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The parody of “Squid Game” on the U.S SNL caused controversies over racism agaisnt Korean

After Netflix’s original series “Squid Game” was parodied on the U.S’s show “SNL”, many people claimed that the parody contains elements showing racism.

On October 16th (local time) a short parody of Squid Game was released on the U.S NBC’s “SNL”. In the video, actor Rami Malek, who is famous for his roles in “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “007 No Time To Die”, and comedian-actor Pete Davidson parodied Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) and Sung Ki-hoon (Lee Jung-jae), respectively, and remaked the contents of “Squid Game” as a country song music video.

Squid Game parody

In particular, some people have argued that the parody video contains elements showing racism. First of all, there’s a part in which Pete Davidson recited the phrase, “I can’t speak Korean, but no one translates it for me”. The way he grumbles, wondering why no one speaks English even when he comes to Korea, is considered typical white supremacy thoughts. In fact, other people also raised opinions saying the parody was a kind of mocking people who go abroad but don’t want to speak the language of that region.

However, it is pointed out that the scene in which the actor searches for the dollar exchange rate for 45.6 billion won prize money is clearly an act of racism. Ramie Malek said, “45.6 billion won is a big amount. I think so, although I don’t know the exchange rate well”. Then he searched for the won-dollar exchange rate on his phone. In this scene, they showed 4 billion won was exchanged for 47.89 dollars. This means the value of 4 billion won is considered a piece of tissue.

Squid Game parody

The problem is that the real won-dollar exchange rate on the morning of October 18th was actually 1,186 won per dollar. Therefore, if the actual exchange rate were applied, 45.6 billion won would cost more than 38.43 million dollars.

As a result, this scene has been pointed out as an element showing racism against Korean. However, Western netizens reacted differently, such as “It’s just a joke”, “This shows Americans don’t care about exchange rates”, “It’s a gag show. Just laugh”

Source: Daum

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