The Contestant Turns Away From Reality

Substantially of The Contestant plays out as a chilling meditation on the grotesque dynamics of fact television and celeb. At the heart of the new Hulu documentary revisiting an outrageous stunt on Japanese tv from the late ’90s lies a psychodrama amongst two people or, alternatively, a psychological vice imposed by one particular on the other. On the just one facet, there’s Tomoaki Hamatsu, an aspiring comedian who goes by Nasubi — which means “eggplant,” a stage identify intended to reclaim an epithet traditionally levied from him owing to his irregular head shape. On the other, there is Toshio Tsuchiya, a television producer obsessed with “real” human drama and, in the end, the architect of all the torment Nasubi will go by means of in the title of fame.

“If there is a god of tv, he gave us a reward,” Tsuchiya suggests to the digicam, decades right after the 1998 competition that manufactured Nasubi famed and ruined his lifestyle. The stunt in question was section of Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, a popular transform-of-the-millennium Japanese truth demonstrate that specialized in dropping unwitting individuals in serious predicaments. In a problem called “A Everyday living in Prizes,” Nasubi was confined to a little apartment with the task of accruing ¥1 million well worth of prizes as a result of magazine sweepstakes even though dwelling off no matter what he gained as a result of people competitions.

It’s excruciating to look at Nasubi endure the several indignities of the challenge. He eats pet foods. He’s deprived of garments for most of his ordeal. His overall body withers underneath malnourishment. When he beats the authentic ¥1 million mark, a feat that took him additional than 300 times, the output spirits him absent to South Korea for a day of feast and enjoyable, only to shove him again into a further apartment where he’s manufactured to contend all above once more, this time in Korean (a language he does not know). What Tsuchiya did to Nasubi was unambiguous torture, and the comic was forced to do it with a smile.

Nasubi’s story, and the footage captured on “A Everyday living in Prizes,” is simply unbelievable, and as directed by the British documentarian Clair Titley, The Contestant is an totally transfixing retelling of situations, a single that evokes all way of queries about the elementary cruelty of fact tv as amusement. But evoke is all it does. The documentary almost wholly declines to say anything at all particular or provocative about the subjects it is looking at. Rather, Titley opts for a closing act which is so tidy it is tough not to come to feel shortchanged by The Contestant’s unwillingness to capitalize on the questions it provides to intellect.

Nevertheless, that footage. We watch Nasubi go from profitable a lone bag of rice to scoring an array of provides. Some are valuable, other people not so considerably at one point, you can see a bike propped up in the corner of the apartment, an ironic trophy for a trapped gentleman. For the professional truth-tv shopper, the footage will possible evoke all kinds of other contemporary contact points. Witnessing Nasubi’s entire body slowly wither as he life off piecemeal winnings, you might assume of Survivor or, potentially more pointedly, the survival levels of competition Alone. His staying trapped in a contained environment provides to mind Squid Recreation: The Challenge, The Circle, Large Brother, or even The Actual World, which very first debuted 6 years right before “A Daily life in Prizes.” Every time the doc flashes on a montage of Nasubi’s greetings to the camera, it is tough not to see the faces of so several YouTube or Twitch streamers broadcasting from their bed room.

But the specific cruelty imposed on Nasubi rises to a whole distinctive stage. To start out with, there is the simple fact that his complete journey was packaged for public consumption solely devoid of his expertise. The inadequate man was instructed to record his expertise with both of those a journal and a video clip digital camera, not being aware of that the footage would be swiftly edited into a weekly broadcast that achieved 17 million viewers and that his journals would be published devoid of his involvement, inevitably turning into finest sellers. Even worse, continue to, is the simple fact his expertise was portrayed on Denpa Shōnen in a purely upbeat way, with the segments slicing out any cases that would propose an personal less than intense duress. As The Contestant pushes on, a yawning gap starts to develop between the comedian’s obvious interior anguish and the theatrical jovialness he attempts to sustain on-digital camera.

Tsuchiya’s occasional appearances on “A Lifetime in Prizes” adds even further agony to the managed cruelty. They access peak morbidity in the sequence wherever he tries to advise Nasubi that he reached his ¥1 million intention by continuously triggering party poppers in his experience, which performs like a grim torture scene. It emphasizes the total electric power Tsuchiya has over Nasubi. The producers declare that the comic was always cost-free to go away during his 15-thirty day period captivity, but it is hardly ever so uncomplicated in practice. A power dynamic locked Nasubi into area, and Tsuchiya — his producer and tormentor — took every single measure to keep him there. Of the relocation to South Korea, we’re later on explained to Tsuchiya expended several hours convincing Nasubi to go through with it. But did Nasubi, malnourished and damaged, at any time have a alternative?

