Hunger Games with Cheese.
I saw Battle Royale as a subbed bootleg around 20 years ago. Fantastic B-movie, and I understand some of the young actors got some notable roles as they got older (Takeshi Kitano was there because he was Takeshi Kitano), but it’s still a B-movie. Good time though, even today.
As an aside on Takeshi, for those who want to go down a rabbit hole, dig into “Takeshi’s Challenge” on the Nintendo Famicom. That game is a trip.
“You know what they call the Hunger Games in France? Battle Royale with Cheese.”
Too many things going on, typed it in backwards!
https://genius.com/John-travolta-and-samuel-l-jackson-royale...
Last year I was chatting with the 20 year old son of a friend, and he didn't know what Highlander was. I mean...
Well there was only the one movie.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/author-will-wight/anima...
It was "the third highest-grossing Japanese film of 2001". "At the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Battle Royale was nominated for nine awards, including Picture of the Year, and won three of them".
Hardly a b-movie, except in the sense "not a Hollywood blockbuster crapfest"
People focus on Kitano too much he was just a secondary character in that movie.
For anyone that misses that jewel of japanese game show, they have rebooted the franchise and the new series are available in Amazon prime.
Yeah, if it's not an American movie, it's some cheap shit! /s
My brother, it was nominated for nine Japanese Academy Awards, it was helmed by one of Japan's top directors, is an adaptation of a best-selling novel, is regarded by critics as one of the best films of the era, has high production values, stars arguably the most famous actor in Japan, was scored by a famous and prolific composer (you might have heard his music in another movie called Django Unchained), etc.
That's not even getting into the economics of film in Japan. A successful film in Japan nowadays earns around $10M on a budget of half a million. BR, produced nearly twenty years ago, had a budget nearly ten times that much and grossed triple.
Suffice it to say, Battle Royale is a high production cost movie, which forecloses the possibility of it being a B movie.
and because I'm just some guy,
https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/japan-ethics-of-making-ch...
The best films I’ve ever watched, that which had the biggest effect on me, were TV-plays and self-funded documentary-films.
That may be true for some but at the really high end, writers have the resources to so some fun things. Even many high-end marvel-style movies have hidden jokes and themes that 99% of viewer don't ever pick up on.
The story is similar to a Robert Sheckley's short story from 1952,"The Prize of Peril" adapted into a movie in Germany in 1970 "Das Millionenspiel" and in France in 1982 "Le prix du danger" (same year as King's Running Man novel)
I would say "The Prize of Peril" is the grandfather of these books, movies and series, as far as I know. Battle Royale is the start of another branch, though : it's not one vs many anymore, it's many vs many.
edit: But yes, Battle Royale is a great movie, and Hunger Games totally rode its coattails.
But I don't feel hard done by, I'm sure many people had similar ideas around that time, and I never executed. I also have no idea how I would get a large multiplayer game off the ground without funding. The idea of making even a two-player game scares me.
But PUBG began as a series of mods for Arma 3, before moving to its own game with its own monetization (and running like absolute crap on release too).
I think there have been versions of PUBG mods for Arma for much longer than when I discovered it.
"Every year, on the first day of May, one hundred teenage boys meet for an event known through- out the country as "The Long Walk." Among this year's chosen crop is sixteen-year-old Ray Gar- raty. He knows the rules: that wamings are issued if you fall under speed, stumble, sit down. That after three wamings... you get your ticket. And what happens then serves as a chilling reminder that there can be only one winner in the Walk— the one that survives"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royal_(professional_wre...
I especially like the “minority rule” game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game
PUBG was inspired by the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds
Fortnite added Battle Royale game mode because they saw how popular PUBG was.
https://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/2q7xie/hey_folks_this...
If so, then it is ultimately named for the pro wrestling free-for-all format. The author says in the foreword that's how he chose the name for the book.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/445444/origin-of...
I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions, but it would be more interesting IMO if the contestants were in debt from student loans, credit cards with 25% interest rates, medical debt, and so on. But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company.
I think my take on that is even more cynical: they'd be absolutely happy to make a story along those lines as long as they could monetize it successfully.
