A Machine for Living: Parasites Commentary on the Dystopian Implications of Contemporary Residential Architecture and Life.
By: Ayanda, Brer Rabbit
Tags: Society, Filmmaking, Consumerism, Perspective, Architecture

Parasite, a 2019 Oscar-Winning South Korean film about the relationship between two South Korean families from contrasting socio-economic backgrounds is at its core a social commentary on the widening and deepening class conflict and inequality in contemporary society. The premise of the film is on how the lower-class Kim family infiltrates the lives of the upper-class Park family as they begin to subsist on them through various odd jobs they’ve been employed to do. The way this unfolds throughout the film, however, is what elevates it’s relatively simple concept to cinematic and pop-cultural relevance.

The film achieves its resonance through an emphasis on the intimate, personal and mundane routines of the two family’s domestic lives in order to deliver its commentary. The vehicle for this commentary is driven largely by the architecture of the film where according to Lee (2019) 60% of the story unfolds. It uses this approach to continuously draw attention to the functional, environmental and socio-economical inefficiencies of modern architecture and the role it plays in perpetuating inequality which we will explore.

The lower-class Kim family living in their semi-basement apartment.

“For me blocking and framing are prioritised; on the other hand, architects build spaces for people to actually live in and thus consider how the environment informs the way the inhabitants live in the space.” Cogley (2020).

This is the approach described and used by production designer Lee Ha-Jun during a press interview regarding the films set designs which were meticulously designed and built from scratch and his highlight of the fundamental differences in design approaches between Architects and Production Designers. The analysis will however, highlight an increasing number of aspects of a production designers’ approach to set design that architects may have inadvertently adopted to varying effects on the profession's approach to design. An approach which could be attributed to how architecture is portrayed and consumed in popular media, prioritizing principles of shots, stills, blocking and framing over designing spaces for people to live in.

On set shooting of parasite in reconstructed their semi-basement apartment set design principles of framing and blocking.

The role of Contextualism in Traditional Architectural Design.

Context is derived from the Latin word “Contexere” which means the weaving together (Cizgen. 2012) whilst Contextualism is the philosophical doctrine behind context that emphasises the importance of its inquiry in a particular question and that all knowledge is context-sensitive. (Buckwalter,2010: 1) In the case of the Kim family’s context, the film opens with an immediate introduction to their architectural surroundings and experiences living in South Koreas “Banjiha” which are semi-basement apartments constructed in the 1970s during the Korean war as bunkers later converted to rentable apartments in the 1980s as a solution to the South Korean housing crises. (Bedingfield, 2020). Today they continue to be occupied by Koreas lower-class who are unable to afford conventional apartments or homes.

A scene depicting the lived experience of the Kim family in the reconstructed semi-basement apartment.

Of how the Banjihas develop in South Korea Lee details that “…the people who live in those neighbourhoods spend decades fixing and repairing things, and a lot changes from how the houses used to be. So, the neighbourhood started expanding and coming together one by one, eventually creating the details of the space.” (O’Falt, 2019). According to this an intimate relationship between the user and their context exists in these neighbourhoods. The users are informed by the context and vice versa, the two in dialogue, continuously shaping each other. Traditionally films are shot “on location” when attempting to capture the atmosphere of a place in order to portray a level of authenticity and realism to a scene. However to authentically and accurately portray the realism of the dynamic relationship in the Banjihas a contextualist approach was used to develop the set, where instead of trying to build Kitaek’s semi-basement neighbourhood, Lee decided they should just bring it over using existing elements sourced from existing neighbourhoods (Park, 2019). The ethnographic process of recreating these conditions and neighbourhood highlights the value and importance of engaging with context in order to understand space and place. A quality that is comparable to the value traditionally placed on the importance of Genius Loci or “Spirit of a Place”, an architectural concept grounded on the idea that the “…spirit of the place is of utmost importance [in architecture], because buildings do not exist separately from place” (Chipova,2012).

A semi-basement apartment neighbourhood constructed in the 1970s in South Korea portraying the diversity of structures as a result of continuous change and development by the residents.

