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

Rating: (4 / 5)

The post Nasubi’s Nightmare: ‘The Contestant’ Exposes Reality TV’s Hidden Cruelty appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

The Running Man

The Running Man was a 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi film in which convicts were put into a deadly game where they would fight against stylised opponents called stalkers with names like Buzzsaw (has a chainsaw) or Dynamo (fires electricity). The prize for the convicts was their freedom. Brilliantly the show combined the genuinely brutal murders with a studio audience similar to the one from The Price Is Right, who would shout catchphrases and could win The Running Man home game, creating a bizarre disconnect from the violence. Very little work needs to be done to turn The Running Man into an actual gameshow as the film demonstrates the show and the only tweak needed would be not to use prisoners but simply ask for contestants.

Brewster’s Millions

A Richard Pryor vehicle from the 1980s, Brewster’s Millions played out a scenario where Pryor’s character, Montgomery Brewster, had to spend $30million in 30 thirty days to win $300million – the catch being he couldn’t have any assets at the end of it. So if Brewster buys a house, that’s an asset. There is a great scene that has Brewster buying a rare stamp, which would be an asset but using it as actual postage to send a postcard. The twist for this modern version would consist of having incredibly wealthy people spend staggering sums of money as quickly as possible, the catch in this show being none of their projects have any practical, financial or cultural merit. Anyone creating something of value would be kicked off the show.

Pride and Prejudice

Dating game shows have been around forever and there are multiple versions of films and tv programmes that would provide suitable inspiration and Pride and Prejudice is considered a classic of literature, television and film. However the jaded audience of today may not find the gentile world of Georgian matchmaking, or indeed 2020s matchmaking, and so the inspiration is not Pride and Prejudice but the more immediately thrilling…

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Of course, zombies are fictional creatures but with the right budget, some close approximation could be achieved. The show would be a mix between polite enquiries about the marital status of your beloved and then said couples surviving a brutal zombie assault course.

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson’s classic There Will be Blood is a masterpiece of filmmaking with a stunning performance from Daniel Day-Lewis. The film follows Daniel Plainview and his business plans in buying as much oil as he can. This show would have contestants compete to gain a monopoly on early 20th century American oil fields by any means necessary, using Plainview’s tactics as a manual. Challenges would include utilising your children (or conveniently available other people’s children) to promote your business, having a spectacular moustache and making fake proclamations of your faith to win the support of religious leaders. The final task of an untypical game of ten-pin bowling from which only one person will walk away from.

So there we have it and all bases are covered. There is the thrilling excitement and physical danger of The Running Man, the tone-deaf money-wasting Brewster’s Millions, the love/zombie-slaying romance of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and finally a business-orientated struggle for wealth and power that is ultimately unsatisfying in There Will Be Blood.

Also Read: Parasite and Foreign Language Films in the UK

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