I thought the first season of Squid Game was wonderful and it depressed me to no end to see how thoroughly the whole thing was monetized. I get it, it's the way of the world, but seeing Netflix commission a "real life" game show, kids in Squid Game outfits at Halloween, the fact that the second season largely exists because the creator was financially screwed out of the first... I don't think it's possible to make a broader argument about any of this stuff without the distributors immediately undermining it.
I wasn't aware of that until watching this recently: The Capitalist Body Horror of Squid Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxNnAAbKk4
You've never heard of Breaking Bad? More recently, Emily the Criminal is an absolutely superb movie and great example of exactly this - Aubrey Plaza's best role in fact.
""Saddled with student debt and unable to find work, a college graduate becomes involved in a credit card scam, acting as a dummy shopper and buying increasingly risky products with stolen credit cards.""
For the medical debt angle, the macabre and outrageous 'Repo Man'(2010) is a pitch-dark and fascinating examination of the end-game of medical insurance.
""Set in the near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit, it revolves around a man who struggles to make the payments on a heart he has purchased.""
Breaking Bad does not feature medical debt, or even medical costs that fhe character does not have ready access to funds to pay.
It does feature hubris, the traditional central feature of tragedy, though.
Every goal he wanted (getting enough money to pay for college for his children, paying living expenses for a decade, etc) he met and still continued.
He even says so in the last episode, he did it because it made him feel alive.
The initial diagnosis is that it is terminal and without useful treatment options and his rationalization for cooking meth is to leave a nest egg. The high cost treatment comes up later and he immediately turns down an offer of no-strings payment in favor of cooking more meth to pay for it (Epsiodes 4-5).
The only medical service he pays for out of drug money before turning down the offer to pay for all treatment is the initial evaluation with the highly-rated oncologists that his wife schedules on her own without a clear plan of how they’ll pay for it from which the treatment plan originates.
All the despicable actions he did during the show (watching his partners GF OD and not intervening, running over two people with a car, poisoning a child, letting a child get murdered, collaborating with neo nazis, and selling Jesse into slavery) were not done to help his family but for his own selfish gains.
That’s like the entire point of the show, selfish man wants his own nut at the cost of his loved ones.
I get his evolution as a character as that's the primary theme, but it never would even be a thing is he didn't have cancer.
You remove this factor, no Heisenberg. Full stop.
The cancer diagnosis and its implications for him and his family is what sparked this. And he continued further down that path due to believing he was going to actually die. If you recall when he decided to get treatment and found out he was in remission, there was a moment of "wtf have I done" for his character.
The Gray Matter backstory, and his former cofounders re-entrance in his life due to perceived medical bills explained the peeling the onion that led to his shift.
Admittedly, the focus on debt was very small. The Korean shows put a lot more emphasis on it.
But it is the story of a father doing everything possible to make sure his family is taken care of after he is gone.
I really hate the twist ending in that movie. Please, screenwriters stop doing that, it ceased to be original like 30 years ago. Aside from the ending, good movie.
To stay on topic, Repo! The Generic Opera (2008) is another film - a musical, even! - that covers a very similiar topic.
Zydrate comes in a little glass vial...
In asking for a critique of debt in general, you are asking for a different show.
Squid Games is gets a lot of attention from the games and mass deaths of the contestants, but ultimately it is a Korean show using a different "language of film" than international audiences might be used to. Think of how silly a lot of hollywood tropes are if you stand back and look.
Try "My Mister" if you want a different take on a destitute character.
I think you are confusing these US specific phenomenons with global ones.
On the contrary, debts from failed businesses (as used in the series) are incredibly common here - probably the most common kind of debt that makes people spiral out of society. Korea has a very high percentage of people who try at some point to start some kind of small business, much higher than the US or Western Europe. Of course this can easily go wrong.
So yes, the debts used in the series are apt for Korea.
Technically it's not debt (treatment hasn't occurred, no money is owed), but medical issues are still a big deal even in countries with more accessible healthcare.
Of course it is “Korean” in that the employees and actors are all Korean, but the show seems to be entirely funded by Netflix. Which means Netflix obviously had a say in the content.