The effects of American Cultural Globalization on Contemporary Architectural Design.

In contrast, the affluent Park family and their modernist contemporary home are introduced to the viewer when the son of the less affluent Kim family applies as an English tutor to their daughter. Upon this introduction the film details that “The Park family fetishizes western culture- their son plays cowboys and indians, the family wear pyjamas (not typical of according to Bong of Korea)” a fetishism that permeates through every respect of their boxy, minimalist, open-plan residence which would look right at home in the hills of Los Angeles. (O’ Falt, 2019). This theme is continuously articulated throughout the film as a comment on the effects of American cultural globalization where “modern architecture is perceived by potential buyers as the culturally significant, highbrow form of architecture, revered by the educated and glossy magazines” (Bedingfield. 2020)­.

Interior shot of modernist inspired designed and built residence of the affluent Park family for the film.

The Park house although as meticulously planned as the Kim semi-basement was in comparison relatively simple to replicate as an authentic modern contemporary house, largely due to how the contrasting design approaches contended with context. For example, The director showed Lee “a simple floor plan he had sketched whilst writing the script’’ (Graft 2019) as reference for the production designer to base his design on. Lee of the process outlines how he“…looked at house designs and even his son’s toy Lego blocks to imagine the design and layout of Park house and tried to refrain from sticking to a particular architectural style”, designing the Park house to feature a number of modernist details (Cogley, 2020). The process is one that is devoid of contextualism in comparison to the Kim semi-basement apartment reconstruction. The home, as a result, is essentially a collage. An assembled kit of on-trend modernist architectural elements by Lee yet succeeds in masquerading on and off-screen as a marvel of contemporary architectural work. A quality the film goes on to playfully mock by establishing early on that the house was designed by famous architect — who upon research the viewer discovers is entirely fictional- Namgoong Hyeonja (Bedingfield, 2020).

The architectural critic Kate Wagner aptly labelled these collage type homes who utilize this approach to design “McModerns”, a play on the term “McMansions” in America which are large mass-produced dwellings composed of a hodgepodge of architectural styles to evoke connotations of taste. Where the “McMansions” were the indulgent, inefficient and architectural obsession of the ’80s and ’90s in America, the “McModerns” are the architectural obsession of upwardly mobile millennials globally (Wagner, 2017).

An interior shot of the McModern approached design of the park house comprised of a variety of modernist element and details.

Wagner (2017) warns of the implications of this approach, stating that “Traditional design can be the refuge of the marginally competent; with modern design, there is nowhere to hide.” She elaborates further that within traditional design there were “rules of proportion, balance and massing most of which are ignored today but were in books going back to Vitruvius” that protected architects and owners from bad design but with modern design these rules don’t exist. It is “every designer for himself” which is what makes contemporary architecture deceptively hard to execute and even harder to assess as successful in as a design intervention. Modern contemporary architectures ability to masquerade as good design behind a collage of modernist details are the effects of western cultural globalization, an ability both expressed in the film and reiterated by Wagner (2019). The increasing prevalence of the McModern approach to design and their disregard for the importance of contextualism result in implications that extend to the functional, environmental and socio-economical aspects modern life.

The Functional, Environmental and Socio-economic Effects of the American McModern Home and Lifestyle.

According to the US Census Bureau, the average size of new homes built in the United States grew 62 percent from 1,660 square feet (154 sqm) in 1973 to 2,687 square feet in 2015, (250 sqm) an increase of 1,027 square feet (95 sqm). (Geffner, 2017). This American trend is especially important within the context of the film and how it influenced the size of the home as American Western Culture through popular media is the most dominant force in cultural globalization (Louch et, al 1998). According to research American cultural products and culture generally tend to be popular with people of very different societies (Louch et, al 1998) such as Eastern, Asian and African cultures where these ideals materialize in excessive, hyper-consumerist versions often portrayed in popular American media. This hyper-consumerist version of Western Culture fetishized by the Park Family is the one portrayed in Parasite and the Park home and as the film reveals are unsustainable in these contexts.

