Expecting Squid Pro Quo

Some years ago, this blog celebrated the butcher from Orpington who, in keeping with the macabre theme of the occasion, obliged a group of zombie-costumed Halloween trick-or-treaters with genuine animal hearts and other assorted innards, to the outrage of their parents (“I was so angry they had been made to touch raw meat”).

I said at the time that it was a bit like going on the ghost train at the fair and then complaining because the ride was genuinely haunted. The same simile sprang inevitably to mind this week with the numerous tales of woe from contestants who had put themselves forward for the real-life version of ‘Squid Game’.

While the original series was a sharply satirical and well-made depiction of how far a group of people can be driven by desperation and mercenary greed, it takes a special sort of warped mind to contrive a real-world version - albeit without the mass murder element - and recruit contestants from among the general public.

Forty years ago, Clive James encouraged us to laugh at the extremities to which Japanese game show hosts pushed their unhappy victims or the exhaustion of American dance marathon competitors; now celebrities being showered with maggots or ‘Touch the Truck’ endurance contests pass without comment in our own TV schedules.

In such a climate, it seems excessively naive (or disingenuously compensation-hungry) of contestants to be surprised or shocked that filming a show derived from ‘Squid Game’ would involve a degree of discomfort, yet a number of them took to the tabloids to express their anger at being woken at 3.30 to spend a day outdoors in the cold playing Korea’s version of Grandmother's Footsteps. 

A particular grievance seemed to be the time taken to set up a camera shot, as if it had completely escaped them that they were taking part in a television programme. Despite their suffering, however, the $4.56 million prize fund seems to have provided sufficient incentive for most to stay put: 

 “Even if hypothermia kicked in, people were willing to stay for as long as possible because a lot of money was on the line. Too many were determined not to move so they stood there for too long.”

Even though Netflix explained that, as well as making the contestants aware well in advance that they would be playing in cold conditions, they provided them with warming facilities and thermal clothing (oh, to have had such things on winter games afternoons at my Northern school!) and that there had been no serious consequences from the cold, one disgruntled participant compared the scene to a ‘war zone’ and said they were ‘dropping like flies’.

I may be mistaken, but I thought that was the whole idea.