I applaud Netflix for actually embracing diversity of content and having great shows produced outside Hollywood, and the results speak for themselves (not just Squid Game).
Everything I read about the show indicates that it was directly a Netflix production that didn’t exist until the writer brought the script to Netflix’s office in Seoul. Do you have information that says otherwise?
I also think you’re right about the global resonance. If this was purely a Korean issue I don’t think it would be as darkly appealing as it is. As an American who is almost done paying off a lot of student debt - I definitely identify with the characters, although their desperation is much worse than mine. I absolutely remember believing that if I didn’t succeed I would have to cut life short. If a few things hadn’t broken my way - I’d probably be in that squid game too.
For the other 50% of Netflix's users outside of the US, they can relate to your problems as much or as little as you can relate to those of Koreans in the show.
The idea that fully-written scripts are just made without any input or pushback from the funders/producers is not how the film industry works.
But the point is that Netflix specifically buys productions from different countries, to cater to the fans of those cultures. If they wanted to have a US-ified script, they wouldn't need to go to such lengths, they could just hire some us-asian writer to get another ethnic US-series.
Netflix funded the production. Netflix has an influence on what the script is.
At no point was I interested in arguing about whether it was a “Korean show” or not.
[0]Example: https://about.netflix.com/ja/news/asura-trailer-special-art
This is actually illegal in South Korea
> medical debt
South Korea has a single-payer system
> student loan debt
I think this is much less of a problem in S Korea than in the US.
As a result, I have trouble having any sympathy for characters portrayed in stuff like Squid Game. They brought it on themselves through their own greed, right? That is what we are supposed to think, I suppose. The show touches only mildly on why Player 456 needs to gamble on horses, showing that his mother is sick and that he is rather destitute after a failed marriage and being laid off, presumably unable to find different work. We're supposed to empathize with that position, but it certainly does not reflect my own debt struggle, nor that of anyone who is suffering the same fate I am which is driven by a lending system that turns us into indentured servants. I don't gamble or take any real financial risks. I just made the mistake of being born with a lifelong medical condition, trying to buy a house and a decent car, and put my kid through college, and I suddenly find myself in a very deep hole with zero chance of escaping before I die. Of course, on screen, that's not as sexy as debt from crime and gambling.
You didn't watch the show then? This simply isn't the case.
Irresponsibility -> debt is just one of the multiple motivations for the fictional contestants. Others include medical costs for family members, being impoverished by someone else's bad actions, being threatened for a debt incurred by someone else, and so on. You're arguing against a simplistic and inaccurate summary of the story by generalizing from the main character.
One of the contestants in Squid Game fell into [AFFLICTION] because of a [FAILED ACTION], and several of them are there because of [AFFLICTION2] caused by [FAILED ACTION2].
Then you just find/replace for internationalization
Squid Game is taking advantage of indebted people. It is an evil organization taking advantage of circumstances and human flaws. That is why gambling should be heavily regulated, and that slot machines shouldn't be appearing in convenience stores.
Just because someone self inflict a wound on themselves doesn't make it OK for an organization to make the wound worse.
Unfortunately this does not seem to be a belief held by everyone. In the US, it seems there are millions who believe being born dumb or poor or getting addicted to gambling is a valid reason to suck the life out of your for profit.
Student loan and medical debt don't have the kind of ticking clock that the issues in Squid Game (whether its payments on debt to gangsters, anticipated costs without which a loved on won’t get medical care, or whatever) have.
For the same reason (wanting someone to look down on) the one group that reliably votes against minimum wage bumps is the group whose pay is below the new minimum wage, but above the old minimum wage.
The show doesn't really interrogate that beyond that point, but if anything honestly points to a future where something like it is real - except it will be televised and everyone will watch and it won't be secret.
I think you’re wrong, anything can be used for making money. I don’t think any major studio would refrain from funding anything if they felt it would profit.
Turns out saddling young people up with 50k debt for a mediocre degree is rather demoralising.
I love watching it for the survival strategies and the human endurance aspects, but it does feel a bit dirty when they start talking about how badly they need the money as they try not to starve for a few more days.
