Bread and Lottery
Note: post contains spoiler references to Squid Game Season 2
The first episode of Season 2 of Squid Game a Korean dystopian survival thriller action series created for Netflix is titled Ppang-gwa boggwon i.e. Bread Or Lottery.
The opening episode features a mysterious character known as The Salesman or The Recruiter for his role in recruiting candidates to sign up for the deadly games. The character is played by Gong Yoo who should have had a lot more screen time to fully bring out his mad genius energy.
When he is not recruiting people for the deadly games he seems to find a perverse joy in hanging out in the park and offering homeless people a very weird choice: Bread or Lottery.
He buys a large number of lottery scratch cards and rolls of bread and makes people choose between either having a scratch card that could potentially win a pile of money or a bread roll.
On the surface the choice seems simple… bread for your immediate hunger but what about the possibility of a scratch card that could change your entire fortune… would you bet a bird in hand for two in the bush?
(Un)surprisingly, a large number of people choose the scratch cards and ultimately lose, whereby the recruiter then dumps his bread on the ground and stomps on it telling the people who are watching that this is their choice they made him do it…
It foreshadows a recurring theme throughout Squid Game where people opt to participate in games, especially as Season 2 introduced a new twist where at the end of each game people were given “The Choice” voting on whether to keep playing or to quit the games and despite their growing knowledge of whats at stake, the majority vote to keep playing, hoping that playing one more game might tidy them over.
After some thought this isn’t too different from the Roman Empire Strategy of Bread and Circuses, Panem et Circenses where they held the gladiator games to keep masses distracted from the politics and social issues while seeming to offer a chance at freedom for the captives…
The illusion of choice is a rigged system where the odds are never in your favour.
The House always wins.
~B
How would you vote:
Becoming The Muse 
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