Motherhood mustn&#8217;t equal sacrifice: The remedy of moms in ‘Squid Recreation’ &#8211; The Stanford Day by day

Editor’s Notice: This text is a overview and consists of subjective ideas, opinions and critiques.
Beneath is a screenplay excerpt of a scene in the direction of the tip of the final episode of Season One from “Squid Recreation”:
Zoom out to image Seong Gi-hun, Sang-woo’s mother and Cheol. Gi-hun’s hand is on the boy’s shoulder, the opposite hand holding a suitcase.
Gi-hun: Maintain him, please.
Sang-woo’s mother: Okay. It’ll be good to have slightly further firm round for dinner for a change. Don’t fear about me. Have a great journey.
Gi-hun walks away.
Sang-woo’s mother to Cheol: Cheol, have you ever had dinner but?
Cheol shakes his head.
Sang-woo’s mother: Right here, come. Come and sit. Come on now. Have a fish bun.
Oh goodness! That jacket is manner too gentle for this chilly. Wait, don’t you could have a hotter jacket?
[Opens the bag Gi-hun has handed to her and stares at the heaps of money.]
To anybody who follows widespread tradition, the fake actuality drama “Squid Recreation” is a well-known identify. And for that very same viewers, the above scene from the primary season of the present is wildly implausible.
When the protagonist, Seong Gi-hun, bequeaths half his prize cash — $22.8 billion gained — to the mom of one other lifeless participant, Cho Sang-woo, he throws in a bonus: the orphaned tween brother of a 3rd deceased participant.
The scene is hanging, maybe particularly to girls, as a result of it rests so closely on a number of assumptions. First: that Sang-woo’s mom, who was solely in search of the return of her grown son, would readily settle for the function of mothering this stranger as a substitute. Second: that she would use this enormous sum of money solely to lift the kid. And third: that she would settle for an unknown youngster in lieu of her lifeless son. Nonetheless, Sang-woo’s mom takes to the function like a fish to water, instantly fussing over the boy, feeding him and customarily — mothering him.
The present has made a reputation for itself by shattering different drained tv tropes and offering a profitable critique on capitalism and social hierarchy. It makes use of deceptively innocuous kids’s video games and accompanying rhymes to cover the sinister undercurrents of loss of life and organ commerce. Nonetheless, in its portrayal of girls and unidimensional motherhood, the present borders on misogynistic.
The present is filled with feminine characters, reminiscent of Kim Jun-hee and Cho Sang-woo’s mom, who’ve just one dimension: motherhood. For moms on the planet of the present, their roles of motherhood are offered as inherently sacrificial, requiring generosity and reinforcing a “mom to at least one, mom to all” trope. This trope has been explored earlier than in characters reminiscent of Molly Weasley in “Harry Potter” and Morticia Addams in “The Addams Household.”
And amidst the pantheon of sacrificial moms who inhabit the “Squid Recreation” universe, Cho Sang-woo’s mom stands out as a hanging instance. She is a mom whose complete identification is her son’s accomplishments, leaving her with no individuality.
Her identification is so connected to this function that the present doesn’t even identify her.
She moms not solely her son but in addition Gi-hun, giving him meals and counseling him to start with of season one when he’s unmoored and broke.
Regardless of dropping her son on the finish of season one, her identification as a mom stays intact when Gi-hun leaves Cheol along with her. She instantly adopts him as one in all her personal, with the identification of the kid nearly rendered irrelevant.
After which there are the moms inside the recreation.
One would possibly argue that the moms who’re really a part of the sport are extra pushed and targeted on their particular person targets. Whereas that is true, their foremost identification remains to be their motherhood.
Jang Geum-ja, who enters the video games to rid her son of his debt, exemplifies this concept. She embodies each the artistic and damaging roles of the Great Mother archetype completely. This Jungian archetype argues {that a} mom can nurture, defend and create a life. She is depicted in myths and tales as a “image of the female precept.” Now and again, to guard, she will be able to additionally flip damaging.
When Geum-ja kills her personal son to guard the new child within the recreation, it’s not solely as a result of she is doing the fitting factor — defending the brand new life and concurrently stopping her son from committing the grave crime of homicide — but in addition as a result of she sees a youthful model of herself and her son within the new mom and youngster. Geum-ja’s son is, at that second, as helpless because the new child. Nonetheless, Geum-ja chooses the new child’s future over her personal son’s survival as a result of it represents the possibility at a do-over.
By killing her son, she has destroyed her function as a mom, due to this fact erasing her function in life and leading to her loss of life. Earlier than committing suicide, she fulfills the “common mom” requirement by making certain that she transfers care of the new child youngster to Gi-hun.
Motherhood is offered as inherently sacrificial. Fatherhood, nevertheless, is unreliable. Though Gi-hun’s character as a father matures over the seasons — from an irresponsible, playing man who’s unable to offer for his daughter to at least one who sacrifices his life to make sure the survival of the new child — he doesn’t make sure that there might be somebody to take care of the child after his loss of life.
An incapacity to interrupt free from a restricted view of motherhood implies that it’s seen as sacrosanct. Whereas this locations them on a pedestal, it additionally imprisons them by being reductive: the one side of their character that’s rendered related is their motherhood.
Fatherhood, for Gi-hun, can also be just one facet of his life; for the moms, it’s the solely facet.

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