SERIES 7. THE CONTENDERS
US, 2001, 87 minutes, Colour.
Brooke Smith, Mark Woodbury, Michael Kaycheck, Marylouise Burke, Richard Venture, Donna Hanover, Merritt Weaver, Glenn Fitzgerald, Angelina Phillips.
Directed by Daniel Minahan.
Sometimes a film comes along that you have never heard of and have no idea what it is about. This was the case with Series 7. The Contenders. The advertisements warn us that it is 'real life and real danger' and it has an 18 certificate. What is it?
As you watch the film, you are not quite sure. We are suddenly introduced to the pregnant Dawn who is being photographed with a hand-held camera. She complains to the man behind the counter in a convenience store. She then pulls a gun and shoots a customer dead. This is shocking so early in the film. Dawn does seem like a killer. This seems too random a killing. But, in fact, it is not. It is all for her unborn child. The murder victim is, in fact, a competitor in a television series, The Contenders, where not only are rivals eliminated from the show, they are actually killed.
Series 7. The Contenders is an in-your-face satire on current trends in popular television, especially the competitive shows, watched avidly by millions around the world, where rivals are ousted from houses and quiz shows. In this case, what happens when you are the Weakest Link, there is no Big Brother to help, you will not be a Survivor. You will receive the final goodbye.
The writer and director of this small-budget mirror of television-watching menus, Daniel Minahan, has said that he had written the screenplay before Big Brother and Survivor appeared on TV screens. He says he was rather taken aback at actual programs becoming more like his fiction. His model (and what he urged his cast to watch) was the 'real life' report shows like the US 'Cops'.
But it is not just the programs themselves which are the director's target. His gallery of contestants is also a mirror of bizarre amoral attitudes amongst seemingly ordinary people. Dawn wants to survive and get the money for her child. There is a nurse who has a handy way of using deadly syringes instead of the gun she was issued with. There is a 72 year old man who does not last long. There is a sixteen year old girl who knows all about guns, egged on by enthusiastic parents. There is a younger man who has terminal cancer and problems with sexual identity. The characters are caricatures but only just. One can see how almost-normal these people are. Which makes their hehaviour and that of their family and friends all the more alarming.
In the last few years there have been quite a number of American movies offering satirical critiques of television and its effect on society: people watching the lives of other people as if they were soap operas (The Truman Show, ED TV), teenagers swept into their TV screens and becoming characters in their favourite soap-opera (Pleasantville), viewers obsessed with continual watching of sales channels (Holy Man).
Of course, any film, no matter how scathing the criticism, as in Series 7, is not going to stop us watching television. But, any film that raises question marks about our viewing, our changing sensibilities and the possibility of desensitising audiences contributes to a critique of television.
