Analyse of Parasites opening scene

Analyse of Parasites opening scene

The opening scene of the ‘Parasites’, reflected many representations of social class, wealth, and society problem, shows that how is working class poor people has been treated and how do they survive in the society by variety use of mise-en-scene, angle, and camera shots. The use of the camera shot, and mise-en-scene has helped audience to learn and see more about the opening scene and creates lots meaning. The movie is setting on 2000’s Seoul, with lots use of mise-en-scene. 

The opening scene gives people a felling of Equilibrium, by the use of the non-diegetic sound, during the whole opening scene, audience can hear a light easily piano sound, which give people a feeling of chill and relax, this could telling the audience even they are poor, but they still living in a happiness live, but also reinforce to the audience the idea of equilibrium, it’s a start of a story, everyone is living in everyday life.

This opening scene introduced a poor working-class family to the audiences, a son, a daughter, an old couple which is their parents, all family are living in a small basement, they represented typical poor working class in the society in this film.

The first shot of the scene is an establishing shot, establishes the basement’s window with hanging socks, the class and wealth different is shown by the use of mise-en-scene in this shot, what’s out of the window we can see is walking street, this represented the unequal life that this family is living, what’s above poor people’s head is everyone’s foot, shadowing the society issue of poor people’s situation, and the subtitle of the film is fading in well, to make people have a link between the name ‘parasite’ with the view of out of the window. The use of high and low key lighting combination, has created binary opposition, the darkness of the basement and the lightness of the street, is has created a contrast to show the big difference between the class. The hanging socks introduces the character, let audiences have a thought it’s a family living in the basement, the socks represented the family, then the hanging socks would represented that poor people are in a turmoil situation in the society.

The family represented the poor people, then the son and the daughter will represent the new generation of the working class, the camera jibbing down from the window view to the son, the use of medium close up has make audience feel like he is an easy-going and amiable person, he’s wearing a plain grey colour shirt, this again shows the poorness of this family, he has a short hair, which he doesn’t need to carefully take care of with, again shows the poorness of this family. The top lighting and the fill light on him, has created binary opposition, the light could saying that he’s is the hope in this family, the new generation is the hope of the working class, but could also telling the audiences that even he’s in the dark basement, but on the other side he is belong to the street, he could break the glass ceiling of poor people’s situation.

Then there’s a point of view shot of the son’s view to his phone, what’s on his phone, it’s about WIFI issue, and the shot also helped the audience have a peek of this house, the WIFI represented important tool in this scene, it represented the connection between the class.

After that, as the son stood up and walking, the camera jibbing up too and used medium close up to the son to introduce the house and new characters to the audience, an old couple and their daughter, from the shot, we can see the family is crowded in a clutter basement, which is significant of the condition where poor people live during that time, reflected poor people’s situation in the society.

In the scene, there’s also a establishing shot of the woman’s picture, from the picture we know she was an athletes, and she got a silver medal as well, but from the dark lighting, we know it’s all past, this created binary opposition as well, the Athletes with medal, glory, honor, contrast with the living dark basement, which reflect the situation of athletes of they has been treated as working class people, and how they get forgotten.

The phone and the WIFI also represented a important sigh in this scene, there’s a camera dollying with close up of the son’s phone, the son holding up the phone, try to let the phone get close to the basement roof to get WIFI, upper the basement roof, is the street, the street represented the normal people, middle class people, so the phone could represented that is the way that poor people to get close to the normal people, and the WIFI could represent the connection between the poor people and normal people.

The hard situation of poor people also been showed by a medium close up of the father, he’s face expression is lethargy, he represented the feeling of poor people, form his body language, tear a small piece of. Bread and out it in mouth, we can see that the bread is very important to them, and it’s very scarce, the bread could also represent the resources in the society, that the poor people don’t have much resources, resources are scarce for them, then the camera tilting down to his hand, there’s a bug and bread on the table, from this we can see the bad environment and bad condition of life poor people are living, the man shoot the bugs off with fingers, the bread could represent the resources, so the table could represent the society, and the bugs could represent the people who are seeking other people’s recourses, the father shoot the bugs off saying that he’s protecting his resources, the way he’s protecting, could represented the way of how poor people protect themselves, the only way they can protect themselves, is to use violence.

But finally at the end of the scene, there’s a mid shot of the son in the toilet, the light colour is yellow, makes the toilet gives people a feeling of old, from this shot the son got on to the stairs, then he got the WIFI, then the daughter got in to the toilet, and got WIFI, the Stairs could represented the way from poor to wealth, from working class to middles class, the order of how they got WIFI could represented the order of how they changed their class.