Joe Lamantia.com

Reality TV Revisits Its Origins

Apparently, if you wait long enough, all circles close themselves. Case in point: I've always thought Golding's Lord of the Flies nicely captures several of the less appetizing aspects of the typical american junior high school experience.
And I've always thought that much of the reality television programming that was all the rage for a while and now seems to be passing like a Japanese fad, is simply a chance for people on all sides of the screen to revisit their own junior high school experiences once again -- albeit with a full complement of adult secondary sexual characteristics. When I do channel surf past the latest incarnation of the primal vote-the-jerk-off-the-island epic, Golding's book always comes to mind.

Then a friend recommended Koushun Takami's Battle Royale as recreational reading. Battle Royale is, as Tom Waits says, 'big in Japan' - it being a Japanese treatment of some of the same themes that drive Lord of the Flies.

The editorial review from Amazon reads:

"As part of a ruthless program by the totalitarian government, ninth-grade students are taken to a small isolated island with a map, food, and various weapons. Forced to wear special collars that explode when they break a rule, they must fight each other for three days until only one "winner" remains. The elimination contest becomes the ultimate in must-see reality television."

And so the circle closes...

local tags: literature, media, social_systems, surrealism, television