"Netflix's " Squid Game " followed four hundred and fifty-six desperate individuals into an underworld where they play lethal versions of children's games in the hope of winning a life-changing amount of money. Four weeks after its release, the show had become Netflix's most-watched series ever; to date, the first season has been viewed more than two hundred and sixty-five million times."
"The show's success in America can partly be chalked up to a love of games-though the game show isn't a uniquely American phenomenon, the modern game show, as we know it, was developed in the U.S. But this subgenre, specifically-fictional content about people who put their lives on the line for large sums of money-also feeds into a fantasy of financial escape, in which upward mobility is as simple as winning a few challenges."
Deadly game-show narratives portray contestants risking death for money, translating economic desperation into spectacles of survival. Major franchises and series attract massive audiences, demonstrating the genre's wide resonance. The modern game-show format, refined in the U.S., is repurposed to dramatize inequality, debt, and the desire for rapid upward mobility. These stories intersect with contemporary gambling impulses and fantasies of quick financial rescue. Filmmakers and viral reenactments leverage that appetite, presenting competition and survival as zero-sum contests that promise escape through singular victories.
Read at The New Yorker
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