(no subject)
Jul. 29th, 2013 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretBecause misery and confusion love company?
There is a thing called Spell-Mageddon. It is a show on ABC Family, but the first episode is up on Hulu.
Here are its constituent components:
A) It is hosted by the actor who played Carlton on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and he plays up that former role for all the hostalgia value it is worth, and then some.
B)Its primary challenge is questions culled from a middle school spelling bee. These words are not very difficult for most of the adult contestants to spell. Except that the adult contestants are very stupid, because they signed up for a game show that involves
C)the contestants are tortured as they try to spell words. Projectiles are hurled at them. They are electrically shocked. They have water and other fluids splashed at them. They are dunked in ice cold water. They are groped by disembodied hands. They are subjected to disorienting sounds and light flashes.
I do not know what to make of this show. It is deliberately cruel, it can certainly be argued that it is calculatedly anti-intellectual, it is unquestionably laughing AT rather than WITH its contestants, and the questions are so easy that to succeed doesn't actually impress me. And I couldn't stop watching.
I was mesmerized in awe at something about the audacity of its concept. The sheer moral bankruptcy constituted an incredibly indictment of the whole American reality show/media complex, in a way I've not seen before: THESE PEOPLE HAVE SIGNED UP TO BE TORTURED FOR A ONE IN EIGHT CHANCE OF WINNING TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Even Wipeout, which has killed people, makes a greater pretense of trying to prevent people from suffering injury. One of my friends observed that the show seemed like something out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil or some other wryly dystopian landscape.
WHY IS THIS SHOW PART OF MY CULTURE? WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT ME AND MY CULTURE THAT IT EXISTS? WHY? WHAT? WHOTKELJKKF;EAK???
There is a thing called Spell-Mageddon. It is a show on ABC Family, but the first episode is up on Hulu.
Here are its constituent components:
A) It is hosted by the actor who played Carlton on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and he plays up that former role for all the hostalgia value it is worth, and then some.
B)Its primary challenge is questions culled from a middle school spelling bee. These words are not very difficult for most of the adult contestants to spell. Except that the adult contestants are very stupid, because they signed up for a game show that involves
C)the contestants are tortured as they try to spell words. Projectiles are hurled at them. They are electrically shocked. They have water and other fluids splashed at them. They are dunked in ice cold water. They are groped by disembodied hands. They are subjected to disorienting sounds and light flashes.
I do not know what to make of this show. It is deliberately cruel, it can certainly be argued that it is calculatedly anti-intellectual, it is unquestionably laughing AT rather than WITH its contestants, and the questions are so easy that to succeed doesn't actually impress me. And I couldn't stop watching.
I was mesmerized in awe at something about the audacity of its concept. The sheer moral bankruptcy constituted an incredibly indictment of the whole American reality show/media complex, in a way I've not seen before: THESE PEOPLE HAVE SIGNED UP TO BE TORTURED FOR A ONE IN EIGHT CHANCE OF WINNING TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Even Wipeout, which has killed people, makes a greater pretense of trying to prevent people from suffering injury. One of my friends observed that the show seemed like something out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil or some other wryly dystopian landscape.
WHY IS THIS SHOW PART OF MY CULTURE? WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT ME AND MY CULTURE THAT IT EXISTS? WHY? WHAT? WHOTKELJKKF;EAK???
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 12:57 am (UTC)It does seem weird, putting it lightly, to take a model of an intellectual contest (answer trivia, spell words) and turn it into a contest that better advantages People Who Are Willing to Do Crazy Things.
In Spell-Mageddon, are contestants shamed if they back out of a particular challenge? Do they ever back out, that you've seen so far? There was definitely a sense in Distraction that there might come a point when participants would say, "Nope, not doing that," and it was an option on the table rather than a game-breaker.
Hm. =/
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 01:05 pm (UTC)The way the show is produced and edited, it seems likely that if someone backed out, they would back out off camera and it would be handled in a way that didn't make a thing out of it. I strongly doubt that backing out is a thing the show is structured to encourage. On the other hand, they clearly have mechanisms for re-adding people who have lost a round back to the competition, so I would assume that would be what they did if someone dropped out.
It does seem weird, putting it lightly, to take a model of an intellectual contest (answer trivia, spell words) and turn it into a contest that better advantages People Who Are Willing to Do Crazy Things.
Yeah. I mean, there's a part of me that finds the idea of chessboxing fascinating, but this is like a parody of chessboxing.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 12:58 am (UTC)Deliberately cruel and laughing-AT-not-WITH sums up a significant chunk of reality TV, in my experience. (Nothing like all of it, but it is a subgenre.) And that bit where the words are so easy that success =/= impressed is a deliberate part of its anti-intellectualism, in my book.
What it says about your culture: I think it says capitalism. Cheap to produce, cheap to watch, and someone to feel better than, no matter how crap-worthless your own life is making you feel.