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The three jurors Mike Singer (lr), Maite Kelly and Dieter Bohlen.
Not to be seen on the far left: the hidden Michael Wendler
Photo: RTL
At first, you might think you accidentally patted the screen with fresh, greasy potato pancake fingers, leaving a large, greasy stain.
RTL retouched the former »Deutschland sucht den Superstar« juror Michael Wendler from the casting episodes of the current season after he had compared the government's corona restrictions with a concentration camp - and received a lot of criticism when he was in the opening episode of the previous one Still sat at the jury table on Tuesday.
Wendler had been provided with snappy comments, but he was clearly visible.
Because RTL had previously announced that it was not possible for dramaturgical and technical reasons to completely remove him from the recordings that were filmed in September, before the Wendler conversion to the conspiracy whisper.
The broadcaster initially refrained from clear, classifying distancing.
RTL followed suit in the second episode and had an off-voice read out a statement before the start of the program and after each commercial break: After the end of the shooting, "a juror had spread conspiracy theories," whereupon the collaboration was ended.
After "the juror" had made new "completely intolerable statements" just in time for the broadcast of the first episode, it was decided to cut him out of the casting series: "We condemn all forms of anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination in the strongest possible way."
Like a ghost in an extremely poorly budgeted horror film
Wendler has now become the ineffable Duweißtschon, whose name is no longer even mentioned, that is consistent.
Visually, however, it was still allowed to shine through, it was erased in the subsequent processing and yet it was left visible.
Actually, one imagines as an amateur, one might simply have had to enlarge the image section in order to remove the Wendler, who was sitting on the jury counter on the far left, i.e. technically very conveniently, from the visible area.
This was also done in many cuts, which the jury showed in the long shot, but occasionally Wendler was also blinded to the blurred streaks mentioned at the beginning, as if he were a ghost in an extremely low-budgeted horror film.
Such a shadowy resolution, but still identifiable as a spiral-shaped cloud, you could then also roughly see its movements, sometimes an unpixeled hand protruded over to the high-resolution ones.
Demonstratively loveless and incredibly trashy
This solution is almost demonstratively loveless and incredibly trashy, so if you do not completely reject the concept of Schadenfreude, you can find it appropriate and entirely consistent with the shabby occasion.
It became completely slapstick-like when in some places it was impossible to avoid responding to Wendler's jury verdict with specific candidates, specifically the question of whether he would like to send her or him to the next casting round: Even then, his voice cannot be heard Instead, it is covered by simple speech balloons with "yes" or "no", an almost intrusive invitation to meme tinkering, no longer just handcrafted, but also stylistically coarse.
In the case of one candidate, the suspicion could finally arise that this was not only about factual, appropriate editing, but also about punishment.
Educator Christian had decided on a Wendler title at his appearance, which was then, however, beeped completely with the name of the pop singer.
The performance was shown anyway, but the music and vocals were faded out and played over by the well-known DSDS jingle in a continuous loop.
A belly band explained that they didn't want to play the judge's music either, while Dieter Bohlen fistbumped into the void to an inaudible rumble beat, and anyone who knows Wendler's gockelige show demeanor believed that at this point he could guess that this solution probably grieved him much more than to simply not occur.
Why hadn't this performance simply been cut out completely, especially since it must have been completely dispensable, because after all the wet research performer got four jury-no's for it?
It would not have been fitting out of respect for the candidate, reported RTL, and that is halfway funny when it comes to a program that had not necessarily attracted attention because of its extremely respectful treatment of its often strikingly amateurish protagonists.
About the same program and the same episode in which jury member Mike Singer asks a candidate in the middle of a jerk if he could go to the bathroom for a moment, and Dieter Bohlen asks another participant in a tight lace outfit where she had "worked" and "worked" last night she calls it "Schnuckelhase".
At the end of the episode, a candidate who chops his way through Britney Spears' "Baby one more time" half-roaring, half-bleating, is euphorically heaved into the next round, and you feel a bit dumb to speculate about the Wendler solution had even considered the possibility that something could be done discreetly in this format.
Icon: The mirror
