Squid Game: The Challenge, a reality show based on the Emmy Award-winning K-drama Squid Game, will debut on Netflix on Wednesday. According to early assessments, while the new chapter makes for ‘gripping’ reality television, it may undermine the previous show’s anti-capitalistic message.
‘Thrilling’ reality television
“The game show employs the language of modern reality television to realize, in its own peculiar way, the themes in Dong-hyuk’s parable of capitalism grinding people to dust.” The simple fact that reality television is a product of late-stage capitalism only emphasizes the point,” writes Vulture, who also dismisses the accusation that Squid Game: The Challenge is ‘exploitative.’
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The Guardian’s review, on the other hand, admits the show’s predatory character while insisting it is irresistible reality TV watching.”It was natural to expect Squid Game: The Challenge to be a cash-in, a cynical outcome of the original’s popularity that would completely miss the point, and perhaps it does.” But, as a gameshow, as a spectacle, it’s difficult to turn away,” the assessment writes.
Death by irony
Some critics panned the tone and approach of Squid Game: The Challenge. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix’s cash-in isn’t ‘beautiful.’ “The Squid Game: The Challenge does not exist in isolation. It was created to capitalize on one of the streaming service’s biggest-ever blockbusters, the South Korean scripted series Squid Game, which is set to release in 2021. “In the given setting, it appears to be an extension of the brand that fundamentally misunderstands what the brand was intended to symbolize in the first place,” according to the report.
“In particular since any criticism regarding the way The Challenge replicates the violence presented in Squid Game can be brushed off with ‘it’s simply fun and games,’ there’s no compelling reason to consider some of the show’s negative connotations,” IGN wrote in its assessment of the show. But therein lays the problem: it’s hard to divorce its ornate sets and green jumpsuits from the environment in which they arose.”
Squid Game: The Challenge will be available on Netflix on November 22.
