{"id":3046,"date":"2021-11-10T12:44:35","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T12:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/?p=3046"},"modified":"2021-11-10T12:44:35","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T12:44:35","slug":"red-light-green-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2021\/11\/10\/red-light-green-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Light, Green Light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Jane Elliott<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Korean\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TV<\/span>\u00a0drama\u00a0<em>Squid Game<\/em>\u00a0is Netflix\u2019s most popular show ever, having reached the number one spot in ninety countries. It tells the story of a diverse group of characters, all heavily in debt, who agree to compete in a series of traditional children\u2019s games with untraditional stakes: losers are killed and the final survivor takes the entire jackpot.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Fictional survival games \u2013 often variations of gladiatorial combat \u2013 appear in classic episodes of\u00a0<em>Star Trek\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>The Twilight Zone<\/em>\u00a0from the 1960s, and the 1980s movie\u00a0<em>The Running Man\u00a0<\/em>(starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and very loosely based on a Stephen King novel; a new, more faithful adaptation is currently in production)<em>.\u00a0<\/em>But the trickle of such titles onto our screens through the 20<span class=\"ord\">th<\/span>\u00a0century has grown to a flood since Kinji Fukasaku\u2019s\u00a0<em>Battle Royale\u00a0<\/em>was released in Japan in 2000. The high-water mark before\u00a0<em>Squid Game<\/em>\u00a0was probably\u00a0<em>The Hunger Games<\/em>\u00a0franchise.<\/p>\n<p>But to criticise <em>Squid Game<\/em>\u00a0for its similarities to other survival game stories is a bit like criticising\u00a0<em>Notting Hill<\/em> for being a rom-com&#8230;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>This is an extract from a piece published last month at the London Review of Books Blog, which can be found at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/blog\/2021\/october\/red-light-green-light\">https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/blog\/2021\/october\/red-light-green-light<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kclpure.kcl.ac.uk\/portal\/jane.k.elliott.html\">Jane Elliott<\/a>\u00a0teaches English at King\u2019s College London. Her most recent book is\u00a0<em>The Microeconomic Mode: Political Subjectivity and Contemporary Popular Aesthetics.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Blog posts on King\u2019s English represent the views of the individual authors and neither those of the English Department, nor of King\u2019s College London.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>You may also like to read:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2021\/05\/27\/thinking-in-crisis-times-a-collective-exploration-by-the-english-department\/\">&#8216;Thinking in Crisis Times: A Collective Exploration from the English Department&#8217;<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2020\/02\/05\/time-is-the-enemy\/\">&#8216;&#8221;Time is the enemy&#8221;: The Wristwatches of &#8216;1917&#8221;<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jane Elliott The Korean\u00a0TV\u00a0drama\u00a0Squid Game\u00a0is Netflix\u2019s most popular show ever, having reached the number one spot in ninety countries. It tells the story of a diverse group of characters, all heavily in debt, who agree to compete in a series of traditional children\u2019s games with untraditional stakes: losers are killed and the final survivor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1004,"featured_media":3047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,12,912],"tags":[1133,1134,1132,1131,1135],"class_list":["post-3046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-20th-21st-centuries","category-contemporary","category-insights","tag-green-light","tag-netflix","tag-red-light","tag-squid-game","tag-tv-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3046"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3050,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions\/3050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}