicated on Oh Dae Soo’s quest to find out: “Who imprisoned me for 15 years?” and more importantly, “Why?” However, even this pertinent question is masterfully planted into his head, with the location, people around him and even the timing planned down to the smallest detail.

The innocuous Japanese sushi restaurant is later revealed as the stage for Lee's masterplan.

The man who gives him the riddle and the mastermind behind Oh’s suffering appears soon after: Lee Woo Jin – the suave antagonist cloaked in impeccable suits, branded shirts and luxury jackets, always armed with a malignant smile.

Park schedules our second meeting with the delightfully evil chaebol in the centre of his sleek and silver upscale apartment, which overlooks the cityscape of Seoul.

Much gore, violence and some sex later, Oh brings Lee what he thinks is the answer to Lee’s riddle: Oh unintentionally spread a rumour (a true one albeit) of Lee and his sister, Lee Soo Ah, making out, which escalated into a schoolwide slut-shaming exercise and culminated in a phantom pregnancy that pushed Soo Ah to take her own life.

His grand revelation however, is met with snorts and chuckles from Lee who reveals that the real question is not: "Why did Woo-jin imprison me?" but "Why did he release me?"

The answer?

[SPOILER ALERT] Oh Dae Soo and his lovely female companion, Mido, did not meet by coincidence but were hypnotised into falling in love with each other. Oh and another thing, Mido is not just some random young woman, but Oh Dae Soo's long lost daughter. Oh Dae Soo goes berserk.

Park overlays close-ups of Oh and Mido with the lips and pendulum of their hypnotist, creating a psychedelic montage that acquires a hypnotic quality itself.

Like the Gods in Oedipus the King, Lee Woo Jin has absolute control over Oh Dae Soo's fate.

A twisted modern day God-like figure created by wealth and indulgence, Lee monitors Oh's every move, creating an eerie panopticon with his plethora of camera and audio technology.

Lee kidnaps Oh and traps him in a motel room for 15 years. He murders Oh's wife to destroy the nuclear family unit on which the heteronormative balance of sexual energy is predicated. Through hypnosis he reaches deep into the unconscious of Oh and Mido to pull out their hidden incestuous desires. With the well-calculated release of Oh after 15 years, Lee manipulates the extreme emotional, mental and sexual isolation Oh suffered to culminate in the fruition of Oh and Mido's Oedipal union.

In the eerie spirit of surveillance, Lee traces the contours of Mido's body as Oh and Mido lie unaware in post-coital bliss.

Perhaps, the moral of the story is don't sleep with girls your daughter's age because they might actually end up being long-lost daughter.

Watch What You Say

Jacques Lacan, Freud’s (self-proclaimed) favourite student, uses many complicated terms to talk about how language works: Signifier, signified, “signifying chain”, etc. The essence of what Lacan is yammering on about, however, is rather basic – which is that we do not control language but that language exists as its own system. This system has its own dictates and is influenced by the same ideologies – patriarchy, capitalism, etc – that shape every other aspect of human life.

For Lacan, Freud's dutiful student, the signifier that all signifiers look to is the phallus (phallocentrism) – therein dick makes the world go round.

In other words, when we speak, the words coming out of our mouth only offer us the illusion of control but what is actually happening as we speak is that we are entering an existing system of hierarchy and power.

The impetus for Soo Ah's suicide is her alleged phantom pregnancy. However, contrary to common sense and biology, Lee declares that it wasn't his dick that caused this but Oh's tongue. Arguably, Lee projects his deeply internalised incestual guilt and trauma onto Oh. But of more significance is the transference of phallic energy onto the tongue.

Freud and Lacan's theories on desire revolve around the penis because their theories prioritise male subjectivity and fail to take into account class (,women and race). In Oldboy, the shift from the phallus to the tongue brings class and gender into the equation.

Park creates a striking tableau of class politics and power dynamics in this shot as Lee towers over Oh, the latter completely at Lee's mercy.

While subjectivity can refer to autonomy and freedom, it can also refer to subjugation or oppression (Althusser). Since the tongue is the tool through which Oh is initiated into language, it becomes the means of both his male power and his economic enslavement. To Lee, the rumour that Oh spreads becomes an unwitting abuse of male privilege and a transgression that should be punished.

The intersection of socioeconomic power and gender accords Lee with the God-like status he uses to mete out his will. Language becomes the medium for Lee's vengeance through which he imposes the same predicament that resulted in his sister's suicide on Oh Dae Soo.

As the climax crescendos, Oh Dae Soo's desperation to prevent his daughter/lover from suffering the damning anagnorisis he did drives him to the extreme. He executes a gruesome self-mutilation where he snips off his own tongue. And so, the cherry on top of the icing for Lee's grand revenge is served.

The biggest reason why this damn film is M18 or even possibly R21 in some countries.

In Oedipus the King, gouging out his eyes is the only form of agency that Oedipus can grasp at in the face of cruel joke that the Gods play on him. Oedipus chooses to punish himself for his incestual transgressions. But in Oldboy, Oh can't even afford that sliver of self-respect as he is reduced to Lee's dog. His tongue becomes the unruly organ that needs to be castrated for the restoration of order in Lee's twisted world of justice. His body, his father-daughter relationship and his libido are all Lee's property.

His final attempt at autonomy comes in the form of clicking the controller that Lee claimed would end his life. But this controller merely replays the sounds of sexual ecstasy when he and Mido first have sex. Oh is left to despair.

Throughout the film, Lee claims that the device controls his pacemaker and that one press of a button could end his life. He uses the threat of suicide everytime Oh comes close to killing him with the malignant taunt: "Then you'll never know why you were locked up. Are you sure you're okay with that?"

In the era of Capitalism, even free will becomes a commodity. Hence, the Rich in Oldboy become Gods for they can afford the luxury of choice and lord absolute control over the life of the working class.

As different as day and night, Oh Dae Soo and Lee Woo Jin are held together by one unfortunate common thread, incest; the important distinction between their illicit sexual relations however, is agency. Lee and his sister choose to love each other and Lee chooses to take his own life. Oh, on the other hand, is not afforded any such freedom of choice.

Park Chan Wook's modern day Oedipal masterpiece goes far and beyond recycling Sophocles' tragedy. If the more civilised we become the more we repress, Park strips bare all charades of 21st century civility to centralise the cyclicality of the abhorrent primal instinct: incest.

Through interweaving capitalism and class politics with the dark underbelly of human civilisation, Park poses an urgent question: What is the future of an ideology/religion where the Gods not only knowingly engage in such shocking moral depravity but consciously alter the structure of society so as to perpetuate it?

This article is the second of a three-part essay series on Parasite and Oldboy. Part I discusses class politics in Parasite and Part III will deliberate on the endings of both films.

References

1. Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” On the reproduction of capitalism: ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Verso, 2013. Document.

2. Freud, Sigmund. Civilisation and its Discontents. Trans. James Strachey. 1930. Document.

3. Freud, Sigmund. “The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex.” Gay, Peter. The Freud Reader. New York: W W. Norton & Company, Ine., 1989. 142 - 172. Print.

4. Lacan, Jacques. “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud.” Écrits: A Selection. London: Routledge Classics 2001, 1966. Document.

5. Lacan, Jacques. “The Signification of the Phallus.” Écrits: A Selection. London: Routledge Classics 2001, 1966. Document.

6. Oldboy. Dir. Park Chan Wook. 2003.

7. Sophocles. “Oedipus the King.” The Three Theban Plays. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1982. Print.