Squid Game 2 reviewed: this is pure architectural mythology

Squid Game has always played with the viewer's perception. It did it in the first season and it does it again in this second one. In spite of a couple of very interlocutory initial episodes, in which we discover that the protagonist of the first season, Seong Gi-hun, has spent these years using the money he won to find the people who organised those games and that, now that he has tracked down the person who selects the possible contestants in the underground, he wants to infiltrate to take them out, when the narrative picks up and goes back to telling the story of the deadly clash between people over money, the series begins to merge the story with the places where it is set.

The island where the games take place and the buildings in which they happen are all child-themed, and even those in this second season (many new, some already seen) are that thing: children's games turned into deadly dynamics. In fact, the aesthetics and furnishings chosen are often reminiscent of kindergartens. However, the design of the rooms suggests another meaning: those places that may look like kindergartens are actually prisons, structured in such a way as to clearly distinguish between guards and prisoners. But not only that: looking at the dormitories, a third interpretation emerges. They look like barracks, and the players are like soldiers, that is, all alike, pawns awaiting orders. These three components - being pawns, infantilisation and the state of captivity - are the elements that the series mixes to build its appeal, and all of this stems from the environments themselves.

In this way, even the repetition of the same dynamics of the first season changes its mark, creating different stories and plots. That iconic location, so crucial to the series, continues to dominate, so much so that even the Netflix logo that precedes each episode has been redesigned to recall the staircase room. Squid Game, in short, possesses a mythology that is all architectural. Between the prison, the kindergarten and the warehouse where human beings are stored and stored, that large set is the beating heart of the series that sustains the writing. In fact, this second season is as well written as the first and succeeds in the not easy task of replicating the tension towards the finale (at least from the third episode onwards), thanks to the mechanism of the deadly games that constantly refer to survival, new challenges and a new puzzle to solve in order to stay alive. It is the open secret of binge-watching.
 

In the second narrative cycle, however, it becomes even more evident how crucial it is what the environments communicate on an unconscious level, to enrich the plot and give it charm (and consequently allow the audience to identify with certain characters and feel empathy for them). Inspired by all those constructions intended to house many people (prisons, barracks, kindergartens, schools, universities, dormitories, ships...), Squid Game's rooms or courtyards are a compendium of the ways in which our society categorises people through design. Designing a space like a prison implies dividing people into two categories (those who guard and those who are guarded), designing another like a kindergarten means directing the interaction of those present, prompting them to play together, while designing yet another like a military dormitory means conveying the idea that they are all equal, devoid of differences, pawns in a larger design.

Squid Game incorporates all these uses at different times, using them narratively according to the purpose of each scene. When characters argue they are almost always in the dormitories, when they are threatened they are in the prison-like areas, when they express solidarity and help each other they tend to be in the kindergarten-like areas. Everyone is told through their personality, their history and the connections they make (the bullies, the leaders, the military, the pregnant woman, the elderly mother, the religious person, the rebels, etc.), but it is the environments that direct the actions and relationships. If they did not all sleep together on stacked beds, certain relational dynamics would not be created and there would be no risk of nightly stabbings. If they were not so separated by guards, they would find out who they are, and if the games were not played in large arenas with no hiding places, the players would not be as vulnerable.It cannot really be said that Squid Game (both the first and second seasons) is a masterpiece. It is an extraordinarily well-executed narrative mechanism that has the merit of saying a few things about society (albeit things we already know, but staged effectively), and it stops there. However, it can be said to be a small masterpiece of architecture applied to storytelling, thanks to the methodical and scientific use of décor and design to define characters' roles and destinies. Many films and series scramble to equip themselves with distinctive environments or costumes in order to be iconic and unique. Squid Game certainly does this (otherwise they wouldn't have designed the bright pink uniforms of the guards that way), but it also takes the next step: it lets the environments evoke the many ways in which we live together.