"Mild trash-talk, underwhelming spectacle and mind-numbing repetition add up to a punishing watch"
"Putting people through the physical and psychological wringer and watching them suffer has always been a popular form of television entertainment."
"The more mature connoisseurs of trash telly among you will fondly remember the demented Japanese game show Endurance. For years, it furnished Clive James on Television with an apparently endless supply of hilarious clips of poor saps suffering all manner of sadistic cruelty."
Television has long derived entertainment from putting people through physical and psychological torment and then watching them suffer. Mild trash-talk, underwhelming spectacle and mind‑numbing repetition can combine to produce a punishing viewing experience. Certain formats deliberately place contestants in grueling situations, emphasizing endurance, humiliation and repeated setbacks to elicit emotional and physical strain. The demented Japanese game show Endurance exemplified this approach by offering shocking and sadistic scenarios that generated memorable, often hilarious clips for observers. Such programming trades on a blend of cruelty, absurdity and audience schadenfreude while risking viewer fatigue and ethical concerns about exploitation.
Read at Independent
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]