The mansion that serves as the primary setting for Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite is entirely believable as the kind of lavish home a wealthy family (and a number of guests, uninvited or not) might live in. It’s also not a real house, having been created from the ground up by production designer Lee Ha-jun. A Great Big Story interview with Lee looks into how the Park family’s home was designed, including details on its food-based architectural inspiration.
Lee explains that his design philosophy is that “a set should not look like a set” before describing how Parasite’s mansion layout was informed by looking at “the Legos my son plays with,” as well as the way cutting into freshly-steamed tofu leaves some pieces standing while others fall over. “That configuration gave me an idea,” Lee says of the tofu before the video shows the blocky layout of the multi-story Park house.
The clip goes on to explain how the mansion’s four different sets were combined digitally in post-production to give the impression of an actual house. It also touches on wild stuff like how the trash can seen in the Park’s kitchen “cost $2,500" and that the huge painting in the family’s living room, while not given a concrete figure, was “very expensive.” Compared to these props, the ones used in the Kim family’s basement were “essentially free.” So, as it turns out, even when it comes to production design, the economic disparity between the Parks and Kims was pretty vast.
For more about Lee Ha-jun’s work on Parasite, watch the rest of the interview here.
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23 Comments
Actually, the Parasite house looked like the celebrity mom’s house in the 2013 soap opera ‘You’re the Best, Lee Soon-shin’. Long time K-drama watchers are amused by how people are reacting to Bong’s work as though its something entirely original. The peach allergy subplot? That showed up in the 2017 time travel series ‘Go Back Couple’.
Are all long-time K-drama watchers this condescending, or…
Frankie Say Relax, You’ve Been Kinja’d.
I mean, it’s weird when people act like class consciousness is a brand new media storyline. In much of the rest of the world, it’s not. I’m American, but spent a period of about six months completely obsessed with kdramas… maybe 8-9 years ago. When I tried to come back to American TV and movies, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t get into kdrama for class consciousness (I seem to recall steamy dude shower scenes playing a big role), but watching them in a sustained way made me realize how fucked up America is around narratives of class and poverty and wealth.It might be condescending to point it out, but that doesn’t make it less true. When was the last time you watched an American show that included lessons around unionizing (The Awl), the dangers and sociopathy of rich people evading taxes (Squad 38), how we’re all one medical emergency away from poverty (maybe 1/3 of all kdramas), how debt collectors are vipers/the relationship between poverty and debt/generational poverty (My Mister), how employers purposely keep people on contract to avoid paying benefits (When My Love Blooms), how caring for people impacts economic opportunities for women (Lee Soon Shin)… I could go on.TLDR: Americans avoid narratives that give voice to their actual lived experience at their peril. Consuming foreign media can give us a sense of what stories American media chooses to tell, and what they don’t.
Slow your roll there. I was addressing the delivery, not the content.
When was the last time you watched an American show that included lessons around unionizingSuperstore
how we’re all one medical emergency away from poverty
Breaking Bad
how employers purposely keep people on contract to avoid paying benefitsSuperstore
Like so many of these themes are shows that American TV has had?? Like
You’re right, there are a few.It’s fairly dominant in kdrama though. The language of kdrama, even the sappy, romantic, easy-listening type of kdrama, is the language of class warfare.
all american tv is just king of queens and this is us, you’re right, we’re all just slovenly mouthbreathers shoveling dogshit content into our mouths
“[H]ow debt collectors are vipers/the relationship between poverty and debt”.‘Elementary’ had an episode about this a few years back. In particular it looked at debt collecting/buying as a predatory industry, not just the work of a few vipers. They also had another episode that dealt with the practice of businesses that deal in viatical settlements, where terminal people sell their life insurance for a one-off payment and the business hopes that they die soon enough that the benefit outweighs the payment and the cost of covering premiums.Actually, ‘Elementary’ had a lot of anti-capitalist themes during its run.
That doesn’t surprise me… I’ve caught a few episodes of Elementary, and I thought they were better than average on those kinds of issues.
Saying American media doesn’t cover important issues is a bullshit argument fueled by purposely excluding large pieces of important media.Medical emergencies ruining people? That’s the impetus of Breaking Bad. The apathy of the wealthy and the disintegration of unions are key pieces of The Wire, which also includes a HOST of other issues into other seasonsHow about mining companies blowing mountains up and ruining communities? That’s JustifiedI pulled those examples out after ten seconds of thinking about it. It wouldn’t be hard to find other examples given time
Your examples are all higher-status show, chosen over two decades. Which is fine! I love The Wire! But there’s really no comparison as far as a few exceptional shows in American media v. like half of everything on all channels, not just the fancy ones, in Korea. It’s fine if you only consume high-quality media in America. My comment was more about normalized media and narratives. If five percent of people are watching shows about injustice in the US and everyone else is watching Big Bang Theory, the impact on Americans’ narratives about themselves is limited. But, FWIW, I totally get not seeing the distinction. It’s the cultural soup we all live in, which makes it harder to notice, until you get out of it for a while.
Yes.
“You’re stupid for not knowing about similarities from my niche media”
Yeh, you really really are. IU’s worldwide hit single ‘Eight’ from last month was film in a two story modernist ranch-style home not far from the ‘Parasite’ style.
Sure, double down. Why not.
kill yourself
“Long time K-drama watchers…”“That showed up in the 2017 time travel series…”Your encyclopedic knowledge of the subject is stunning.
Did someone say Parasite house in Lego?
oh WOW!
Cool, huh? Thanks, Reddit.
Knowing how much people love shit like “Gatsby parties”, I’ve been waiting for some rich person to have their house designed to look just like the one in ‘Parasite’.
Okay but what if they actually made a Parasite LEGO set. That would be awesome