Netflix has dropped a trailer for the upcoming actuality collection Squid Recreation: The Problem. The forthcoming present begins with 456 contestants competing for a $4.56 million prize in occasions repackaged (minus the brutal violence) from the scripted collection. What higher option to observe a fictional critique of contemporary capitalism’s exploitation of the financially determined for revenue and leisure than to embrace a actuality TV spectacle that exploits the financially determined for revenue and leisure?
Amongst different video games ripped from the South Korean present, the competitors’s trailer showcases the unique collection’ creepy “purple gentle, inexperienced gentle” doll as gamers in inexperienced tracksuits nervously scoot throughout the ground, able to cease at a second’s discover. (On this model, the “gunshots” fired at infringing gamers contain pre-placed blood packets exploding on their chests.) In customary actuality TV trend, there are hints of shameless backstabbing and loads of lusting over the prize cash. Masked guards create an ambiance of intimidation as Sammy Davis Jr.’s “I’ve Gotta Be Me” performs within the background, echoing the supply materials’s theme of unlikely riches as the only path to success in a late-capitalist hellscape.
When the competitors was filmed earlier this yr, every participant subjected themselves to this exhibition for a 0.22% likelihood at a few million {dollars} after taxes.
The fact collection made headlines earlier this yr when a number of contestants reportedly required medical consideration, proving that irony has flatlined, and Netflix is promoting tickets to view its corpse. “It was like a struggle zone,” one participant instructed The Solar. “Folks left in tears.” The report described frigid circumstances: one exhausted participant was hauled away on a stretcher whereas others crawled to the end line.
“Even when hypothermia kicked in then individuals have been prepared to remain for so long as doable as a result of some huge cash was on the road,” one competitor stated. “Too many have been decided to not transfer in order that they stood there for a lot too lengthy. There have been individuals arriving pondering they have been going to be millionaires however they left in tears.”
As a contestant says within the trailer, “It is a savage sport.” Squid Recreation: The Problem begins streaming on Netflix on November 22.
