#4 The Contenders - Series 7
This film is a dark parody of the public’s current preoccupation with reality TV and live news coverage. Put the two together and you have "The Contenders".
A government lottery picks five people who then have to try to kill each other. The last one remaining alive is the winner. All of this is covered by a Survivor-like TV show, following them, doing interviews with them, researching family history and even manipulating the situation to make it more dramatic. The whole thing is made to look like a TV show, complete with segment spaces for commercials.
Our society feels that it has the right to stick it’s cameras in the faces of grieving people. We want to know all of the grim details. We no longer live our own lives, but prefer the virtual lives. Somebody figured out that we didn’t have to hide that fact any more, and made the jump from sit-coms to "Survivor". We want to see other people’s pain; very little has to do with seeing other people’s joy. In the end there’s only one person left in the tribe, -or in the case of "The Contenders", only one person left alive.
I’m sure there are lots of people out there who would love to see "The Contenders" be a real TV show. Unfortunately, the satire is already lost on them.