“Squid Game”, or the reasons for the success of a South Korean series with a globalized discourse – archyworldys

Four hundred and fifty-six South Koreans, badly in debt and facing great social hardship, are crammed into an undisclosed location in an attempt to win 45.6 billion won (about 33 million euros) by participating in gambling games. ‘children, with a fatal outcome. This is in essence the script of the South Korean series Squid Game, whose worldwide success surprised the Netflix platform, which broadcasts it, as much as its director, Hwang Dong-hyeok.

Squid Game (“Squid game” in French, named after a hopscotch game in South Korea) signed the best start of the series on the American platform. In seventeen days she had already been seen by 111 million subscribed households – according to figures stopped by the platform on October 13, counting a view after two minutes of viewing.

Google Trends also reveals a spike in searches associated with the South Korean series in early October. It was then five times higher than that observed at the end of 2020 on the occasion of the release of The Bridgertons Chronicle, which narrates the sentimental intrigues of good British society at the beginning of the XIX^e century. With viewing by 82 million subscribers within four weeks of going live, this series held the previous record.

• Communication provided by fans on social networks

It is difficult to analyze the success of a program a posteriori, at the risk of attributing opportunistic and hazardous reasons to it, according to Olivier Thuillas, lecturer in information and communication sciences at the University of Paris-Nanterre. . Film production is “An industry of uncertainty”, he recalls. Especially since Netflix did not spend more for the promotion of Squid Game than for that of other productions: “Around $ 25 million [21,5 millions d’euros], as usual, against 250 million [215 millions d’euros] for a traditional cinema film, like James bond “, still believes Olivier Thuillas.

Certain mechanisms, however, have certainly helped push the South Korean series to the top of the charts on Netflix in 80 countries. Social networks and their dissemination force are one of them. They thus ensured most of the communication around the series, their importance being “Tenfold in front of an audience of fans of Asian culture, who are more inclined to put themselves on the stage”, analyzes the lecturer. These fans have thus embodied scenes from the series that they then broadcast massively on social networks, such as TikTok, particularly popular with younger generations. “The fans do all the work”, he summarizes, the exchanges around various theories maintaining the online presence of the series.

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