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Wednesday, Oct 06, 2021 - 23:53 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Fun With Seafood


Top: Squid Game Invitation Card;
Bottom: Zen Maru-Sankaku-Shikaku (Universal) Motif
(Sources; r/wallstreetbets, wikipedia.org)


You know a show's really hit the popular consciousness when you get to hear of it as a reference in an official workplace communiqué, as was the case for the latest Netflix sensation, Squid Game. About this, it has been noted that the premise of a mass deathmatch for a huge (cash) prize* isn't all that original or even less-explored in recent years, with similar implementations such as Alice In Borderland, Divergent, The Hunger Games, Liar Game (formerly discussed here in 2015, but perhaps less suited to a big screen adaptation due to the relative complexity of the schemes; they have been scarily prescient on the YouTube censorship and deplatforming going on willy-nilly nowadays, though), Battle Royale etc. still fresh in the memory - or, going slightly further back, works like Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept or Battle Circle series.

The craze has seen replica Squid Game invitation cards being offered for sale by many enterprising vendors, about which I thought it interesting to comment on the possible provenance of the symbolism. The shapes have been noted to remind of the buttons on the Playstation controller and even the logo of LOONA, a K-pop girl group, but for my money the closest resemblance - including the arrangement - would by far be the Buddhist representation of The Universe as first conceptualized by Sengai (perhaps extended from older imagery, and later apparently inspiring a by-now largely-forgotten Japanese rock band). That said, I suppose usage of the three most basic shapes** is hardly the unique providence of any philosophy.

[*Perhaps not even that huge at slightly less than US$40 million, from how even hamsters have been killing it in the market recently; the four-hundred plus entrants should have more realistically mortgaged everything to throw into crypto before this last resort, all the more as it's Korea. Well, inflation appears finally getting acknowledged after a thirty-year high could not be hidden, so let's see how much longer this lasts]

[**Actually, the three shapes are equivalent in topology, make what of that you will; claiming equivalence can get tricky once one gets into more-impractical mathematics]



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