A spokesman for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya) of Chernihiv, commented on Squid Game, a globally acclaimed series by Netflix.
“It is strange why the Squid Game is considered an allegory of capitalist society. In fact, the idea behind this series fairly accurately reflects the totalitarian-murderous model embodied by numerous twentieth-century regimes, from the Bolsheviks and Nazis to the Maoists, Khmer Rouge, and Jucheists,” the OCU spokesman said in a statement.
He put forward several arguments to support his assumption.
In particular, in the series, as in totalitarian regimes, a small circle of “leaders” uses poverty of the masses to satisfy their ambitions for power. Also in the series it is mentioned that “For the happiness of the best you should destroy the worst.” And it’s leaders who designate the “worst,” including “capitalists”, “racially inferior”, “intellectuals,” and other “public enemies.”
“Even terror does not stop the participants in the ‘struggle’ – they always harbor hope that it is not they who will die, but someone else. […] The system of terror is based on the alleged voluntary consent of both participants and victims. ‘The piggy bank with billions’ hanging over the heads of the participants is Communism, the Millennium Reich, and other ‘bright futures’ for the sake of which people kill and remain ready to kill,” said Archbishop Yevstratiy.
“Perhaps in many countries, Squid Game is perceived as an allegory. In it, I saw our own story – the country had been playing in it for more than seven decades…” the OCU spokesman concluded.
Netflix estimated its Squid Game series at almost $900 million, according to Bloomberg, which claims it saw a sensitive internal document circulated within the streaming platform.
According to the document, the project is set to yield profit that is 40 times the cost of the series as Netflix spent only $21.4 million to create the whole project (some $2.3 million per episode) – a really modest sum compared to other modern cult series.
For comparison, the company spent $50-60 million to create the first season of Game of Thrones.