Squid Game in the Context of Panopticon, Modern Surveillance Regimes, and the Neoliberal System: A Critical Examination of Capitalist Disciplinary Mechanisms and Individual Survival Strategies

Özet

Jeremy Bentham's surveillance-based panopticon model has been taken up by
Michel Foucault as one of the fundamental concepts explaining the ways in which
modern powers control society. The panopticon causes individuals, aware that they
are being watched, to develop internal control and regulate their behavior. Neoliberal
policies similarly offer individuals visible freedom while producing a new form of
power based on performance, competition, and success criteria. The individual, as
human capital and an entrepreneurial subject, is forced to constantly prove
themselves; this leads to the transparency of life and voluntary exposure. Byung-Chul
Han's conceptualization of the transparency society explains how this subject
discloses themselves and provides information to the system. Thus, the individual
becomes not only observed but also a subject who disciplines themselves by making
their performance visible. The aim of this study is to examine how Foucault's concepts
of panopticism and disciplinary society, neoliberal individual, and Chul Han's concept
of the transparent society relate to capitalist competition, individual capital,
performance imperatives, and voluntary surveillance dynamics in the context of the
television series Squid Game, focusing on how games, spaces, character relationships,
and aesthetic choices within the context of the television series Squid Game. To this
end, the television series Squid Game, directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, was analyzed
using thematic analysis, one of the qualitative text analysis methods. The analysis
concluded that the series critically reproduced modern forms of surveillance,
neoliberal subjectification pressure, and the necessity of performance-based value
production in terms of the advancement of today's capitalist system.