Nasubi’s ordeal culminates in a surreal climax. Just after at last beating his South Korean aim, the creation ships him again to Japan like a piece of cargo: transported by boat to steer clear of awareness, so totally sequestered from the environment he even thinks he’s being whisked absent to North Korea. When he comes, he’s blindfolded and led on to a stage in front of a reside studio viewers keen to witness the finish of his journey. But Tsuchiya has one additional act of cruelty up his sleeve. Nasubi is led into a simulacra of a compact apartment, and when his blindfold is taken out, you see anguish flash throughout his deal with as he thinks he’s remaining prepped for a third spherical of hell. He’s prompted to strip down to nothing at the time all over again, which he does. As he blankly settles in, the room’s phony walls slide above, and he gazes, uncomprehendingly, out into a sea of cheering people today. It is so hard to parse out what Nasubi is considering at that moment: He’s dumbfounded, numb, ravaged, however he ends up smiling amid the adulation. But the footage is irrepressibly hypnotic. You might even appear near to viewing what Tsuchiya had been obsessing in excess of all this time.

It is at this incredibly position in the documentary that The Contestant sets by itself up perfectly to link the dots in between “A Existence in Prizes” and reality television as we know it today: how it is progressed, how it’s stayed the identical, what it says about us as a society shaped by actuality television, what Nasubi’s ordeal forecasted about how the style went on to shape the globe. But Titley opts rather for a closing chapter that feels closer to a rosy, gauzy bio-doc. The Contestant opens with photographs of Nasubi overlooking his home metropolis of Fukushima, and it concludes by tracing Nasubi’s journey from traumatized unique — just one who has misplaced faith in humanity and was unable to parlay his experience into an real enjoyment occupation — back to a form of wholeness, when the disastrous Fukushima earthquake in 2011 jolts him into motion and self-discovery as a individual made total by serving his neighborhood. We are demonstrated the extraordinary mother nature of Nasubi’s next act as he increases a campaign to summit Mount Everest in the name of his hometown. Listed here, Nasubi comes throughout as a man or woman who converts his trauma into a little something gorgeous and impressive.

It is a heartwarming arc. But at the exact same time, it’s challenging not to feel like The Contestant was looking for a clear summary. That pursuit of narrative closure even seems to prolong to Tsuchiya, Nasubi’s unambiguous tormentor. We’re explained to that Nasubi extensive held an powerful hatred towards the dude, but in just the text of the documentary, their dynamic gets something approximating resolution when Tsuchiya assists Nasubi keep a fundraiser for a second exertion to summit Everest immediately after the comedian’s first excursion was scuttled by a different earthquake. (Nasubi was explained as having invested the bulk of his price savings on the very first exertion, by itself a reflection of how he barely benefited economically from his superstar.) There is even the recommendation that Tsuchiya feels at minimum some regret. “If he asked me to kill myself, I’d contemplate it,” he says of Nasubi in the vicinity of the finish of the documentary, despite his noticeable pleasure over the tv he created. No matter whether he’s genuine in this statement, or just a gentleman who appreciates how to placement himself onscreen, is never terribly crystal clear. Titley doesn’t push him.

Nasubi was a gentleman exploited to each inch of his bone. His bare entire body was beamed out for thousands and thousands to chortle at, his torment distorted into a truly feel-good story of triumph. In the late ’90s, he experienced none of the remunerative affordances that fact-tv society put in decades building: the way a True Housewife or Bachelor contestant, created into a clown on tv, can yet make a killing promoting products and endorsements on social media the way lengthy-working competition franchises like The Challenge can attract players back again to roll all-around in the mud for year following year of opportunity prize money. There are so lots of means The Contestant could’ve been about some thing greater, so a lot of persuasive interior issues it could’ve explored. Why didn’t Nasubi just go away? What do we make of his eagerness for superstar? How has truth tv changed in Japan since, and how has it stayed the identical? How must we grapple with the genre’s ethics now? How do we configure the line amongst reality television as an inherently cruel business and actuality tv as a authentic conveyor of human drama?

The Contestant only gestures towards these inquiries, and instead of likely huge with the inquiry, it chooses to shrink its aperture. “A Lifetime in Prizes” distorted Nasubi’s encounter by leaving out the sophisticated fullness of his ordeal. By tying his tale up with these a tidy bow, it’s really hard not to experience that The Contestant commits a comparable distortion. It is a move in shape for reality television.