Squid Game season 2 spoilers follow.
Note: The following article contains discussion of sexual misconduct.
A lot has changed for Seong Gi-hun in the three years since he won the Squid Game.
He’s a lot richer, of course, and more than just a tad traumatised. He’s also reverted back to his natural hair colour, which is a win for everyone. But in the gap between seasons one and two, the show itself has evolved a great deal as well.
Now that we’re familiar with the story, writer/creator Hwang Dong-hyuk takes time to flesh out the world beyond these titular games to reveal more about the people running them (not to mention the others trying to stop it all from the outside). The Front Man especially takes a much more prominent role when he infiltrates the games to toy with Gi-hun firsthand.
Yet his former associates, the VIPs, are noticeably absent this time around.
Remember those vile, rich (mostly American) men who bet on the games to win more money? These mask-wearing sleazebags were extremely problematic and not just because they were depraved in every sense of the word – pretty much everyone in that first round of Squid Game was immoral to some degree.
It’s not because they were played by bad actors either, although the performances (perhaps hindered by editors unfamiliar with English cadences) did detract from an otherwise flawless first season.
No, the problem with the VIPs is that they represented the only queer characters in an otherwise predominantly straight show, and their depravity was directly linked to their queerness in troubling, dangerously stereotypical ways.
The scene that instantly comes to mind took place 40 minutes into episode seven when one of the unnamed VIPs took Hwang Jun-ho out back to sexually assault him away from the prying eyes of others. Although the handsome cop managed to escape before anything worse could happen, the damage was already done when it came to the on-screen perpetuation of harmful tropes.
Hollywood has long equated evil with queerness, suggesting that the “Sissy Villain” and the “Depraved Homosexual” can only be defeated by a heroic, heteronormative patriarchy. This idea that queerness is wrong insidiously became an intrinsic part of cinema at large, impacting everything from classic screwball comedies to Disney films aimed at children.
We’ve come a long way in recent years, but these tropes still lurk in the shadows, much like the gay VIP in Squid Game who continued to embody them in the worst way possible.
You could argue the show includes even worse characters in the grand scheme of things, monsters who cruelly kill people on a mass scale. But Squid Game’s first season made a point of connecting the story’s sole act of sexual deviancy with its only queer character, thereby encouraging us to be disgusted in ways that connected his sexuality with immorality.
By removing this element in season two, Squid Game’s return is instantly better in one key way, regardless of how you might feel about the wider show as a whole.
Of course, there is a chance the VIPs could still return in the third and final season. They only popped up originally in time for the last two games of season one, so that cycle might repeat itself again as the new games continue.
But even if they do come back, gay VIP and all, it seems likely that Squid Game will handle this better now, especially if the trans narrative in season two is anything to go by.
There are obvious issues with casting a cis man like Park Sung-hoon for the role of a trans woman, whether or not you accept that it would have been hard to find a trans actress for the role in Korea. Yet Dong-hyuk still treats the story of Hyun-Ju with far more kindness and sensitivity than anyone could have expected given the show’s track record.
After some initial resistance, the other women Hyun-ju befriends refer to her as “unnie,” a Korean term of respect and affection that women use to address older female friends or sisters.
An older competitor even brings Hyun-ju into the female bathroom at one point, affirming that this is where she belongs at a time when public discourse around this topic grows more toxic by the day.
Season two doesn’t shy away from the adversity trans people face the world over, but its ultimate message is one of love and tolerance where Hyun-ju is concerned.
Seeing a show on this scale affirm Hyun-ju’s trans identity is nothing short of remarkable, especially in a country like South Korea where queer rights are still not recognised and protestors regularly push back against LGBTQ+ storytelling of any kind. It’s worlds removed from the damaging portrayal of queerness that the gay VIP represented in season one.
Let’s just hope Dong-hyuk isn’t playing games with us and keeps them out completely still in the show’s final season.
Source: digitalspy.com