As you look across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the internet as a whole, you can really feel the sweep of joy for 'Parasite'.
Bong Joon-ho's private smile at the statuette has been .giffed and memed, fans of the director now call themselves the Bong-Hive, and the all-Korean cast are now the toast of Hollywood. Brad Pitt is stopping to hug Joon-ho after the ceremony, and the HBO series based on 'Parasite' is now one of the most hotly-anticipated TV shows.
Looking at the reaction online, it feels like it's all preordained and not the upset it's being made out to be. There's a sense that this was long fought for and inevitable for, just like Sinn Féin's victory at the polls this weekend. In a way, they're not that dissimilar. Korean cinema has been cranking out some of the most exciting and finely-crafted movies of the past two decades, with 2003's 'Oldboy' kicking off South Korean cinema as having crossover appeal with Western audiences.
2013's 'Snowpiercer' was a cult hit and was probably how most people were introduced to Bong Joon-ho's work, but he's been working steadily for years. You only need to look at 'Memories of Murder' and 'The Host' to know that there was a serious talent at work. 2016's 'Train To Busan' was hailed as a genre masterpiece, and successfully fused zombie horror with frightening action setpieces and class satire. Park Chan-wook's 'The Handmaiden', also from 2016, was a huge critical success.
Leaving all that aside, another reason for the upset with 'Parasite' winning is that it didn't follow the preordained path to victory. When you look at the gold derby, there's always markers and signs that point to the Oscars. For example, a win at the Director's Guild of America Award assures you a win for Best Director at the Oscars. The accuracy rate? Since 1948, there have only been eight directors who have not won Best Director as well as winning the Director's Guild Award. When it comes to Best Picture, the Producer's Guild Award is another reliable marker. Before last night, the Producer's Guild Award had a 67.74% accuracy for predicting Best Picture.
An upset with two of the most reliable predictors of Oscar glory is no mean feat in and of itself, but there's yet another reason why 'Parasite' wasn't expected to win and it's the elephant in the room. It's a foreign-language movie. 'Parasite' isn't the first foreign-language movie to be nominated for Best Picture, and it most definitely won't be the last. It is, however, the first ever to win it. The Oscars are in their 92nd year.
The real question isn't how did 'Parasite' win here. The real question is how did it take the Oscars so long to give Best Picture to a foreign-language movie. In his speech at the Golden Globes, Bong Joon-ho talked about how "once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films." That might be true of audiences who are more used to conventional movies, or the kind that star people they recognise and respond to.
How is it, then, that the Oscars and the voting pool of the Academy Awards have only just now cleared it?
