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Fire at will: In »Squid Game« people are portrayed as faceless cattle, milked by capitalism
Photo: Noh Juhan / Netflix
Netflix has radically changed how media is used, but perhaps the technical component, i.e. broadcasting series and films over the Internet, was just the beginning.
Perhaps the group will soon be testing the limits of entertainment in a completely different way.
In any case, Netflix announces a large-scale “social experiment”.
In a game show based on the extremely successful series »Squid Game«, 456 participants from all over the world are to play for prize money of 4.56 million dollars.
That's no joke.
They're serious.
You can apply for it now.
Anyone can enter as long as he or she is over 21 and does not work for Netflix or is related to people who work for Netflix.
The exclusion criteria probably apply to a very small proportion of the world population.
On the other hand, there should be heaps of suitable candidates: people with high debts, with badly paid jobs or sick relatives who need support;
Lonely ones with an urgent need for fame and public recognition and certainly also people who just find it cool to beat others in the game to the top.
At this point it should perhaps be emphasized that Netflix does not intend to fully adapt the series to reality.
So nobody gets mown down by a volley of machine guns or falls into the depths during a tug-of-war.
Netflix makes a footnote out of this fact in its little announcement text: "Whether won or lost, all players will remain unharmed.
But if you win, you win big!” It's good that they clarified that again.
One would like to imagine the birth of the strange idea for this show as a scene in one of those satirical series critical of capitalism that Netflix loves to have produced: Good-looking, top-dressed people sit at a long table in a hip-style conference room and think hard.
In the background you can see a Power Point presentation with the number of subscriptions, the curve is pointing ominously downwards.
One bored throws a crumpled paper into the trash can.
Then someone jumps up and shouts, "I've got it!
We do something like ›Squid Game‹, but in real!
Fuck the satire, we take the show's cynicism seriously!
We turn it into the biggest money-is-cool show in the world.
And then....«, now in a dramatic close-up, »...then this curve will also point upwards again!« A trembling index finger points in the direction of the smartboard.
Other than completely over the top, I can't imagine how anyone at Netflix could think of this as a good idea.
Perhaps the employees aren't actually watching their own content, like so many people who have been calling for it to be indexed over the past year, as the Squid Game series became a phenomenon.
The masked costumes and internet memes of sugar cakes and deadly giant dolls seem to have stuck.
Does it really need to be reiterated that Squid Game is above all a terrifying, brilliantly stylistically over-the-top commentary on a form of capitalism that sees humans as faceless cattle that need to be milked?
Well, detaching the imaginary game show, which serves as a vehicle for a critique of social conditions in the series, from its artistic context and making it a reality, shows an extremely robust cynicism.
Netflix also makes no secret of the fact that the fundamental element of the show remains: the fight of all against all.
"With a fortune to grab," writes the company, "who will be an ally in this ultimate test of character, who will you trust, who will you betray?" Given these lines of horror, the question of whether Netflix is now a big one seems moot Is a pioneer for art that promotes social change towards more justice, openness and diversity - or at least a turbo-capitalist company that only cares about its own growth.
The show will certainly be a new sensational success, perhaps even bigger than the series or the second season it is also aiming for.
If ideas for more reality shows of this kind are asked for (they certainly are), we have a few ideas: How about a version based on the movie "Running Man" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example?
Since criminals are hunted down and liquidated by man hunters, that promises great excitement.
Or a show variant of "Das Millionspiel", wonderful old camels of German series history, contract killers are hounded on those who are willing to play and have to try to survive for a week.
But first, we'd have to talk about a second season of the Squid Game game show.
It will come for sure.
And seriously: That at least not a hair of the participants is harmed physically – it doesn't have to stay that way, does it?
