Parasite .. my comment ...... The Film of the year and the way i see it through the experiencing of Surveillance

I went to see the film with Margaret who is the guardian of the Muse'e Adzak who has been living in Paris for more than fifty years.  She was interested to go when i told her that President Trump had criticized the fact that the film had won an Oscar this year and that the prize should have gone to a home grown product;  Mrs Crowther told me that she had been to Korea and has enjoyed hospitality from friendly Korean families staying in Paris .  Despite of the film being praised by some people and contrary to my expectations she wasnt impressed with it. For my part  i certainly did like the film. infact just before going to see  it on a rainy Sunday night i was telling Margaret how much i liked the British TV series "Upstairs Downstairs" which in my opinion  was  similar in some  points, certainly class issues could be the main theme in the two stories.

I must say that i still haven't understood the meccanisms that are involved in the Stasi system. People in the countries where the Stasi operated for many years have a way of dealing with "the invisible  power people" which give them a priviledged positon. They are already used to the system and can profit by it;  I think this system is basically frightening and inhuman and unjust;The new world is not solving the climate problem but is getting ever more interested in other peoples bedrooms;  This was the case of the recent expose' of a French Polititian who was the victim of a Russian intruder who took a video of him while having Sex.  The "con artist" video maker created a scandal which affected his victim's political work and has tried to pass off his misdeed saying that it was for "moral" reasons that he had done it (because having sex is like killing some one and then taking a photo of their dead body ? which is what happened to an English girl in Newzealand).

What really caught my attention immediately was that "Parasite" was already outdated because the new technologies of surveillance we have today wouldnt allow any of this prying ang wriggling into a rich household .  Today the rich are super protected in their homes and this fact makes the film a sort of fairytale  involving the battle of the poor with each other while the fortunate ones geton with their lives.

Today there are microphones listening in to everything and CCTVs which leave little breathing space for trespassers .... Another point which was interesting was the idea that the new technology of Smart Phones was used in order to win the treasured job from a  person who was already working in that position  (through unfair means) .... We should remeber that the Koreans are different from other nations in that they recognize that there are limits and they are respectful in their attitude.  In this film what the poor people are after is the possibility to work in a wealthy family's  household.


The "tracking" of the nanny was very real and happens to all of us in the new era of mobile phones, so was the battle to win her phone with the photos she had taken of the intruding family (of ambitious talented slumdwelling jobseekers) .  very actual use or "misuse"  of the  phones it is what we read about in the morning news today .... the competition between working families using the social media is a daily experience for some people espesially in Asia today.

One of my own experiences from when i had just sold my property (my parents house) and was living  in Dubai was that i was tracked heavily  everywhere i went. I was a single woman with a bank account with an important sum of money and worth controlling.   I had always wanted to go to the US  and that was why i tried  to apply for a visa  immediately . It was 2010 and I was hopeful (before the Republicans showed up).

Here i want to underline the difference between the attitudes of the people who track others ....  some people think that "the power" in doing this sort of thing that Surveillance gives them has no bounderies and this overflows into the negative. Finding out what you love most , or your personal likes or dislikes all adds up to having power and then how do you use it if you  have no respect  for the person you are following ?   This was how it has felt many times, when some one else "decides" for you when they are the ones who are "in need" and you are the one who does not know what they want ..... but usually the awnser is simply them needing  "money" in exchange for leaving their "opressed person" in peace .... at other times it is "services" .....

It was while standing in a que in the American Embassy waiting for my turn when i noticed that the couple standing next to me were showing too much interest in me .....  i was minding my own biz but they were watching the ticket i had  and they wanted to find out the number i had  .... then one of them asked me out right what my number was  and i told them ; i didnt think any thing could happen  by being  civil. Later on i noticed that the man at the counter had changed and he looked similar to the people who had asked the number i was holding ....  they were Eastern Europeans (who i think are experts in being policed in this type of Stasi system in their own countries for many years).  Infact i  had noticed a lot of them in Dubai.  I had been to this city many times and their presence was disturbing .... for some reason they were a priviledged lot and had a predatory feel to them.
  In my case i was not given a visa and was sent off with some silly excuse.  I had a plan B.

