The guards wear red overalls and black masks, are armed and have only one goal in “Squid Game”, the world’s most successful series on the US streaming portal Netflix: to kill people. Highly indebted people fight for their survival in green overalls while playing children’s games. The losers are cruelly killed in each round, and the winners receive a large sum of money.
Clothing made of red and green overalls is currently becoming a trend, for Halloween, Carnival or in the schoolyards. Some Bavarian schools have already warned against reenacting the brutal scenes in the playground. According to the local state criminal investigation office (LKA), “business cards” appeared at at least three elementary and middle schools, which serve as an invitation to the “Squid Game”. The LKA speaks of “isolated suspicious perceptions in connection with the television series”.
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However, there are no known cases of physical injuries or acts of violence in connection with the game in Bavarian schools. “Teachers have reported that this series is also being re-enacted in their schools,” the President of the Bavarian Teachers’ Association (BLLV), Simone Fleischmann, told the German Press Agency in Munich.
Brutal, glorifies violence and especially disturbing for children
According to a newspaper report, children also played the series in a daycare center in Pinneberg near Hamburg. In a letter to the parents, the responsible contact person at the day care center warned against the series. It is “brutal, glorifies violence and especially disturbing for children,” quotes the Schleswig-Holstein newspaper publisher (SHZ / Freitag) from the letter.
Nightmares, fears and psychological problems could result. “Hence our urgent appeal: don’t let your children watch this series. Not even when you’re there. ”The series is rated FSK 16.
According to the report, kindergarten teachers became aware of the fact that at the end of a game the children said to each other: “I’ll kill you”. “You cause emotional harm to your children if you let them see something like this,” warns the contact person responsible for parenting in the letter.
Police in North Rhine-Westphalia warn of Halloween costumes, Berliner Kolleg: inside more relaxed
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the police union is worried about the upcoming Halloween night. Erich Rettinghaus, state chairman of the German police union, told the “Rheinische Post”: “Individual squid game costumers could become the new horror clowns who attacked bystanders a few years ago and terrified them violently. We can only warn against replaying the games from the series in public on Halloween. Bystanders cannot tell whether it is fun or not. And even we as the police cannot always recognize this immediately in an emergency. For example, ketchup as a blood substitute cannot be identified as such at first glance, especially in the dark. “
Berlin’s police spokesman Thilo Cablitz sees it more relaxed. He told the Tagesspiegel: “It is fundamentally unfavorable to act out homicides. You always have to assume that people will inform the police, whether it’s Halloween or filming. So far there has been no case of squid game imitations. “
Benjamin Jendro from the Berlin Police Union: “Halloween is never easy for the police because it has long become the fashion in this country to dress up to spread fear and horror. That doesn’t just make it easy for our colleagues, but also for the population, to distinguish between fiction and reality. The current Netflix trend “Squid Game” is accordingly to be classified in the same category as “It”, which resulted in horror clowns running through the streets. All we can do is call for the fun not to be taken too far and that it is better to recognize it at an early stage, before the fear causes injuries or deaths. “(with dpa)
