Parasite: The Unrepaired Fissures between Allegorical Narration and Realism

Abstract

Boon Joon-ho's film Parasite inherits the allegorical narrative from his early works The Host and Snowpiercer. In The Host and Snowpiercer, the abstract, hypothetic dystopian setting goes well with the form of political allegory. However, Parasite takes realism as its blueprint and combines realism with an allegorical narrative. The combination casts a higher demand on the director who needs to fix the fissures between realism and the allegorical narrative. However, it's a pity that in Parasite, the lack of subconscious power, the straightforward representation of the silent "other", and the lack of ambiguity together make the combination incomplete and yet unbalanced.