ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that gender plays a highly significant role in the film, not only by helping to define class relations but also by significantly affecting the representation of power, specifically through the depiction of the characters' gullibility, humiliation and dignity. The multiple humiliations and acts of emasculation are slights to Gi-Taek's masculinity. It is in biopower's consideration of the disposability of human life, the rationale for regarding some lives as worthy and others as tangential and sacrificable, where we can consider the representation of gender in relation to class in Parasite. Critics of the film overwhelmingly focus only on class, rarely addressing gender as an important element of the film. Before Parasite's theatrical release in the United States on 5 October 2019, media critics and reviewers understood the film as a piece of social criticism.
