In a tiny Japanese apartment’s living room, a naked man dances, showing his thin body and a tired smile after winning sacks of rice; his genitalia are covered by an eggplant emoji, which refers to his artistic name, Nasubi (Japanese for the said vegetable). It is 1998, and the image is seen in almost all Japanese households who follow the struggle of the cut from society comedian was trying to survive only on prizes won in magazines and would leave only after he won ¥1 million (about $8,000) which kept him 15 months on the reality TV show Susunu! Denpa Shōnen from Nippon Television channel.
With the documentary ‘The Contestant’ (2023), British director Clair Titley brings not only a register on the early stages of reality TV but also on the backstage dealings of TV shows and the human need for voyeurism which is satiated by such shows because if people start to prey on neighbours, co-workers or other ordinary citizens their behaviour will be designed as bizarre if not a law enforcement matter, a line of thought that helps understanding the appeal of Nasubi’s confinement whose real name is Tomoaki Hamatsu.
Bullied for his long face as a child, Nasubi found a way out of harassment through humour and later a professional path. Japanese TV was having a moment for comedians when the king was “Beat” Takeshi, known to foreigners as the award-winning film director Takeshi Kitano (Hana-Bi).
Nasubi wanted to join this world and meet Susunu! Denpa Shōnen’s producer Toshio Tsuchiya was like talking to “a god” for a young Nasubi who took part in a selection process to know who would headline a new TV show but only later was informed about the project of his “imprisonment” and agreed as he believed it wouldn’t be shown as he had promised his mother to never appear naked; promises to parents have a different weight for Japanese people than to their Western world counterparts.
One of the highlights of ‘The Contestant’ is the back-and-forth interviews with Tsuchiya and Nasubi, showing their monster and creator, abuser and oppressed relationship dynamics, which have traits of co-dependency.
Although people were laughing at home, Nasubi had to deal with hunger, isolation from human contact, sleep deprivation, no sunlight, and no access to broadcasting. His only accessible media were the magazines he had to read to find the sweepstakes entry forms.
There are tender moments, like when Nasubi makes a stuffed seal for his friend, and others humour due to his body language and making fun to the camera because Nasubi has an innate charisma and is a natural for comedy. When the viewer laughs, The Contestant might make them question their own sense of humour because Titley’s work is a haunting experience on what might be the cruellest reality TV show ever produced.
‘The Contestant’ is also a tool that helps locate the advent of reality TV and understand its current state and how it has influenced society considering the growing numbers of influencers on social media or sex workers in spaces like OnlyFans trying to make a living out of their image and promoting situations that might be deemed controversial to be performed in public. It also dialogues with the human need to be seen and feel loved while addressing survival skills developed by Nasubi as ways to endure the contest that didn’t readily translate to outside society when he wanted to have a regular TV comedy career using his image. Later he went on to be part of many Japanese productions under his nickname.
“The spectacle is a social relation between people that is mediated by an accumulation of images that serve to alienate us from a genuinely lived life. The image is thus an historical mutation of the form of commodity fetishism,” wrote French philosopher Guy Debord (1931 – 1994) in his opus magnum The Society of the Spectacle (1967), which helps to explain the Nasubi phenomenon.
Those who followed Nasubi’s ordeal while having fun received 24/7 hours of him to alienate themselves from their own lives, as if cheering for someone who was put under a cruel game would make their lives less miserable or at least for a moment forget about their own banality. Without cliches or preconceived ideas, Clair Titley challenges us with a dark side of our own voyeurism.
The Contestant will be previewing in UK cinemas from 27th November before hitting cinemas nationwide on 29th November
(4 / 5)
