“Beast Games,” a reality competition show currently streaming on Amazon Prime, begins with a dramatic camera shot panning at a sixty-three degree angle to film the show’s host, a lanky young man holding a microphone. The man looks ordinary: with a sparse beard, fresh skin, and simple uniform (tight pants, crisp white sneakers, jacket over a hood), he looks like a novice medical equipment salesman. Ready for a night out at a Murray Hill sports bar with his college buddies. However, the fact that he is standing on a pyramid-shaped pile of dollars points to the fact that he is not an ordinary man; And when he speaks, his voice also booms with the frenetic energy of a megachurch pastor. “I’m standing on Five million dollar “It’s real money,” he shouts. “the greater Grand prize in Entertainment history! And compete for this Five million dollars This is it one thousand Contestants. Come in!”
The man is Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, a popular YouTube personality — the kind of character you probably haven’t heard of if you’re over twenty-five, but that Gen Z and Gen Alphas in your life are all too familiar with. (Even if they weren’t fans: “Please don’t write about MrBeast,” my thirteen-year-old daughter pleaded, before knowingly walking me through some key moments in his career.) Donaldson, twenty-six, is currently , is the most popular content creator on YouTube, with three hundred and forty-four million subscribers and hundreds of millions of views on almost every video he posts. (He said recently time Magazine generates between six hundred and seven hundred million dollars in revenue annually.) He began his journey towards platform domination in 2012, when he was only thirteen years old, and over the years, he became known for his extravagant and loud advertisements. – Video clips with production value in which seemingly insurmountable challenges are faced and overcome. Sometimes he serves as a guinea pig for various prisoner-of-war style experiments (“I spent 7 days buried alive“;”I paid a real killer to try to kill me“;”I spent 7 days in solitary confinement“); and sometimes he extends his hand in charity to a less fortunate group (“It has helped 2,000 people walk again“;”I saved 100 dogs from death“); and sometimes offers large prizes to contestants whom he pits against each other in a series of wrestling rituals (“Every country on Earth is fighting for $250,000“;”100 boys versus 100 girls for $500,000“).
“Beast Games” falls into the latter category, and although the show is Donaldson’s first foray into television, it retains much of what made him a notable YouTube personality. Over the course of ten episodes (only six of which have aired at the time of this writing), Donaldson and his all-male “crew”—five young, exciting guys with names like Nolan and Chandler—preside over a series of challenges, gradually winnowing down the number of contestants from the original thousand Which you start the game with. Games range from a trivia quiz (“Who founded Amazon?” “Jeff Bezos is the right answer”), to a block-stacking contest (Who will be among the first hundred people eliminated because their stack falls?) to oversized beer pong (Which team will get More balls in a huge singles cup?). The action takes place, first, in a dark, cavernous hall built on individual platforms for competitors, then in a depressingly anthropomorphic “city” (complete with a “T-Mobile VIP House”, where the winners of one challenge kick a return), and later in the brush and sand of an island In a special panama, gang members compete to win it.
The contestants, dressed in blue tracksuits bearing individual serial numbers, are monitored by masked guards – an Abu Ghraib meets Adidas aesthetic borrowed from the dystopian Korean series “Squid Game”, in which a group of cash-strapped competitors take part in a series of deadly children’s games. . But while the Netflix hit is an obvious inspiration, “Beast Games” is also a paean to Donaldson’s obsessions, which seem constantly fueled by a childlike instinct to turn fantasy into reality. “What you see is real,” he repeats loudly, as the contestants enter the hall where the games begin. “This is bigger than anything you can even imagine.” The point here is the exaggeration: the winner will take home five million dollars, yes, but there are also other winnings on offer: that private Panamanian island! Lamborghini! Not to mention the extra “big, giant piles of money” on top of the main wallet. There are also cannons that fire from a “real pirate ship” and a “real navy.” seals” to chase down Survival Challenge contestants. Throughout the series, a five-million-dollar cash pyramid follows players to most of the groups in which the games take place, standing silently but clearly at the center of the action. When some of the contestants are eliminated, they quickly and suddenly fall through Trap doors to holes in the floor All of this is to say that this is not a show that values subtext The scene here is built on the literal: no need to imagine anything again.
At the same time, the glut on offer is coupled with deprivation. “To completely bring my family out of the poverty line,” one contestant explains when asked why she joined the show. Another parent has cancer. A third grew up homeless. The stakes at hand are expressed explicitly by an eager competitor: “I would die for this. I would die for five million dollars.” This desperation serves as the engine of the drama. Many of the games Donaldson presents are intended to test the competitors’ individual need—or perhaps their greed. – In exchange for their commitment to the group, will the competitor sacrifice themselves to ensure that the team they are placed in is not collectively eliminated and conversely, will the competitor resist offers of money that, if accepted, will make them rich but doom their team?
These moments are set up as dramatic “Sophie’s Choice”-style decisions. But, as I continued to watch, I had to admit to myself that my interest was not piqued, nor was my sympathy — mostly because I found it difficult to care about the plight of the contestants who, for most of the show’s run, were among the participants. Hundreds, often referred to by their serial numbers rather than their names. There are many references to the supposed “friendships” made by the contestants during the games, and yet, even Donaldson himself seems to realize that the show’s participants are not just strangers to us, but to each other. “They just said no to a million dollars, not to their friends but to people they had only known for a few days,” he marvels, after four contestants, who knows why, succeeded in obtaining a bribe that would have led to their victory. Eliminate his teammates. Regardless: what enlivens the show is not the character, motive, or plot, but the numbers. When I looked at the notes I took while watching the series, it occurred to me that they looked less like the important footnotes I normally jot down and more like a math class notebook. One note read: “18 people, $13,000 per person.” Another message said: “62 people were eliminated, 431 people remain.” “Player 413 wins the Golden Ticket,” reads a third.
I’m a fan of reality TV, yet I also understand a lot of the criticisms it makes. Reality stars, whether on competition shows like “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” or on soap opera-style series like the “Real Housewives” franchise, agree to use their lives to entertain strangers — a trade-off that, even if consensual, is certainly… It’s not always healthy or even fair. However, at the very least, they should be individual characters. The beauty of a lot of reality TV — despite its claims of bad editing and manipulative storytelling — is that we, as viewers, are able to focus on people’s experiences and their own inclinations. (Every day, I thank those generous enough to agree to this trade-off for the enjoyment and enlightenment of the American public.) However, in Monster Games, there are no stars – no subjects worth noting, no people to get to know. , there are no complicated relationship dynamics to answer for — just a bunch of faceless numbers yelling, screaming, and crying their way through a series of meaningless challenges. This kind of abstraction is, in a way, what the show is about, and it’s chilling. “They literally look like ants,” Donaldson tells a friend as the two stand atop a tower, watching from the top up, hundreds of racers streaming into Beast City. Later, he made another observation: “It’s like a horde of zombies coming towards me.” ♦
