Monday 20 January 2020

Explaining the Movie 'Parasite'

First, it's a South Korean production, and it's not likely to be shown much in most theaters around the country.....however, it's now in the hyped-up group for best movie of the year for the Oscars.

The basic script?

There's this South Korean family (father, mother, son and daughter) who are on the bottom level of society in South Korea.  They live in a basement of a highly urbanized neighborhood, and are marginally 'making it'.

One day, junior gets this tip on a job....a tutor job.  It's for a rich and affluent family.   Junior has to go and pretend a lot of things, but it's part of the family tradition of surviving.

The storytelling art is stretched a good bit because they introduce you to this somewhat dysfunctional rich family, and their housekeeper. 

As time goes by, Junior sees a chance to bring his sister into the game....also pretending that she has expertise to fit some role in the rich affluent family. 

Along the way, they see a chance to edge the housekeeper out (getting her fired), and then the mother of the marginalized family enters the scene as the new housekeeper. 

The father? Well, the son figures a way to get the rich family's chauffeur driver fired, and so dad shows up and becomes the new chauffeur. 

So, they are all doing well, and fitting into this scheme.  Then, the curve occurs.  The rich family goes off for a weekend, and the marginalized family decides to party it up at the 'mansion'.

The party goes well, until the old fired housekeeper arrives.  In a matter of ten minutes....this movie changes gears and goes to the weirdest unexpected thing....the modern house has a bomb-shelter in the basement, which the rich affluent family is totally unaware of.  The housekeeper is aware of it.....and there sits the 'secret' to the whole story....the house-keeper's husband. 

This guy has gotten himself into trouble and has had to disappear, and the old housekeeper has kept him there, in a secluded room.....feeding him.  There is no exit out of the room.....unless the outside person moves a cabinet. 

Things go downhill at this point, with a fight between the housekeeper and husband....versus the marginalized family.

I won't go into great detail about the ending, but it's a pretty dramatic ending....with more than a couple of folks dead. 

With twists and turns....I regard Parasite as one of the best stories of the past twenty years. 

The 70-Billion Promise?

What is Bloomberg's announced campaign 'promise'?  As president, he would funnel 70-billion dollars to a blacks-only economic program.  There are some twists to it....the money ONLY goes to the top 100 black neighborhoods of America, and there would have to be a black-run neighborhood 'equality' office in his section chosen.....to help provide information to a White House manager who would be the actual person with the bundle of money to spend.

If you were in the 101st or 129nd black neighborhood?  You would be screwed.

Who would form up the black-run neighborhood 'equality' office?  That's a mystery item in this and you can figure that various people will claim the title, and infighting will occur with one group fighting the other to be the 'equality' manager. 

Frequent trips to DC?  I would take a guess that each top 'equality' manager will get a free trip to DC for five days....each quarter, and mostly sit around in some conference room to gab with other equality managers.  A 'friend' authorized to accompany the equality manager?  More than likely.

The odds that 25 billion of this money is totally wasted?  It's a fairly high chance.

Me running this?  I would just cut a check for each black adult (over 18) for $500 a year for four years.  Just hand them the money.....rather than bringing this stupid equality manager corruption scheme into being. 

Added to this promise by Bloomberg......there would be an additional one-million black homeowners.  There weren't a lot of details over how they'd make this work.  One might assume that HUD would be given more cash, and told to go out and find blacks....lower the down-payment structure and ease those blacks easily into the heavily financed home. 

The odds of a 2008 'meltdown' occurring again, and throwing these blacks out of their newly acquired homes?  I'd say there's a fair chance of this happening.  The potential for the home-gimmick to also be tied to equality managers?  It's best not to bring up this possibility. 

Then he said this.....somehow....someway....there would be 100,000 new black-owned small business operations.  How?  That was left entirely blank.  My humble guess is that for government services and procurement....there would be some forcing nature put upon government operations to buy on x-amount of services from black-owned businesses, period.  The fact that you might have a company rigged up to appear black, with a black 'CEO' but be entirely owned by some Latino or white guy?  Don't bring that up.

Some blacks will latch onto this.....hyping the just-nature of this deal.  The problem is....for decades, in highly urbanized areas (Baltimore is a good example)....literally billions have been delivered in each decade, and it's basically failed to make any difference or change.  This seventy-billion?  It'd quietly disappear, if Bloomberg is the President, and show no real change in the end, if you regard past history as being reliable.