by Victoria Potenza, Staff Writer

After last month’s entry into my Women Who Kill column, I decided this was a good way for me to highlight other women who I find represent societal ills and issues, or kill due to said issues. So this month’s column is on the joys of capitalism! Who doesn’t love working themselves to the bone for 40+ hours a week to bring home a meager wage that barely gives you enough to derive any enjoyment from life? I can admit that I am one of the lucky Millennials who was able to buy a home a few years ago, something that would not have been accomplished without a lot of help from family members and an actual pandemic that forced us inside the house and made us save up our meager shekels. However, there are many things I want to do with just not enough money to do it. Including making repairs to the house, traveling, going back to school, and a plethora of other things that are much more than my pitiful pay checks might allow. Instead I sit here screaming “eat the rich” and visualizing Elon Musk getting the guillotine treatment.

So in the capitalist hellscape we live in, my mind turned to Cheng Lai-sheung, who I saw in the film Dream Home a few months back. Cheng similarly pines for the things that would bring her and her family a better life but too few opportunities are granted to her. So instead she takes fate into her own hands and commits heinous acts of violence to get her dream home.

Dream Home follows Cheng Lai-sheung (Josie Ho), a young working professional in China who saves up for the singular goal of buying her own apartment with a view of Victoria Harbor. The film jumps back and forth through time showing us a young Cheng as her family is evicted from a low-rent housing unit so that developers can turn the space into luxury condominiums. She promises her mother and father that she will get them this dream home but her mother dies before she is able to keep her promise. She believes she has finally saved up enough money to finally buy the apartment her heart is set on, but at the same time there is a hike in the stock market and the owners decide they are going to raise the price of the space. With her father’s mounting hospital bills, and a married boyfriend who has little interest in helping her with the extra funds, she comes up with a plan to get what she is due. In order to lower the price of the apartment she goes on a killing spree, killing many of the residents in the complex. If one thing can make the price of a living space plummet, its murder, and Cheng is willing to do anything to get what she wants.

Cheng’s motive is pretty straightforward and easy to understand; she murders those in the apartment complex to make the available apartment more affordable to her. When Cheng first sets out on this endeavor she believes she is doing it with the best intentions. As a young girl she wanted to get a nice place for her family because she did not want her grandfather to walk long distances while he was older and in poor health. Later on she hopes that she can at least elevate the quality of living for her parents. This is dashed when her mother dies. So then the focus is on making the best life for her and her father.

Unfortunately her father becomes ill with mesothelioma, something that can happen when people spend too long in older run down spaces that have expose them to Asbestos. While she wants to do right by her father, she also recognizes that the cost of his oxygen and other medical expenses are putting a huge drain on her and the money she needs for her home. So she makes the decision to withhold her father’s oxygen and kill him, freeing up the money she thinks will get her the house. Capitalism always brings out the best in people, and in this instance it makes her greedy. The dream home becomes such an obsession that she needs to get it no matter the cost.

After the price of the house skyrockets she makes plans to go on her killing spree within the apartment complex. The gore and violence escalates, much more than even Cheng expects, as she constantly runs into more people who see her carrying out her crimes. Unwilling to leave witnesses or go to prison she has to get rid of all of the witnesses. This leads to her killing a pregnant woman, a guard, a group of young people partying, and a few police officers. Ironically many of her victims end up being killed with a variety of household appliances that are within her grasp, including a vacuum storage bag. This is all a necessary evil to get what she needs. She had her mind set to a goal and she accomplished it. If we are to buy into the capitalist myth that all we need to do is work hard and we can get what we want out of life, than she followed through. Can the capitalist gods really blame her?

Due to the fact that these crimes, for the most part, take place over the course of a night it is hard to say what the perception of her is. If she had been caught we can assume that she would come off as a crazy, selfish woman who did something horrific and incomprehensible. And perhaps that is not the entirely wrong perception even though plenty of greedy terrible things are done in the name of the free market and capitalist gain on the daily. Shouldn’t we also reflect on the poor quality of the homes that Cheng and many like her were forced to live in, with so many condos and homes, how are there not enough spaces to place those who do not have means? We should also reflect on the health conditions that often result from the poor quality of houses that they are forced to live in; her father would not have gotten sick if the building designers used materials that were not literal poison. And we should also reflect on the society that allows these things to happen; that does not provide the safe home, the adequate health care, the suitable paychecks to let people live. Are these crimes not as heinous and inexplicable? Yet we accept them as a norm because that is what our society is structured around.

The film clearly wants us to reflect on all of these ideas. In the end Cheng gets the home of her dreams and in the background we hear about the impending mortgage crisis going on in the United States and how it will ripple out into the rest of the global community. The film has a very pointed social message while also maintaining a sense of humor about what someone like Cheng would have to do to pull herself out of poverty and provide an adequate home for herself. Because of this, Cheng really stands out from the rest of the Women Who Kill crew that I have covered thus far. None of them kill simply to provide for themselves in a toxic society. It is a very different type of survival for Cheng, it is pulling oneself out of the depths of poverty. While her crimes are outlandish and she might not be the best poster child for selfless acts, she is very much a product of her environment. As billionaires continue to be allowed ridiculous tax breaks, pollute the air with their private jets, and rape the earth for everything it has Cheng really does seem like a tiny problem in the grand scheme.

While I cannot promote pulling a Cheng to get what you want I can suggest using the bathroom on the clock, not answering that email when you’ve clocked out, taking all your sick and vacation time, and not working harder than you have to. Because what do we really owe capitalism? So fuck billionairs, eat the rich, and revolt against these greedy pigs commrads!