Screens and Ghosts, or, the Window and the Guy in the Basement

In Parasite, the widely acclaimed and first ever non-English language film to win the Academy Award for best picture, there are two houses. In one lives a poor family; in the other, a rich family.

The house with the poor family is semi-basement, with one window which opens onto the outside world at street level. The architectural window becomes a screen through which the family, enclosed in the darkness of their largely subterrestrial home, sees sights of the outside street. But, as with the post-screen, the window's boundaries are open, porous and permeable, so the window also lets in fumigation fumes and, at the film's climax, rain floods which pollute and destroy their home. We can say that this is a different kind of screen.

The house with the rich family has a hidden basement with a guy in it. He had once emerged from the basement to steal food from the kitchen and frightened the rich family's little son, who refers to the episode as having “seen a ghost.” This guy turns out to be the original housekeeper's husband who had been secretly living in the basement bunker for over four years hiding from loan sharks – indeed, a man with a ghosted identity.