Squid Game
New reports are emerging from the sets of Netflix’s reality TV Squid Game show that paint a dire picture. Contestants report that the filming conditions for the show, based on the hit Korean Netflix drama, are often harsh and cold.
“This is not a Bear Grylls survival show,” a contestant named John told Variety about one grueling filming session that ended up being exceptionally chilly. “If they had told us it was going to be that cold, no one would have gone through with it.”
456 contestants are competing for a $4.56 million prize, with each game “killing” off a bunch of hopefuls. For $4.56 million, I’m pretty sure plenty of people would have gone through with it, cold be damned.
John was eliminated in the first round, however, along with roughly 227 other contestants. This is very similar to the first round of Squid Game, in which 255 of the 456 contestants were killed playing Red Light, Green Light.
Contestants — who weren’t paid to participate in the series — say they were told the actual game would take roughly two hours to play and shoot, but instead that turned into an almost seven-hour ordeal for some contenders. All of this was carried out in an unforgiving U.K. cold snap that saw temperatures drop to zero degrees Celsius in Bedford on the day of filming. A number of contestants collapsed on set — likely due to a combination of cold and fatigue from the eight hours of prep time before the game even started.
Contestants, speaking anonymously, described a game where they had to hold a static pose for upwards of 30 minutes. Apparently medics were called at one point, though Netflix denies this. The producers of the show also claim that they’ve taken safety and health concerns seriously, so we’re dealing with a bit of he said/she said at this point.
Rolling Stone has a separate report of the “cruel” and “rigged” games:
“It was just the cruelest, meanest thing I’ve ever been through,” one former contestant told the magazine. “We were a human horse race, and they were treating us like horses out in the cold racing and [the race] was fixed.”
“All the torment and trauma we experienced wasn’t due to the game or the rigor of the game,” another former player adds. “It was the incompetencies of scale — they bit off more than they could chew.”
I admit, I have a hard time mustering a great deal of sympathy for contestants in this particular show given the nature of the source material and the weighty prize. Sure, it’s not Survivor, as they point out. But neither is it a game show like Jeopardy or Wheel Of Fortune. This is Squid Game: The Challenge and it’s designed to be miserable. What’s the fun in a reality TV show based on a game as deadly and horrific as Squid Game if there’s not a bit of suffering involved? Nobody should actually die, obviously, but I suspect a lot of people would be willing to freeze their asses off for the chance at $4.56 million in prize money—the largest ever for a show like this.
If reports that it’s rigged are true (contestants claim that they made it across the line in Red Light, Green Light and were still eliminated but there’s no way to verify this) then that’s definitely bad. And if medics really did have to come in for people “convulsing on the floor” from the cold (which is a weird reaction to the cold, but okay) then that’s also not great. Safety still matters on a show like this.
But am I alone in finding all of this a bit amusing in a macabre sort of way? Maybe I’m just a bad person for getting a bit of a laugh out of this, but come on people. You signed up for a Squid Game reality TV show! You’re competing for the kind of money that makes you stupid rich overnight! In gamer parlance, maybe it’s time to just git gud.
Or maybe I’m just a heartless bastard. Hey, why can’t it be both?
In other news, Netflix’s CEO claims they’ve never cancelled a successful show, to which I say:
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/02/05/netflix-squid-game-reality-tv-show-contestants-shocked-that-squid-game-isnt-actually-fun/