I don't really get this point (which I often see repeated online). There are tons of TV shows, books, movies, songs, etc, which include scathing critiques of various aspects of "the system" (government, the financial sector, the medical sector, the class system generally, etc). Many of these are produced and promoted by "big business". There is no centralised control over what gets funded, businesses will fund and produce what is likely to make them money. If shitting on capitalism will make them money they'll happily sell you that.
The people in the games are there because they are gambler types on some level. A person with student loan or credit card debts wouldn’t be a very interesting player, a person with medical debt might not even care about paying back their medical debt enough to risk their life.
These people want to make a fortune to pay off their debt and live lavishly.
It's depressing that we're still stuck framing gambling as "irresponsible decisions" as online gambling becomes more and more ubiquitous and deliberately drives addiction.
And if you disagree that they were all very left wing: college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take! So either side will happily highlight that, although perhaps only one will suggest why that is.
You Americans really have lost the touch of reality with regards to politics, that's for sure.
Tech companies are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the world. They do what they do in order to increase profit. Nothing left-leaning about that.
In a few days your new president and his gamer buddy takes office, and they both have their own social media networks.
Works the same for other things too ;)
Not that it's a necessarily bad thing (invisible hand of market of Smith goes as an example), but it's a thing.
> college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take!
Sure, the left wing take is to have high quality education paid for via tax dollars and thus being universally available, same as healthcare should be.
No, none of the big for profit, often venture-capital funded or publicly traded, firms in the tech industry have been advocates for any of the pro-labor and anti-capitalist ideologies that define the left. Being (often only performatively) on the Democratic side of some of the culture war issues between the centrist Democratic Party and the hard-right Republican Party while spending lots of money to keep the Democratic Party strongly committed to corporate capitalism doesn't make them even slightly left-leaning.
To answer your question: because a good portion of a company like Netflix’s annual revenue is derived from credit card payments that are sort of “forgotten” monthly bills. These companies don’t benefit at all from a financially-literate and secure customer base.
There have been many, and still are, under the most common definitions of left-wing.
Of course you'll find zero of them on the NASDAQ. That indeed is a modern-day impossibility.
No. They have their own thing going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology.
> During the 1990s, members of the entrepreneurial class in the information technology industry in Silicon Valley vocally promoted an ideology that combined the ideas of Marshall McLuhan with elements of radical individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics, using publications like Wired magazine to promulgate their ideas. This ideology mixed New Left and New Right beliefs together based on their shared interest in anti-statism, the counterculture of the 1960s, and techno-utopianism.
I don't see the need for this sort of poor attitude in phrasing. I have some idea about left wing politics, and also have seen a lot of very left-leaning policies enforced at social media companies and other related companies. You might say some people are neoliberal, or being very left wing (or perhaps "progressive") between 2010-2020 was just the most money-making stance for a neoliberal, but that doesn't seem particularly relevant.
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399591/wobblies-of-the-wor...
First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that. In fact it's the epitome of individualism when you're focused on what makes you different from them instead of focusing on what is common between the general population (which they are part of). Labeling it as left has been a very successful psy-op to create a controlled dissidence (which is not dissident at all).
Why do you think megacorps like Disney et al are so adamant on pushing this agenda? Everything a company does, everything, is calculated. This is not "neoliberalism" like sibling comments are mentioning. This is a very calculated power move to shift the narrative (and how it's labeled as "left" is proof that it succeeded).
The only alternative explanation would be that they're trying to capture a greater market share, but it has been proven time and time again that it has only led to flopping (by pushing away the majority of non-identitary people while not even capturing the already small minorities) and yet they still push for it. Why?
By making vast swaths of "revolutionary" youngsters (as all youngsters are) fight for this nonsensical cause, they have effectively suppressed any possibility of a real struggle for power that might topple the actual elites.
And as a neat side-effect this identitarism has managed to make the everyday man focus on their peers as the source of all their woes. Corpos like that. It prevents Mangiones that might take action against their actual oppressors. Energy is finite, so they're trying to make it be wasted on intra-class instead of inter-class politics.
Stop playing their game.
Identity politics, at least as I've seen them over and over again, look at identifying an individual's struggles / privileges / speech rules / etc through their membership of groups, not their individual struggles or advantages.
