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Media Review: No Other Choice!? Recognising and Resisting Rational Hysteria

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaoran Ma

    (University of Melbourne)

  • Andy Wear

    (University of Melbourne)

Abstract

Based on: Park Chan-wook No Other Choice South Korea: Moho Film "Park Chan-wook's interweaving of ludicrous villainy, emotional maximalism and Hitchcockian devices in No Other Choice (2025) belies a simple storyline: After being laid off by the papermaking company that he has served for decades with decoration and pride, a middle-aged man—Man-su (played with astonishing wickedness and guile by Lee Byung-hun)—is exiled into the job market, where he finds himself having ‘no other choice' but to kill all his competitors to be able to land a new position in the same field. Regardless of whether this marks the director's aesthetic best (given earlier works such as Oldboy [2003] and The Handmaiden [2016]), the film's ideological critique is loud and clear: Neoliberal capitalism, built on the meritocratic determinism of social Darwinian competition, is turning job markets into battlefields where affective relations are distilled into a ‘kill-or-be-killed' dynamic."

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaoran Ma & Andy Wear, 2026. "Media Review: No Other Choice!? Recognising and Resisting Rational Hysteria," Post-Print hal-05777377, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05777377
    DOI: 10.1177/01708406261459070
    as

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