Functionally, the Park family’s dependence on outsourcing labour to the entire Kim family to ensure the upkeep of their home and western lifestyles places emphasis on how functionally unsustainable the architecture and lifestyle it accommodates is and becomes the main driver behind the infiltration. The Kims’ in the film portray a closeness and sense of community ground in the Confucian ideals of how to treat each other (Ward, 2020) which is “pointedly set against the relative isolation of the Parks who don’t often share the same shot much less the same room” (Dargis, 2019) by the director, a by-product of their western lifestyles. The Kim family takes advantage of the isolation as each character has spaces that they take over and infiltrate. The son Ki-Woo takes over as a tutor followed by the sister as art therapist, the father as chauffeur and lastly the mother as housekeeper. The last infiltration occurring when the wealthy matriarch of the park family in desperation fails to maintain the home when the previous housekeeper is fired. The unfolding becomes a commentary on the class and cultural conflict produced by these Western and Eastern ideals as the two families attempt to co-exist through exploiting each other’s contextual circumstances.

CAD model shot of the interior layout and spaces in the Park Family residence.

Environmentally, the natural environment as a design element and commodity afforded to some is a motif that is extensively explored through how it affects the two families. For the poor Kim family, the natural elements are a commodity they can neither afford nor contend with, Lee reflects this reality where “The poorer you are, the less sunlight you have access to, and that’s just how it is in real life as well: You have a limited access to windows…and with semi-basement homes, you have a very limited amount of sunlight you get during the day — maybe 15 or 30 minutes” (O’falt, 2020).

The recreation of the Kim family’s semi-basement apartments depicting the limited access to sunlight and the importance of the relationship that they have to it.

In the Park Residence however, the natural elements are trivial, controllable and a form of entertainment due to their excessive wealth. Large windows are used to capture the view, sunlight and rainfall at the expense of heating and cooling principles. Wagner (2019) of the environmental effect of modern contemporary design states that “if modern design is really hard, modern green sustainable design is even harder” and attributes the causes to the fact that “designers add jogs, projections, and giant windows because they have few elements to play with” however as Parasite points out this could also be attributed to the fact that the natural environment doesn’t have to be responsibly contended with by those with wealth who can afford not to and subsequently the architects employed to design their homes don’t have to either. This effect has negative implications on the environment because they all increase heat loss and gain, thermal bridges, and mess up air barriers and insulation, implications visibly present in the park family’s residence.

The Park family’s privileged relationship to sunlight and it’s significance in the film is illustrated in the architecture of their living space.

Lastly, in an orchestrated rainfall scene Bong Joon-ho contrasts the effects the elements have on the different classes. The same torrential rainfall ”…doesn’t affect the rich Park families’ fun when camping in the backyard yet it floods the Kim home leaving the toilet bubbling over with sewage and the drenched family wading through it.”(Haigh, 2020) It’s a sobering comment on how the socio-economic status of people determines the experiences and meanings they attach to the natural elements, a defining highpoint in the film stressing the importance and relevance of contextualism.

Torrential rain flood and destroy the entire Kim family apartment during heavy rainfall in the film.

Scene the day after the rainfall devastates the Kim family’s semi-basement apartment depicting how the rainfall was experienced and perceived from the Park family’s point of privilege.

In meticulous fashion, Parasite illustrates on multiple levels through its own process of developing the sets and its plot the importance of context and contextualism and that much of the work that graces magazines and popular media must be approached with scepticism and critical enquiry when used as reference. The absence of universally agreed-upon principles in contemporary architectural design and the increased prevalence of the “McModern” collage approach to architecture perpetuated globally by American cultural globalization allow bad design to easily masquerade as good design, which has real functional, environmental and socio-economic implications. It highlights a potential need for increased enquiry when teaching and assessing contemporary architectural work as architecture is not immune to the effects of hyper-consumerism and cultural globalization and if unchecked may be inadvertently reinforcing and perpetuating it.