Squid Game: The Challenge Review: A spinoff of the 2021 Netflix K-Drama; critics point to the exploitative nature of the concept

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Squid Game: The Challenge Review: A spinoff of the 2021 Netflix K-Drama; critics point to the exploitative nature of the concept

Not to mention that the program's bad implications may be easily dismissed when critics point out that the game show mimics the brutality. Consequently, there is no need to give the show any thought.

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November 23, 2023 11:08 IST
Squid Game: The Challenge Review: A spinoff of the 2021 Netflix K-Drama; critics point to the exploitative nature of the concept
Squid Game: The Challenge Review: A spinoff of the 2021 Netflix K-Drama; critics point to the exploitative nature of the concept

New Delhi: Netflix released Squid Game: The Challenge on November 22nd, a reality programme spin-off of the 2021 Emmy Award–winning Korean drama. Although this is a riveting reality TV, some say it might undermine the anti-capitalist themes of the original series.

Unfettered commercialism and soaring popularity inevitably led to Squid Game: The Challenge. Although it serves its purpose, it is a costly filler for those who are patiently waiting for season two of Netflix’s Korean drama. Thanks to certain astute game design decisions and obvious efforts to humanise its characters, it even succeeds in entertaining. The reality competition show Squid Game: The Challenge, based on Hwang Dong Hyuk’s popular Korean drama, is, nevertheless, a superficial and sometimes retrograde parody of the original.

Review

Through its peculiar use of reality TV lingo, the game show brings to life the ideas presented in Dong Hyuk’s K-Drama of capitalism reducing humans to dust. In response to claims that Squid Game: The Challenge is exploitative, a review in Vulture says that the very fact that reality TV is a product of late-stage capitalism serves to further demonstrate the point.

Reviewers admit the programme is exploitative, yet they still can’t get enough of reality TV.

In the first few episodes, the appeal of recording 456 individuals competing for a million dollars becomes immediately clear. Making money off the style of Netflix’s most successful original series to date is a no-brainer. Not to mention that the program’s bad implications may be easily dismissed when critics point out that the game show mimics the brutality. Consequently, there is no need to give the show any thought.

At times, it seems like Squid Game: The Challenge is skimping on the subtlety of these violent occurrences in favour of the usual reality TV melodrama and spectacle.

Squid Game: The Challenge is just a big contest with no real plot or purpose; the only thing that matters is that some random individual won $4.56 million.

Though they are recreations of Squid Game’s more famous games, it is the new features that set them apart. Intergame changes may throw participants off their fragile truce; it will be intriguing to see how coalitions fare when members feel their immediate moves might put others or themselves in danger.

The Squid Game: The Challenge would be the reality programme equivalent of missing the point. The combination of Squid Game’s unique visual style with its unscripted programming verges on indecent taste; instances of violence reminiscent of the popular Korean drama make it seem especially gruesome.

Showing the participants as genuine individuals rather than just contenders told to exaggerate their emotions while they’re on camera helps the programme maintain some credibility with the drama unfolding on television. Watching Squid Game: The Challenge is a good idea, even if it seems pretentious.

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