Caution: Heart Eyes

I am so happy Southeast Asians are getting representation. Especially in Korea!! Big applause for Anupam Tripathi and his portrayal of Abdul Ali 💖!! That being said I have issue with the way the actor and character are being treated by the media and fans. Ali is one of the main characters of squid game,yet I see very little fanart of him,and when I do he is white washed! Also he is not listed on the official cast page if you Google the show! And while he has taken a few personal photos with the cast and crew all the official photo shoots that have been done for the show and Netflix do not included him. and if he has taken them they are not being circulated around as much as other characters are online even though he is getting just as much praise as a fan favorite.

This is troublesome because this coupled with the whitewashing fanart suggest a support that often comes when shows pander diversity to seem less racist. Which isn’t surprising as Korea has a huge colorism problem. But I’m getting off point. To clarify I’m not saying all diversity is pandering because the world is more colorful than it ever will be on screen.There is just a certain type of box south east Asian characters get placed in, in media and I’m tired of it. (Now as a black woman I am not going to pretend to know all of their issues. This is just coming from the perspective of lack of diversity in film and the tropes poc often fall into. )

But in media, Southeast Asian and Asians in general get typecast as either the gross goofy friend or the meek, nerdy undesirable character who can’t take control . And while the actors who play them are beautiful, in the shows they are often deemed as unattractive. Ali falling into the latter and his inability to take control proving fatal.

You would think that Korea, a country full of Asian people who see the way Asians have reacted to their portrayal in the media would try to avoid the very same potholes. Yet they even go out their way to make him handicap A plot device that only comes up in one scene where he is told it will make him be viewed as weak. Even after his death in the show he is not mentioned by any of his teammates nor is their a look of mourning. Instead we focus on the fallout between a background couple who were never named.  and by the end of the show we are left to assume his family did not get any help while the family of the man who killed him (and no one liked) did.

I am just one of many people rambling on Tumblr of all places but while I can enjoy the progress people are making in having media reflect the world we live in. That mustn’t stop us from critiquing those inclusions especially if they prove problematic and promote harmful stereotypes. 

ANOTHER BIG THING INTERNATIONAL VIEWERS MAY NOT PICK UP FOR SQUID GAME:

any viewer for squid game will understand that each game/round in the show are all childhood games from korea. this is well known.

but a smaller, unsubtle nod to another korean classic is actually the very last episode. it's titled 'A Lucky Day' or in korean '운수 좋은 날'. a modern classical literature text written by a korean author in 1924 about a rickshaw driver who went out to work despite his sick wife's protests, had a unusually lucky day and earned enough money, but upon returning home found his wife dead.

a big symbolism noted in the book itself is its showcase of rain and the wife's yearning (for warm broth). the very last game/battle between gihun and sangwoo ends in rain. when gihun returns home its raining heavily. gihun gets fish (well albeit rather reluctantly takes it from sangwoo's mom) for his own mother only to find her dead. despite how the games initially seems favourable in gihun's part, his world ends up rotten to the core when he returns back home. everyone he cared for now died.

i just feel like the director-writer made it such that the whole plot is a big nod to old korean classics (be it games or literature) and i just didnt see this noticed in social media so just wanted to share this! very happy to see such symbolism of korean literature in squid game.

this is a tutorial on how not to whitewash and still use ur pastel psds!! believe it or not but photoshop has some nifty tools so let’s get to it