Nasubi, Wendy, and The BH: 90210 Reboot
I like unsettling tv and this was a good week in viewing.
Hi, guys! I watched some stuff and enjoyed it!
Despite the existence of this newsletter and what it might make you think, I am highly averse to attention. I prefer privacy. I adore anonymity. Unlike the subjects of my week’s watching, all of whom cleave more or less fiercely at more or less absurdly personal risk to BEING FAMOUS. Let’s review.
The Contestant persuades me that Japan is light years ahead of the West on truly disquieting sadism. We have guns, they have naked comics Milgram Experimenting their way through total isolation and radio prize rations on *live* camera. A robotic TV producer holds auditions for a reality TV show. Nasubi attends, is offered the job, says yes, is blindfolded, and is brought to the set location, where the scary producer Toshi Tsuchiya tells him to strip. Tsuchiya is a terrifying Anton Chigurh/Guy Fieri cross. Equal parts fearful reluctance and tender showmanship (throughout his time on camera), Nasubi does so. Producer Tsuchiya gestures at his surrounds. Apartment, phone, radio, rack of current magazines offering prize contests, stack of blank postcards for writing in to said contests, kitchenette. And a gray cushion. The Contestant has nothing else. The Contestant’s name is Nasubi, which means Eggplant. We are told his long face resembles an eggplant. I don’t see it. Nor do I see It, as Nasubi’s genitals are covered on camera by a large eggplant emoji. The show Susunu Denpa Shonen! aired at the turn of the millennium, before smart phones and icons were popular lexicography. The Contestant inaugurated the penis eggplant. During live tapings, techs had to scramble to censor his bits in real time. Although he did not believe his footage was airing, Nasubi’s time living on prizes lasts one year and five months and tops 30 million weekly viewers, regularly. I’ve spoiled nothing here. It’s a ride. Rating: one million yen’s worth of retroactive privacy, or 5 out of 5 eggplants
Watch “The Contestant” on Hulu
Wendy Williams persuades me never to drink again. Full disclosure: I am as valiant a spooky bitch/gore girl as the next coastal elite, and definitely know my comfortable way around some macabre fare. But eye stuff squirms my tract. And Wendy has got some Eye Stuff. Wendy has Eye Stuff breaking doping laws. Wendy has Step Off Barbara Bush Eye Stuff. Graves’ disease compounded by the incomprehensible pickle her brain matter has become. I was startled and yelled almost every time she appeared on screen and I watched half of this series with my hand up to my own eyes. I did not pay much heed to Wendy Williams on her way up, and I didn’t watch her show, but at that time, I consumed US Weeklys like crack, where her quips and fit callouts ran freely. I never imagined the decline that has befallen her. The first five minutes she’s talking, you think, “This woman is so unwell and labile and high, this has to be rock bottom.” By the end of the show, that’s as lucid as she gets. Most of the action occurs in her *stunning* apartment, and my buddy emmiyah noted, “Every single thing these people are wearing is branded.” Enablers, crooks, and golden children abound in this valuable, agonizing documentary. Rating: 5 out of 5 Genovese Effects
Watch Where Is Wendy Williams? on Lifetime
BH:90210 persuades me Tori Spelling deserves a boss third act. The Reboot is her brainchild, along with real bestie Jennie Garth, and it reunites the erstwhile Beverly Hills High clan under close-to-true-life fictional auspices: Brian Austin Green is married to much bigger female star (not Megan Fox wink), Jason Priestly punches a dickhead (kinda Harvey Weinstein?), and Tori Spelling supports her pretty-face hubby and five or six kids by sharing their lives on reality tv. These touches anchor the crew’s quest, after a cheesy Vegas convention turns into a humiliating criminal enterprise, to make good (and money) on their dwindling potential with a very special reunion show. Soap opera turns ensue by dint of both dream devices and mutilated dolls. There’s nothing quite like child actors who survive. The writing gleefully sends up industry ridiculousness without ever apologizing for the cast’s expressed desire to continue to *be* actors- and known, and liked for it- despite the march of time. Twists, cracks, and japes succeed because the actors are totally game. You can tell everyone is having a really good time. And if they’re not, even higher praise.
Rating: 7 out of 8 Peach Pit Milkshakes (pour one out for the homie Luke Perry)
Watch BH:90210 on idk the bootleg dvd we got? i mean youtube
All three of these shows concern themselves with perception, celebrity, and fame. All these subjects like fame and attention, which is an anathema to me. The 90210 crew turns to the venue they most understand to repossess their sense of identity- television. Nasubi pursues the spotlight avidly and early, hoping for the world to someday know his name. Wendy, down to her last few firing neurons, still gatechecks a gawker effortlessly with a withering, “I’m famous.”
I’ll watch BH:90210 again and again because it is such a strongly constructed piece of fourth-wall-penetrating fiction. The Contestant and Where Is Wendy Williams felt more like I was revictimizing Nasubi and Wendy, and I was struck so many times by how thin the barrier between entertainment and snuff (or at least suffering porn) has worn. Celebrity seems a short stack measured against these humiliations. If a man starves to death on live tv, does he make a sound? Wendy’s frightening eyes become a good icon for the symbiotic circuit her spectacle and our watching make.