Even if everyone can complain about the current state of television, we as viewers are more than spoiled for choice. The current grotesque abundance of television shows ensures that there is truly something for everyone without sacrificing interest, and we owe this abundance to Hollywood’s creative drive to foster understanding between strangers and make us dream – wait , no. It’s capitalism. Just like everything else, it is capitalism.
The more emotionally and intellectually indulged a viewer feels while watching a show, the more their screen-damaged eyeballs remain glued to the television, where their mere presence either generates direct revenue for a streaming company or increases a traditional broadcaster’s capacity to sell toilet paper. In short: TV is nice to us because they need us, and that’s how the system works.
Except for Squid Game: The Challenge. Squid Game: The Challenge fucking hates us.
This is not a judgment on the merits of Squid Game: The Challenge as a television show. Whether or not this show is “good” couldn’t be further from the point (or further from its own point). This is a grudging ovation to Squid Game: The Challenge’s ability to exist as a reality competition show that hates each of its competitors and its audience alike and doesn’t even try to hide that disdain… presumably and that’s just one interpretation the mood, because we are naughty little pigs and they want to make us squeal. And it’s 100 percent true.
“Squid Game: The Challenge” is a reality competition show, which means it’s a way for rich and powerful studio executives to create entertaining disposable entertainment by asking regular people to perform childish tasks for free in the hopes of winning a cash prize . “Squid Game: The Challenge” is adapted from Netflix’s South Korean smash hit “Squid Game,” a clever and satirical meditation on the brokenness of a system that treats the deadly struggle for freedom from income inequality like throwaway entertainment for the rich and powerful. So yeah, yikes.
Since Squid Game: The Challenge can’t literally murder people (ugh, lawyers), the losing contestants instead wear an ink detonator strapped to their chest that explodes with a gunshot sound, after which the squibee is forced to dramatically “die” on screen. . . It’s humiliating for them and insulting for us to make the rude assumption that if we’re the kind of weirdos who wanted this show in the first place, the fun is in watching strangers mimic their inevitable deaths.
“Squid Game: The Challenge” COURTESY OF NETFLIX
“Squid Game: The Challenge” also uses the traditional reality format where you introduce a “character,” follow their journey through the game and become involved in their story. It pushes us to believe that our feelings matter before stabbing us with a blade carved from our own expectations. It often reminds us powerfully why each player is fighting – to raise money for a kidney donation clinic, to care for a disabled child, to ease the struggle as a refugee – just before eliminating that player like a cat stealing a glass Water from a coffee table. Squid Game: 1, Feelings: 0.
In the literal sense of bullying, reports from contestants on “Squid Game: The Challenge” compare the experience of being on the show to borderline torture. Hundreds of contestants were reportedly held in icy conditions for hours, leading to a handful of serious illnesses and ultimately a lawsuit against the show by aggrieved players. And yes, it’s easy to look at competitors’ complaints about mistreatment, remember that they volunteered to participate in “Squid Game,” and say, “Okay, but did you die?”
It’s easy because it’s right.
And yet, like fools, we persist in watching, just as they persist in routinely getting screwed. Despite “Squid Game: The Challenge”‘s attempts to sow discord among competitors, which include a series of incredibly rude games where players are punished for things like mentioning out loud that they’d like to go home, having no friends, and just Eliminate As the players fail to convince a single person to get a chocolate muffin, they can’t help but be sweet and unfortunately human. Despite their determination to be bitter enemies, many of them succumb to the human urge to ally with one another against all odds, only to have that instinct brutally beaten out of them again and again because the entire concept of the series is completely contradictory.
Anyone who saw fictional characters compete on Squid Game and wished it was a real show because they were dying to see it is the villain. This means that by default the entire Squid Game: The Challenge audience sucks. The show knows this and is bullying us. “If we truly choose to live in a reality in which your capitalist demands and lack of understanding of vision require my existence,” the show says, “then I can make fun of you for participating in any way .”
Which, you know. Just.