The Safe Internet League will be checking the hit Korean TV series Squid Game with experts.
The organization fears that “some viewers, especially young people, may be tempted to repeat the scenes,” and wants to negotiate with cinemas about protecting minors from 18+ content.
For those who have not watched The Squid Game, I will briefly retell the plot. It largely repeats the Japanese film "Battle Royale", the American epic "The Hunger Games", the Russian TV series "The Game of Survival" and others. The essence of the "Squid Game" is that several hundred people in catastrophic financial circumstances agree to take part in games where the losers are killed. In the end, there will be one winner who will take away the multi-million dollar winnings. The difference between the "Game" and previous projects is that the participants agree to death matches voluntarily and can stop them at any time, but must refuse to win - and they choose death in the struggle for a valuable prize.
Film critics have already called the series a vivid criticism of capitalism, which makes people fight to the death for money, and teens from all over the world are filming videos on this topic for TikTok.
But in fact, this is a story about how people for the sake of something give up their rights, freedoms and from life itself, voluntarily accepting a tough totalitarian system with complete suppression of the individual.
If, with all the abundance of bloody content of varying degrees of rigidity, teenagers were attracted by this particular series, this means that it makes them think about something.
And if something is interesting, then it is necessary not to prohibit, but to discuss, so that the series will be remembered not by the terrible aesthetics, but by the questions about the voluntary acceptance of totalitarianism and about the rejection of one's own and other people's lives.
The second aspect associated with the notorious Squid Game is teenagers' cravings for trendy and aggressive content, which instantly goes viral in the era of social media.
Adolescents are very sensitive to the general level of aggression in society, and it is a fact that it has grown in the era of a major pandemic.
The Internet can help someone to relieve aggression, but someone, on the contrary, can cheat.
And here again it is not the content that is to blame (half of which is produced by teenagers themselves).
The culprit is the adults who willingly write to each other “burn in hell”, “kill such people” and so on.
And they do it exactly at the time that could be spent talking with children.
If you follow the path of prohibitions, then the fruit will only be sweeter, and technically, children are now much better grounded than other adults.
Moreover, the issue of children's access to 18+ content should probably be decided not only by cinemas, but also by parents.
In my own youth, there was, I suspect, not less, but more bloody content and violence, including street violence.
There were no age markings, you could buy anything on the market at Gorbushka, and rappers went to fight metalheads after school, and no one even thought of reporting this to the guardianship authorities.
The difference is that information about all this was not delivered to everyone at the same time to every gadget of every home, so the true scale is still unclear.
But they talked with adolescents honestly and about what really worries them, very rarely, what then, what now, with all the abundance of psychologists.
However, there are always those who are ready for conversation and not for condemnation.
So, once in our school a history teacher devoted a whole lesson to answering our stupid questions about the Great Patriotic War.
Including the presence or absence of a choice to surrender Leningrad.
By the end of the lesson, we understood everything - precisely because we discussed everything with us.
And I also once came to the same school as an adult for a meeting with schoolchildren on human rights.
Do you know what we discussed for most of the lesson?
The death penalty and the investment of state money in the salvation of hopeless children.
Two of the hardest topics about life and death that not every adult is ready to discuss.
But the children wanted so much, it was interesting for them to argue with me, with the director and teacher of social studies (our adult trinity was against the death penalty, the children were, rather, for).
So it is here.
If children are interested in talking about these topics, you need to talk to them.
About whether the state should help those who have fallen to the bottom.
About whether it is possible to give up basic rights for the sake of something.
About where is the line between entertainment and cruelty.
About how to relate to the surrounding aggression, which some people can use for bad purposes.
About whether it is possible to wish other people death, about how valuable the life of even a bad person is.
These are all important topics for teenagers.
Of course, Internet HYIP is the golden calf of our time, but the conversation about why it is impossible to worship him should at least begin.
In any case, this will be the creation of much more constructive content than the daily adult swearing on the Internet.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.