 I had tried to go to Spain as well and infact i managed to buy an appartment there. I was in the Spanish consolate and trying to get a visa to go back there and to reach my new home when the new woman at the counter,  because of some unfathomable reason, wouldnt give me back my passport. I wanted to get it stamped with a new visa and she kept holding on to my document while we were alone in her office.  The woman who had helped me before had been very nice and kind indeed , but this one was a dragon and wanted "something" (and later on the tought came to me that she probably wanted a gift of some sort) .... i kept on having to ask her to give me back my document and she was just holding on to it and was on some sort of "power trip";  This situation went on for some time , perhaps an hour , i was asking myself what i had done wrong .... i had all the necessary documents with me .... i had paid for my appartment and had the contract ....  Later on a Russian man came in and as he was like me and asking for a visa ; i happened to listen in and she was telling him:  .... "you can by ten properties in Spain but i am the one working here and if i want to give you a stay permit or not well that is my own choice ".   That time i got lucky because a Spanish man had come into the room where we were waiting and he just stared at the woman working there who was holding my passport. He knew something was going on and finally probably fearing him , she gave me back my document.


Just to say that there was trickery at every stage trying to guide me towards a certain direction  and goal which was not mine ......  finally i had to make do with what i really didnt want.  I found this sort of cunning at every step of my searching and buying a property. Certain people (who were not needy)  behind the Surveillance were pulling the strings/ All to the advantage of the people who didnt have the money but had the power of knowing the system and the possibility of seeing the  bigger picture  from their own point of view . They thought "they" should grab as much as they could because i couldnt do anything to their shadows.   This was happening to me and i wasn't even rich  .... i had come back from Italy after many years  to look after my mother in Tehran  .  She had Alzheimer  and her friends (and my well wishers) were telling me  to leave her in an Institution .... her family (because she had a brother and a sister she was proud of and who she believed in more than she believed in me but they didnt want to look after her and couldnt do it because of age and their own ill health).  The price i had to pay for staying with her and looking after her had been very high.  I had lost my residency in Italy after 23 years of living there.  I had also chosen to go to look after her than to get married to an italian .   Did any one consider these things ?  Perhaps God was smiling then and saying : "well you have an inheritance and you are working for every penny of it" .No  "they" were only thinking "this is a cake and i want some of it" (if not all) ! "They  didnt see the price i had paid because they only saw the money and that was all "they" the watchers were intersted in .....   Another office worker in yet another consolate  had made the remark : " you will have to swim across the Mediteranian next time in order to get to your home in Europe."


The film reminded me a lot of various occasions when people had tried to get "things" from me using a "virtual gun" .   The nanny in the film ....  made the imposters keep their hands up in the air as if she had a "real" gun , but she was holding the phone with proof of their fake identities ......  ie the people she discovered were very much  like her, they needed to work for a living and were living in a basement flat in a poor part of town (which got flooded everytime it rained);  They wanted to change their standard of living.  Hoping to get a decent place to live in, they were ready to walk all over any one else who happened to be in their way.  That is why they had no scrupels about tracking the working woman and accusing her of having Tubercolosis .  All a put up job which they achieved by using their information about her allergy to peaches; making it seem that she was coughing for a serious illness and thereby achieving to get  her position for the mother of the intruding family.

Later on in the film we see how this woman they managed to trick out of her living, is actually in a darker place than they are (this film throws light on  the story of my life! because i can see how on the other side of the fence there were people who thought i had a cushy life while they had "problems" because they were unemployed)  How clueless we are about each other .  She (the ex nanny)  rings the bell one rainy evening and asks to pick up something she has forgotten in the basement.  Having gone down to the basement, the "humaine" family of imposters and  tricksters finds  out about the Bunker under the villa where the ex Nanny has hidden her beloved husband for many years.  I like the fact that you get to know something real about South Korea because i never knew that people there had those subterranean places where they could hide incase a serious war happened.  The husband comunicated with the wife through light signals and he was happy to live in a safe place underground.

At this point in the film all the family are working for the rich husband and wife and are eating and drinking well and getting drunk  as much as they desired, but they hadn't  changed their appartment and they still have the so called "perfume of poverty on them".  This is like the stink of some second hand clothes washed in disinfectant , or even the odours of a fry up on your clothes when you have been working in a kitchen for too long.  The youngest in the rich man's family picks up on this and comments on how the husband and wife (now pretending to be two strangers who happen to work in the same place"  have the same odours on their clothes .

 For many years I have been thinking  about how it is to be working in a Surveillance position. Then i found an Article in the New Yorker about a man who had a Hotel and would be looking on to the guests sexual lives. He writes about them in a gloomy way, as if he is the keeper of some animals in a  zoo and looking at and watching over the animals he is keeping; his story goes back to the sixties in the US.