Have you considered why the pride flag (a rainbow, metaphor for inclusion of all "colors", has no need for extensions) now has so many additional flags superimposed on it?
Wikipedia's "List of gender identities" has dropdowns for letters of the alphabet (and growing).
None of this is accidental.
It's identical. People with debt invited to a game and a chance at loads of cash. People die in the game and some get enslaved. Rich people sit in another room and laugh while they watch people suffer. There's even a game where the "contestants" walk high up and fall to their deaths.
Then the main character gets called back into the game and you get a season 2.
This dates back to at least Ancient Rome, where slaves would fight each other in the Colosseum for the amusement of spectators. Many people volunteered (actually seeking enslavement) because being a gladiator led to glory and riches.
Flamma was granted his freedom 4 times and refused it every time! He refused to quit and ended up dying in his 30s. The idea that someone would voluntarily rejoin the game show of death is very realistic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamma
That being said, many gladiators didn't really have the skills to pursue a different career after retirement.
Same applies to many, many soldiers — and it's not just about the skills.
It's just that things don't matter as much anymore outside of that environment.
As an adult, it makes me wonder if that's what we were doing though; setting up gladiator games to try and feel a dominance over something in a world where we were constantly the bottom of the hierarchal ladder. The above step on the below, so to speak.
The card game with the slave (I love that one) and the “waza” in the background when the main character doubts himself are some iconic missing adaptations. :)
Here is an online adaptation of it: https://e-card-kaiji.netlify.app/
One of my favorite things about manga is that regardless of what genre a series might seem to fall into, it might also involve in depth explanations of topics either real or fictional. That combination of soap opera and explainer is so common in Manga and seemingly so rare outside of it.
And on the opposite end of the spectrum, because that level of instruction comes with the genre, it can be amazing for a creator to purposefully avoid that. Taiyo Matsumoto is a weird vibey almost abstract artist, and when he took on the classic sports manga structure in Ping Pong he intentionally explains nothing about how Ping Pong works lets the whole story play out via the main characters repressed feelings.
Manga rules.
Coincidentally, they both are from 1996. Though, the Battle Royale-novel was only finished in 1996, while Kaijis first chapter was released in 1996. So maybe they had the same inspiration, or somehow the novel was influenced by the Manga, even though it was so early in its fame.
Kind of mirrors what's going on in many countries.
The art style is "special" but the content of the anime and the manga (because you'll want more of it) are top notch.
Kaiji is amount my favorite anime (I haven’t read the manga). It is very obvious the Squid Game creator borrowed heavily from Kaiji, and ripped off the overarching theme, but aside from the glass platform game was there really a lot else taken from Kaiji? Were there any other games or story arcs in the manga that were stolen?
(I haven’t seen season two of Squid Game yet btw).
Everything has inspirations. Truly new ideas are rare and often the first author to a truly new idea doesn't necessarily do a great job with it, and certainly can't explore it fully in any one work. But there's definitely a category of "direct ripoffs with little more than the proper nouns filed off". I'm not even targeting that at the current discussion; it has been observed by many people that rather a large number of "Hallmark movies" are literally just the same story, beat for beat, with the details of the participants in the love triangle slightly altered and recast. There's entire genres that are arguably just ripoffs of the genre template, over and over.
The atmosphere is quite unique and for 1996 it was so innovative.
Hunger Games is the one closer to Battle Royale, while Squid Games is just Kaiji with better presentation.
The pink caskets (which might be my favourite visual element) feel like they would be at home in the world of Battle Royale, but IMO feel way too dark humor for Hunger Games.
Battle Royale and Squid Game both feature characters reaching quivering ecstacy when players die. My memory could be rose colored at this point, but Hunger Games just wasn't that dark.
In the second and third Hunger Games novels, the traps and obstacles are designed to torture, maim, and/or inflict painful deaths, for the viewing pleasure of those watching (in the second) or just to inflict pain (in the third). At the end of the final novel, the "good" guys murder a bunch of innocent civilians (including children) in order to assure their ascendancy to power.
In terms of darkness, the Hunger Games is darker than Battle Royale. But it's not a direct comparison, since Battle Royale is a satire and Hunger Games is not.
