How Can We Learn From “The Platform?”
TLDR: Watch the film on Netflix, you won’t regret it.
The film is astoundingly brilliant in the sense that it is powerfully simple. Perfect as an introductory film to a philosophy class, the film tackles different components of capitalism, socialism, individualism and collectivism.
Imagine you wake up in a vertical prison facility consisting of an unknown number of levels. There are two prisoners per level and you share the room with an inmate for exactly 30 days. At the end of that period, gas fills the space and knocks you out. The next time you wake up, you’re on a new floor. There is a huge rectangular hole in the middle of the floor, dropping down through all the levels. Once a day, a floating slab full of fancy food lowers itself to each level, stops for a couple of minutes so that your inmate and you get to gobble. It begins at the top from floor 0. Floor 1 gets the food of their choice and the leftovers trickles to floor 2, floor 3 and so on. If you wake up to find yourself on floor 6, good for you. If you wake up to find yourself on floor 200.. good luck. Humans being humans, we tend to feast when we’re at the top and we fight for crumbs and bones at the bottom. So, what would you do if you woke up on floor 200? Would you eat your floor-mate? Would you do anything differently if you were fortunate enough to wake up on floor 6? Would you stuff your face with food like no tomorrow or consider what happens down below?
What would you do when greed and fear rule above all else?
The film features little to begin with: two beds, a minimal sink/toilet setup and a rectangular hole in the floor that connects the space to identical cells above and below. But the message behind the film holds a whole of truth. The intent is to bulldoze us with metaphors that appear to be wrong with modern society. Remember the time when I wrote about how I don’t understand why people are hoarding toilet papers during a global pandemic? The same thing is happening here. The difference is that it isn’t about toilet paper, but something much more essential that falls right at the bottom of our hierarchy of needs. Food. It makes sense, because if you don’t eat (enough), especially when you’re older in age, you will die. Can we blame the 61-year-old man stuffing himself with 4 chicken thighs on the 5th floor? Let’s extend this thought further. How about if you wake up at floor 200 only to open your eyes and witness the 61-year-old man attempting to cannibalize you?
Survival of the fittest? Perhaps.
Alternatively, we can look at how the film presents the imbalance of a system where a small group of people have unfettered access to wealth and power, and the ability to casually deny even basic survival necessities to people below them. Class tensions has never been an easy topic to break into, but I believe The Platform has presented it in a delicate manner. There is no excessive fluff seen in the film. In fact, it was such a barren set, so squalidly lit that the details fuzz together. In spite of the simplicity of the space and the effects, the film is visually striking and memorable, very much like our first romantic partner. Yet, big ideas still come in one wave after another. Since he has control of the food first, the main lead (Goreng) has some leverage over the prisoners dwelling in the floor below him. He can persuade/threaten those below him with what he has, but he can hardly influence the ones above. In this place, power only moves downwards. The solution is simple. As long as everyone take according to their needs, all would be fed.
How would you control other people’s behaviour, except in limited ways and through vicious means?
Ultimately, the film satirizes the rampant inequality of modern life and how we, as humans, tend to act most from self-interest. Betrayal doesn’t come from how deep we love or know someone. Often, it comes from a place where it is completely dependent on the magnitude of burden placed in front of us. The Platform offers much food for thought. Between your survival or a newfound cellmate, which would you choose? Between saving yourself or risk dying while trying to save everyone, which would you choose? It is almost a gruesome metaphor for capitalism at its worst portrayed in a fashion of a prisoner’s dilemma. We can’t decide the cards we’re dealt with, but we all certainly have an equal chance to decide how to play our cards. Sometimes it isn’t about understanding our cards, but understanding how the game is being played.
