INDEX
Critical Reflection on Late Capitalist Society
In this light, the assassin’s love for the songs of The Smiths, who were known for their vitriolic criticism of Thatcher, the strongest proponent of the so-called “neolibe,” and who sang about the serious inadequacies of youth in such a society, is a bit too witty and ironic.
Confident businesspeople listen to The Smiths to stroke their “outlaw” status, just as they ingest their favorite music for “healing” and “energy for tomorrow. They do not objectify themselves as mere members of the gig economy, after all, but act professionally at their own risk. No, I have no choice but to act. Even in the course of the grueling task of hunting down the client who put himself and his loved ones at risk.
The background music for the nonpolitical freelance assassin is always The Smiths’ classic songs about outsiders “just like me. What a grand irony! It is not surprising to find in this irony a biting critique of a familiar phenomenon of our time, in which certain subcultures clad in radical politics are gradually de-ideologized by the whirlwind of the commodity economy, and instead, are deftly prolonged as pro-capitalist “goods.
What Fincher means by “funny” is precisely the feeling I have described above. Thinking back to “Fight Club” and “The Social Network,” David Fincher has been relentlessly depicting the ridiculousness and contradictions of men living in late capitalist society for some time. With his ever-restrained narrative style, one could be fooled for a moment into thinking that “The Killer” is a celebration of “cool masculinity,” but in fact, it seems to reveal quite the opposite. In other words, “How ‘independent’ and ‘free’ are you, who almost applaud the monologue and behavior of this man-assassin, in the current social/economic system of sharing economy, gig economy, and technology led by global corporations? How “independent” and “free” can you be in the current social/economic system led by global corporations, the sharing and gig economy, and technology? This question should be the most critical theme of this film. The Smiths’ music plays an extremely important role in bringing this question to light. At the same time, the way the question is posed in such a roundabout way is itself very much like The Smiths.
