When watching The Squid Game, two questions arise: the challenge. The first is unavoidable and dissolves after 10 minutes, as soon as the already iconic doll of the Red Light, Green Light test feels the first shocks and we discover that the balls are made of paint. No, no one will die in this adaptation. Something that the creators had already made clear during their presentation. As if it were necessary, although perhaps one day it will be necessary. The second plans run through our minds throughout the competition. Is this the excellent material that Netflix was referring to when it told us that account sharing limited its “ability to invest in creating great stories told through quality series and films”?
This statement made me feel like an American before Kennedy’s inaugural address. “It’s not about what Netflix can do for you, it’s about what you can do for Netflix.” Being naive, I thought that if my mother stopped sharing my account to watch Turkish soap operas, Mindhunter would have maybe a decent ending, they would produce great shows like Orange Is the New Black or House of Cards again, and the abrupt cancellations would stop. But no, what we get in return is a reality show because they keep telling us that traditional television is dead, but it is becoming more and more common that platforms offer us traditional television content, see Yellow Humor, Un dos tres o el mejor, OT, which Amazon Prime Video broadcasts live from this Monday, becomes for a few hours another channel where you can see a product exactly the same as that broadcast by TVE. The TV you kill is in good health.
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“The Squid Game” was an unusual success that surprised even Netflix. A local product that seemed incomprehensible outside of South Korea ended up becoming the most viewed content on the platform and, more importantly, an inevitable topic of conversation. The critics weren’t too enthusiastic, the setting was shabby and the script was shabby, but it exuded originality and a refreshing shamelessness in the midst of so many productions that seem to have been made after a market study. Such success could only be overused. An unnecessary second part is coming soon, which, unlike the usual one, was completed satisfactorily, and today the reality show has arrived. The paradox is that its creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, conceived it as an allegory of modern capitalist society and it has now become a shining part of the mechanism he denounced.
Contestants line up in four lines to compete in “The Squid Game: The Challenge.” COURTESY OF NETFLIX
The production by The Garden and Studio Lambert, responsible for the successful film “The Traitors”, offers a gigantic, unprecedented show. It is the most ambitious reality show recorded to date. 456 contestants from around the world – although we quickly note that “everyone” means, as usual, from Washington to Florida and a few Commonwealth countries – are aiming for the highest prize never awarded on television: $4.56 million. The key is that everything is “bigger”, at no point does it seem to matter that it is better.
The replica is perfect. The scenery of the children’s games, the uniforms of the players and guards, the murderous doll, the Dalgona cookies… miss what a pinch of morality cannot provide: the desperation that, in the series, drove ordinary people to give their lives for money take risk. Here the majority just wants, as the winners said on December 22nd, to “close gaps”. And you don’t watch a stranger suck on a cookie with the same interest when his life is on the line or when all he’s interested in is paying the down payment on a Mazda.
The room full of bunk beds where the contestants of “The Squid Game: The Challenge” sleep.PETE DADDS/NETFLIX
The participants are the great asset of any reality show and here we find the usual profiles in every Anglo-Saxon program. There’s an avid jock who looks like a high school bully about to show his paw. “Compassion is only a weakness, my greatest strength is manipulation,” he proudly declares, only to assure us seconds later that he is competitive, “because Jesus was competitive.” If someone doesn’t remember whether the competitive Jesus in Luke or Matthew, he can check out the great essay “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, which explains the strange appropriation of Jesus by these types of characters. There are several participants who believe they are the Iron Sergeant and play the harmless Sink the Fleet, like someone conquering Iwo Jima, and a few old men who surprisingly no one tries to befriend because they suspect that , just like in the series, they could be the owners of the Cotarro In fact, there are many moments in which people act as if they have not seen the series, too many for the script that it supposedly does not follow to be credible were.
In the second episode of The Squid Game: The Challenge, a contestant attempts to pass the Dalgona cookie test. COURTESY OF NETFLIX
Given such an ambitious format, there was no shortage of accusations of stupidity and also complaints about the conditions under which the tests were carried out. The tabloid The Sun wrote an article claiming that some participants almost died of hypothermia. Filming coincided with a cold snap in the United Kingdom, the location where the program was recorded. Netflix quickly downplayed the incident, saying that the health and safety of the cast and crew was “very important” to it. The truth is that, at least in the episodes that the media were able to see before the premiere (the first five released this Wednesday; another four will be released on December 29th and December 6th, the last episode), The evidence seemed so innocuous that we might as well have been watching the reality show The Durrells. It is still paradoxical that the participants of a reality show inspired by one of the most sadistic and bloody series are so whiny. I’m risking my life, yes, but don’t let my kidneys cool down. The noise caused by the supposed rigor of the tests seems more like a clever advertising maneuver to draw attention to a product that is trying with all its might to appear much more than it is.
The Squid Game: The Challenge tries to convince us that we’re about to see something we’ve never seen before, but the tests are no more entertaining than those of any other episode of Yellow Humor and certainly can’t impress us with their severity and reality shows surprise They have long since crossed all boundaries, at least the legal ones. Years ago on Fear Factor we saw a woman drinking donkey urine and sperm, and not even for an obscene amount of money, just $100,000. In case anyone is interested, he stated that it had “a slight hint of hay.”
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