The presentation comparison is apples to oranges. Kaiji just wouldn’t work as live action (although they tried with a movie) as it relays heavily on the affordances of anime/manga as a medium to present Kaiji’s inner world and show visual metaphors for his emotions. Without that you take away the substance. It’s fair to say Squid Game steals a lot of themes and ideas from Kaiji, but it’s certainly not just Kaiji with different wrapping (unless there is something I am missing having not read the manga).
That being said, I was thinking of the article when I wrote my comment, they should've featured Kaiji instead of Battle Royale since it's the main inspiration behind the show.
I know there was a reward for winning and the fundamental reason for the Battle Royale was economic, but I always got the vibe the government was the problem.
Like, the kids in Battle Royale weren't exempt if they were rich, right? It was a lottery. Squid Game only appeals to people struggling under capitalism.
Love that film.
Another one is Ready Player One borrowed from Sword Art Online, which borrowed from .hack, which borrowed from Serial Experiments Lain, which drew upon a rich pantheon of cyberpunk novels.
The setup is absolutely bonkers: Something, something, things are going bad in the future so we have children battle each other - even a seemingly well functioning class.
But to hell with that. It is quickly forgotten, once the game starts. Why the kids starts killing each other is much better shown in Battle Royale than why contestants in squid game accept the game.
My point is, those things actually don't need an explanation for the movie to be good. The director just said "fuck those details, let's get to where these kids gets weapons in hand"
It is actually a good one from a storytelling perspective. The entire point of the story is that kids kill each other for no good reason, so give a reason that is not good. Not giving a reason would have the reader wonder about the "why", which is not the point.
Of course the core issue isn't the kids, but that's not what the system was trying to solve. It evolve in a less bloody way (by instituting a system where teachers can basically dictate grades independent of test results), but Battle Royale is definitely a product of its time, and some teachers would probably have been totaly fine with that solution.
The antihero used Futures and committed fraud in a company, with the police after him and significant debts to repay as well.
That's why contestants in squid game join - they're all in so much debt that theyve even signed away rights to their body. That's why the contestants can get in and choose to stay.
The premiere was so cool. They served Red Bull and vodka with these little commemorative battle royal cans. Some people got plastic umbrellas like the one in the movie.
At the time I feel like it was the most mind-blowing movie experience I'd ever had. Nobody was expecting what was coming, and there's something extra special about experiencing that together with a theatre full of people.
before Squid Game there was Liars' Game
and that one teaches muuuch better lesson - that players can cooperate so that nobody loses, no matter how much organizers want to make players clash with each other
What some people have missed is that this is its own sub-genre of horror.
You have shows like Alice in Borderland that doesn’t get nearly enough love (and is far better than Squid Games in my opinion).
Cube is a late 90s movie that’s on this theme too. You could argue the SAW movies are too, though I’m not personally a fan of those.
There are also plenty of comics on this theme too. The aforementioned Alice in Borderlands is based on a manga by the same title.
I just watched season 2 of Squid Games and whilst it was fun and I enjoyed it, it didn't really seem to add much to the series.
To be fair, they seem to also name Liar Game, as also Kaiji.
A quick search shows me S3 is happening this year which makes my mind boggle because I though S2 wrapped that whole thing up nicely and completely.
They both seem to go back a ways though - AiB is based on Manga that was serialised starting in 2010 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Borderland
And SG was apparently first written in 2009.
And yes, I agree it should get more attention! There are obvious similarities, but AiB appeals to me more in its mysteriousness.
I'm very surprised the post's author finds the book shallow (he uses "lacking in depth" I think).
-Bong Joon-Ho
Hijacking a plane to North Korea is pretty fucking savage.
King is really good at making you live through the eyes of his protagonists. Which is really hard to do in movies. Same thing with Shining were you follow Jack's fall to craziness from his PoV. And the same thing will happen with "The Long Walk", another great novel which I recommend if you like the death game theme.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/quentin-tarantino-robert-altman...
On it's surface, an absolutely wacky survival action film; but also subtly excellent commentary on class, race, crime and capitalism.
Good job, elites. You’ve secured your place at the top yet again.