 Now i wonder how it would have been if this family of intruders had real "power" (and if they weren't polite orientals and Koreans, but rather wild and undiciplined people with a chip on their shoulder)  could controle the house in a full time situation  ....  where would humanity and Kindness .... a sense of morals and ethics come in ?  When you know that the other side is clueless as to the rules governing living in poverty ....  what gives them ie the people working in  Surveillance  their set of rules in how to direct Other peoples lives?  Being in the  privileded position like theirs.is a lonely place to be in, unless you are in a group and then that priviledge makes you out to be in a "priviledged" "cast system".

Many years later I saw a painting in a Paris market in San Suplice (some years later i had managed to reach Paris in 2017).  Only people like me who had been through the experience could understand it ....  On a street life view .....  there , in three levels was a scene with normal people going about their life while being watched by guardians who reside and work on the higher levels.  They are watching over other people as if it were "their own thing"  .... it was very unpleasant and perhaps not at all futuristic or surreal.


I realized i had Surveillance in my parents house in Tehran when i tried to sell it after my mother had passed away. It was a house that  had been left unattended for some years . My parents had gone to live in my brothers appartment close to the airport during the Iran Iraq war to get away from the bombings. My parents had rented the house out to a family with lots of children who were probably well connected to the Army and perhaps it was in this period that those technologies were introduced into the house.  I had chosen to go to live in this house where i had spent my childhood and could feel the effects of surveillance on our lives here, for example things went missing when i went out to buy groceries.
 This house was prime property and sought after by the developers who wanted to build five stories on the land. It was in  their interest to get me and my mother to leave the place. Once for instance my brother's friend had come to visit me and my mother, it was winter and snow was thick on the ground .... as our friend knocked on the big door to the garden, i went to greet him and was surprised when a snow ball was thrown at him from God knows which direction (but from somewhere behind me but obviously it was thrown by a neigbour or some one watching from the roof and in the know) .... some one was making a statement and fear was what i felt in my heart ....  i couldnt believe what had happened .... that snow ball could have been something less innocent ....

Obviously the sale of the house didnt go well for me and as is the case in my country today , a lot of people and their properties are entangled in the web by the "webmaster" who knows how to prey on people who have properties.
 Parasitic living is normal among the  poor  and that is probably talking about the whole world today where "the have not" classes listen in and are always thinking that it is easy for other people and that they who are supposedly rich ( because they can afford to go to the hairdressers) can  help them.

  Like the Rich woman in the film who thought there were  ghosts in the house , i too had the impression that some one was walking in and out of the door without any permission  ....  later on i found out that their name is "The snoopers"  and that they are authorized to walk in and out of peoples houses.  Infact on one occasion when i had left my mother on her own in the house and had gone to get some groceries , i found the door open and a young man with an army suit on sitting with my mother ....  i was speechless .... he left without saying a word and i didnt say or do anything about it.  Many years later i read Riad Sattouf's book about Colonel Ghaddafi's  Libia. Here Sattouf who grew up in Libia said  that they would take over your house in that country  if you didnt leave some one to guard the door (i read this in the book called "the Arabs of the Future)  it was just something people knew about and the same thing happened in China.


While living in my appartment in Spain , i often found the door open when i came back .... i was innocent and couldnt fathom what was going on , so i got an allarm put in , but this didnt work either .... on one occasion i found a childs toys in my sitting room and on another i found all the food i had bought for myself disappear with no rhme or reason.  The Ghosts didnt ask permission and didnt even say thank you !

Really speaking there are people who live in the dark place in the basement (as in the film) and they only seek a safe place)  and who come up for air and food (like the husband of the Nanny) but they are scary because people like me dont know  how to handle the situation. Ideally it would be great if the have nots and the wealthy could come to an agreement  like "entent cordial" but what happens is always the contrary.  Like in the film when the rich owner is wanting the new hired driver to playact at being a Red Indian , he expects service for the money he pays him  An agrument between the two would only mean an ensueing power struggle between worker and employer.

"Sense and sensibility" is what i experienced in one case when i was in a friends house in Italy, i felt that the person who was looking on at me was compassionate and a friend ....  how lucky to have that sort of Angel looking on at you.  Ofcourse that was a unique experience ..... i was facing a fire situation when they sent me some one to help me without my having asked .....

I immagine that this sort of Parasitic life became normal in Russia after the Revolution in 1917 perhaps they did the same sort of thing in their "Soviet" colonies ..... and that bringing every one down to the same level and homogenizing the world is the perspective that is what the future promises for us earthlings living on all the five continents.