Squid Game and the exploitation of female suffering

Squid Game and other survival dramas exploit female suffering by turning fear, injury and humiliation into the fuel of a competition. Women contestants are repeatedly placed in situations that invite sexual danger, emotional breakdown and spectacular violence. Their pain gives other characters chances to shine, gives viewers guilty pleasure, and gives platforms material that travels easily through recommendation feeds and social media. The suffering may be fictional, but its circulation follows a very commercial logic.

Depicting misogynistic violence can expose it, especially when female characters retain the wit and anger to name it. Exploitation becomes clearer when the plot treats distress as entertainment while denying the women involved narrative control, solidarity or lasting consequences. The key issue is who authors the suffering, who benefits from it, and whose humanity survives after the episode ends.

Australian viewers encounter these stories amid the conveniences and inequalities of a particular media market. Subtitled thrillers fill train journeys from Sydney to Melbourne and quiet evenings in Perth; Netflix, Stan, Disney+ and Freeview catch-up services compete for the same household attention. Classification by the Australian Classification Board can flag coarse language or violence, but it cannot judge whether a narrative has made women’s pain into spectacle.

Violence as a ratings engine

Squid Game turns brutality into a viewing mechanism. Sudden violence, bright costumes and sharply separated soundtracks make each elimination feel like a revelation. The rules promise impartiality, yet the emotional experience is carefully directed: viewers know whom the game despises, which bodies produce shock and which reactions will become memes. Even when a woman wins, her achievement is filtered through the suffering required to secure it.

The disturbing pattern lies in the allocation of pain. Female contestants are subjected to sexualised threats and circumstances that expose their vulnerability, while male cruelty is often presented as plot momentum or evidence of individual evil. Women’s fear becomes a measure of their moral worth, whereas violence against women supplies the story with atmosphere and apparent stakes. Their distress gives male characters opportunities for empathy, leadership and redemption.

Survival tests and manufactured helplessness

The games appear neutral, but the contestants arrive with unequal social power. Poverty, family obligations, gendered expectations and past trauma determine who can recognise manipulation and who can afford to trust. Female characters are often placed in double binds: they need strategic intelligence to survive, yet the narrative still frames their intelligence as an exception to their supposed helplessness. Sae-byeok’s resourcefulness saves her, but it does not erase the system that demands constant proof of her competence.

Across The Hunger Games, Alice in Borderland and The 8 Show, this dynamic persists with different costumes. Women are expected to be physically exceptional, emotionally controlled and morally unimpeachable, while male misconduct is more readily treated as a redeemable flaw. Survival narratives therefore sell an troubling bargain: women receive visibility, but the price of that visibility is intensified scrutiny and inevitable punishment.

Australian viewing conditions and limits

A busy railway carriage offers an unusual intimacy with these stories. Many commuters in Sydney and Melbourne watch subtitled episodes on phones with headphones, often while messages, news alerts and work tasks compete for attention. Emotional cliffs and visual cruelty survive that fragmented attention particularly well. The experience differs from communal television viewing, but domestic streaming on a television or laptop remains familiar across Australian households.

The local market is equally important. Stan gives Australian services a domestic platform, while international companies dominate much of the available catalogue. Local distributors decide which international hits receive prominent promotion, and free-to-air and catch-up platforms place them beside home-grown drama. This combination allows a Korean thriller to become a shared Australian cultural event without erasing the commercial systems that delivered it.

Regulation addresses access and online conduct rather than the politics inside a fictional world. The Australian Classification Board evaluates violence, language and other material, while the Online Safety Act 2021 places duties on online service providers. Neither framework can determine whether women are repeatedly assigned disproportionate pain so that other characters can appear heroic. That requires criticism of narrative framing, not simply a rating decision.

Exploitative patterns and responsible alternatives

Female suffering operates as an efficient business tool because it produces reactions: shock, pity, outrage, attraction and fear. That reaction can be monetised through cliffhangers, recap videos, brand partnerships and clips shared without the episode’s context. When women become devices for testing other people’s emotions, their anger risks being absorbed as part of the entertainment rather than changing the rules governing the contest.

The hierarchy of attention also exists behind the screen. Performers supply the fear and pain, while writers, directors, platforms and sponsors sell the resulting image. The maker’s labour can disappear beneath the character’s recognisable suffering, a concern that also emerges in conversations about the artist’s perspective.

Recurring signs of exploitation

• Women’s distress exists mainly to provoke reactions from characters who receive the narrative rewards.
• Sexual threats and humiliation supply atmosphere while institutional misogyny remains unnamed.
• Women must demonstrate flawless judgement to earn sympathy, competence or survival.
• The story rewards suffering with virality but gives it little lasting emotional consequence.

Changes that reduce exploitation

• Give women decisions, alliances and mistakes that belong to them rather than serving male arcs.
• Reveal who designed the rules, who enforces them and who profits from obedience.
• Connect danger to work, class, race, age and institutional power rather than treating it as random cruelty.
• Allow emotional and physical consequences to continue beyond the cliffhanger.

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SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS treats popular culture as a site of political struggle rather than a set of disposable products. Its commitment to examining gender, power, race and sexuality is explained in the publication’s mission. That approach remains essential when survival dramas package women’s distress as a test for viewers’ emotional endurance.

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