#produce-101

[mjohnso]

Promise of Exposure, Reconsidered

Long-time readers are already familiar with my feelings regarding survival shows, but for those that are not, they are simple and soon stated. Survival shows are bad for idols, who often get the worst end of whatever deal they promise. I am skeptical of any change made to the survival show format that claims to make things better for participants. And furthermore, I believe no amount of reform can fix this, short of doing away with survival shows.

Production companies, television networks, and entertainment agencies are not of this same mind. Seven years removed from the premiere of Mnet’s Produce’s first season and three years from the Produce voting scandal, survival shows remain a fixture of the television landscape. Last year almost a dozen different survival shows aired, while this year has already seen the premiere of four shows—Mnet’s Boys Planet, MBC’s Fantasy Boys, JTBC’s Peak Time, and KakaoTV’s Girl’s Re:verse and. This is to say nothing of shows announced but not yet aired like Belift Lab and Mnet’s I-LAND 2.

Survival shows would not have such staying power if trainees and idols had not proven to be such willing participants, but it is hard to fault them for this. To the industry’s many trainees dreaming of debut and idols who have cycled through multiple failed groups or stagnated in their careers, survival shows present a tempting opportunity. If they secure a spot in the final group, they are all but ensured a debut and a chance at success. For everyone else, the show offers the consolation prize of every survival show: "exposure." In theory, "exposure" comes with multiple benefits, as I noted in a 2016 post published on the eve of the premiere of Mnet’s Produce 101:

That is due to the size and reach of their platform, which many of the participating entertainment agencies that skew low and mid-tier could never match, a trainee appearing on the show could hypothetically find fans or catch the attention of the public. In turn, this could lead to offers for endorsement deals and attract investors to her company before, as Mnet stresses, she even debuts.

As for idols that have already debuted, there is the hope that their participation will lead to the kind of career renaissance à la EXID and Brave Girls, both of whom, thanks to “exposure,” were pulled back from the brink of disbandment. Never mind that the attention in both cases arose organically via fan videos, rather than mediated by a television show. But In an industry where success is never guaranteed, would-be and struggling idols are conditioned to seize every opportunity, lest they miss “the one.”

This is not a gift that comes without strings; there is a tradeoff. While participants can receive attention, they have no control over how much they receive or how it looks. Depending on the ratio of contestants to a show's run time, they could receive little or a lot of screen time. During whatever time they get, the show could portray them positively, their best attributes highlighted, or conversely, their scenes edited to highlight or create conflict. Similarly, the show may emphasize scenes of a singing voice cracking or a participant making a misstep while dancing, played on a loop, or accentuated with sound effects.

Such is the risk of potential fame, or at least that is what survival shows would have participants believe. In spite of recent "improvements" intended to make survival shows fairer, this aspect of survival shows remains untouched—until recently. JTBC’s Peak Time and KakaoTV’s Girl’s Re:verse present a corrective. Instead of promising exposure, they offer anonymity. Although both shows’ participants are already debuted idols, they forgo introduction videos and strip all identifying details of them, including their names. In Peak Time, the 24 boy groups are identified by an hour of the day, e.g. 8:00, 13:00, 20:00, etc. In Girl’s Re:verse, virtual avatars representing the female idol participants are referred to by their chosen nicknames: Chonkycat, Dopamine, Rascal, Cheer, Zzaru, and so on.

As with most changes to survival shows, the rhetoric around the switch has framed this as beneficial to participants. For example, the production team of Peak Time has described the show's goal thusly,

“We intend to show solely their skills without the boxes and labels attached to their teams’ names and images. [Through the program], people will be able to evaluate the teams purely by their skills without prior prejudice of their existing image and find new aspects or values of the teams that they did not know before.”

Likewise a New York Times article, “Will the Metaverse Be Entertaining? Ask South Korea.” quotes Girl’s Re:verse producer Son Su-jung, as saying that part of the point of the show was to give them “a break from the industry’s relentless beauty standards, letting them be judged by their talent, not their looks.”

In theory, this sounds good but as I noted above, so too did paying participants in exposure. That is precisely the problem though. As it gives the perception of fixing the problem, it become a useful means of re-branding. Thus the choice of both shows to not reveal their participants' identities is elevated from cheap, oft-used gimmick to a form of 'conscious marketing,' where it is actually helping idols. Tellingly, it is not about sparing them from judgment altogether, as this is still a survival show, but from a certain brand of superficial judgment. That is while they will still be judged by the appointed judges, who by dint of their history in the industry, are supposed to be understood as only delivering constructive criticism, viewers too now vote for participants on the basis of their skill.

Conveniently, nothing about this change requires any major reckoning over the survival show format. Nor does it require soul searching on the part of those who work on the shows behind the scenes, to consider how they themselves may contribute to the problem said show is purported to fix. That would be what is needed to make the real changes they claim to, but it is harder. It also requires giving up power, and also potentially losing power and money. And anyway, there is no guarantee that if it were to happen viewers would even recognize it for what it is if shows did it. After all, they had probably heard it before.

[wieqo]

˚𖤛ᩴ◦👜📿⣷.ୁֵׄ⃜ Girassóis Secos /運 *•🚼. ♪ ིུ͠

[youmeipeach]

[seulggi]

ME:I ⊹ CLICK for @miyawaki

[sekaiichi-happy]

CLICK 2024, ME:I

[mibhhh]

[ayanetakami]

ME:I / CLICK' MV

[xinyuehui]

ZHOU JIEQIONG for 国风大典

[zhansww]

© 爱不设限丨0805x1005

[bonebabbles]

Scenes like this keep cropping up and I cannot help but roll my eyes all the way back into my skull

Don't worry guys, having NEW children fixed him. This famously teaches a violent man to stop hitting kids and makes him no longer feel the need to construct nightmarish scenarios so he can humiliate and embarrass those he has power over. Men whose wives produce lots of babies for them are Very fulfilled and Understand how strong bonds are supposed to be

"Instead of advising him he'd been defensive" is a REALLY INTERESTING way to phrase "got so offended at the suggestion to stop murdering women for their land that he shoved his son's face in a festering wound and told him to leave him to get eaten by maggots."

I wonder how they'd spell something like, "walked through a patch of thorns so that his son would be in physical pain and then belittled him for finding an alternate route because he wanted him to suffer" and "lied directly to his face about why he abandoned him when he realized the child could be useful"

[patetic-club]

⠀⠀⠀⠀[꯭欜꯭氎꯭.] ෆ˒ (𝑃.)𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑐-𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑏𓈒   ♡̶ ꯭ 㜻꯭㜼꯭ 𝆯

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ꯭꯭꯭ ⍈  ≡ ⠀꯭灎꯭⠀chayeon 𝑰𝑪𝑶𝑵𝑺 ⬭𝆬⭒۟

[ranfused4ever]

This is one of my favourite yibo moments of all time, for many reasons, the casual singing, the passion, his entire outfit is ace, and of course it's nan hai. Yibo yibo, will you please sing a proper cover of nan hai so I can die a happy person, please and thank you.

[yningz]

걸어 잠글게 𝗕𝗢𝗖𝗔 ✦ ⾕

 ⋆ ★ 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹 ø 𝘃 𝗲 ?

⌗ ☁️ — 가시 같은 그 말로꧇  ՚՚  ݈݇-  

k.wsk. ☄︎ ՚ .. liking/reblogging is appreciated!!

[youmeipeach]

[nightfuryinthesky]

ME:I - LEAP HIGH! 〜明日へ、めいっぱい〜

[sekaiichi-happy]

ME:I 2024, Hi-Five MV Teaser