Entertainment – Laugh required, pain glorified!

Looking back at the past few months, we are forced to note that individuals were pushed to their limits: families were put on the test for the better and for the worse; candidates to game shows had to be even braver, stronger, luckier to get some money; and citizens, especially the youngest, were put face to face with their responsibilities. TV programmes exhibited certain crudeness and even some brutality.

Wipeout (Endemol)

Indeed many shows are acting as a giveaway of people's troubles. Programmes are becoming schizophrenic, vacillating between laugh and cruelty and alternating terrifying programmes while others are having fun. On the one hand, a particular taste for parody, on the other hand, a taste for cruelty, a metaphorical vision of the social brutality.

We notice a return of comedy and irony: Debates are parodied, serious programs are imitated, and worries greeted with derision, individuals put themselves at the centre of the mockery and laugh at themselves. In the United-States, "The Chocolate News" on Comedy Central offers with scorn new versions of the so serious "Daily Show", "Colbert Report" and "Chappelle's show", while "The Tony Rock Project" on MyNetwork TV is a Borat style show, with Tony Rock wondering about the big stereotypes of our society.

Men have also been a recurring subject of parody. In Japan, they even need advice from the Greek mythology in order to tame women again and to be back to the gentlemen's sphere in the NTV's comedy show "Saturday TV lab: the Greek mythology guide to pick up girl".

On the other hand, candidates to game show are physically and mentally hard-pressed. They hurt themselves to prove they're alive. Last summer, they were mocked in "Wipeout" : mud-bathed, punched, wrecked… This fall season challenges got harder, with productions intensifying dramatization to the extremes. The emphasis is put on pain and fear.

Adapted from the Fuji format Run for Money, "Cha$e" (Sci-Fi) pits groups of contestants against each other in a quest for cash prizes while being stalked by "hunters". The action takes place over 60 minutes and is shown in real time. As the clock ticks down, more hunters appear on the streets, the game perimeter gets smaller and contestants are assigned more difficult tasks. Players earn money for every second they stay "alive" and may opt out at any time, but if caught by a hunter, they lose everything.

On the same cable net, "Estate of Panic" turns nightmares into reality and pushes phobias to the limit. Each week, a new group of contestants enter the estate searching for money hidden inside of booby-trapped rooms. Throughout it all, contestants must remain calm because if they panic, they won't get paid.

On The CW, the mid-season show "13 Fear is Real", thirteen people compete to "stay alive" as they face their deepest fears in an all-out elimination competition and scare-fest. Pitted against each other in situations straight from the horror movies, the 13 will face shocking surprises, psychological scares and lots of "beware of the dark" moments, all designed by a "mastermind" of terror.

In the United-Kingdom, t he reality soap "Unbreakable" (Five) is looking for the breaking point of the mind and the body. It features eight elite athletes who go head to head against each other in a grueling series of physical and mental tests as used by some of the world's toughest organizations and found in the world's harshest environments. Their goal is to reach the breakable point where no one went before.

But hurting oneself does not necessarily imply a masochistic dimension. Surpassing oneself can be very painful because of the necessary physical effort. This is more than true when the people taking the challenged are handicapped, as in "Expedition Unlimited". In this reality soap, shot in South Africa, 10 candidates travel to Cape Town. Five of them are young models; the other five are people with a physical handicap, missing an arm or leg. Before the start of the game they did not know who they were going to team up with, but they have to cooperate to win the 20.000 euro cash prize. Every episode starts with a game where the contestants can earn a head start for the second part: a race with specially prepared two-seat bikes. The winners of the day also earn the right to give one of the other teams an additional challenge the next day, to delay them. In a physically and emotionally exhausting race, the five 2-member teams struggle against and with each other to win the rally.

Source: Eurodata TV