By [ad_1]
A Squid Game fan evaluates and discusses the question of whether the games could be legal in the real world, and the answer is rather horrifying.
Could the horrific contests in Netflix’s hit Squid Game ever be legal? The answer may seem obvious, but a fan’s video gives it an intense scrutiny and comes up with some surprising answers.
In a new Film Theory video, YouTuber MatPat discusses the legality of the titular death game portrayed in the series. MatPat walks viewers through various scenarios, including the Squid Game being held on a privately owned island, in international waters or in a new country that those in charge created. He concludes that no matter where it was held, it would ultimately be illegal. This is due to an aspect of international law called universal jurisdiction, which designates crimes against humanity as illegal regardless of whether or not a sovereign nation’s internal law decrees the actions legal.
MatPat also explains that the participants themselves would be criminally culpable for the deaths of the other contestants in the games, whether they were the direct aggressors — as when Deok-su kills another player over food and incites a riot in Episode 4, “Stick to the Team” — or not. The video cites numerous cases in the United States involving Russian Roulette, which found individuals who took part in the game and survived guilty of manslaughter even though the victims agreed to play and pulled the trigger themselves.
Moreover, because a charge of manslaughter carries a sentence of between three and 20 years in prison, the Squid Game’s winner would potentially be facing a roughly 8,000-year prison sentence to account for the deaths of the other 456 participants.
While the Squid Game would be a terrible thing in the real world, it makes for very engaging television. The series attracted more than 142 million viewers after only 28 days of availability and is now a pop culture phenomenon, inspiring a wealth of fan-made Squid Game content and even (non-lethal) reenactments by school children.
Furthermore, just because the Squid Game is illegal doesn’t mean that something similar couldn’t happen in real life. MatPat points out that human rights violations often occur in our world, particularly under totalitarian regimes like the one in North Korea, despite the existence of legal concepts like universal jurisdiction. The YouTuber goes on to posit that Season 2 of Squid Game may reveal that the death game operates under North Korean jurisdiction and control, citing the presence of Kang Sae-byeok — a North Korean defector who wants to use the winnings to help her family escape her former country — in the first season as support for his theory.
So far, a second season of Squid Game has not been confirmed; however, the show’s creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk has revealed that he does have plans for the story going forward.
Source: YouTube
About The Author
[ad_2]
