Squid Game: The Challenge

he lines between Korean and American popular culture continue to blur. Netflix is a California-based media streaming company whose most popular tv series to-date is the South Korean series Squid Game, launched in 2021—it represents the country’s massively successful Netflix franchise. While we wait for next year’s release of Squid Game Season 2 Netflix offers us a new 10-episode reality tv series called Squid Game: The Challenge. In contrast to the graphic, dramatic intensity of the original series, The Challenge seems to take the battle royale concept and replace bloody murder with the interpersonal dramas and candid participant narration that have defined elimination game reality tv ever since Survivor hit the screens a quarter-century ago.

This trailer opens in the dark, with ominous bass rumbling. Immediately we hear a female voice over the loudspeaker announcing, “Attention all players, it is now time for the next game” with the number 456 glowing in the background signifying total players. Without missing a beat, at 0:06, we hear the creepy red light/green light game doll’s song, adding to the sonic nostalgia for fans of Season 1. Accompanying this is the mechanical and electronic power-up sounds of banks of lights being illuminated and video game screens switching on. From 0:07 to 0:11, these sound effects are rhythmically synched with the doll song, which seems to evoke military percussion. We also hear a single rising electronic tone, a common device in EDM buildups. When a large metal door opens at 0:11 and we see the contestants, the sonic focus is on their American accents with exclamations of “Oh, yo!” and “Oh my God.”

As contestants make their way into the room to play red light/green light 0:17-0:25, a high-pitched whistling sound pans from left to right, as if a screaming wind were swirling. At 0:32 we’ve cut to black, but, from 0:32-0:38—as runners head toward an unspecified goal—an echo of the last note of the doll’s song is repeated to establish a new tempo that segues smoothly into the second verse of Sammy Davis Jr.’s 1968 hit “I’ve Gotta Be Me.” At this point we’re witnessing a Korean drama concept which is turned into an American reality tv show, with a quintessential American entertainer providing the soundtrack. What country are we in again? I don’t know anymore.

The lyrics are a great fit for the action on screen. “I want to live, not merely survive,” sings Davis at 0.39 as one participant states in a voiceover that this is a “savage” game (0.44). From 1:00-1:12, Davis’ voice is lowered in the mix and more and more spoken clips from the contestants are featured. For contrast, at 1:12 Davis’ song disappears and is replaced by bass whooshes, leaving space for the female announcer’s voice to take centre stage yet again. At 1:17 we segue back to the song, and we’re now at the key change starting verse 4, which begins, appropriately “I’ll go it alone,” now with added triplets from the reverberant cinematic big drums we’ve come to expect at this point in a trailer.

From 1:16 to the end of the trailer, “I’ve Gotta Be Me” is remixed to extend and expand the final moments of the song with added cuts to silence, choir, orchestra, more and more drums, acres of reverb, and a long pedal tone (from 1:36-1:49). Before it resolves, there is a drop, musically and visually. The band cuts out, the announcer states, “You have been eliminated,” and the floor drops out from under a contestant. As they plummet downwards offscreen Davis sings a cappella one last “I’ve gotta be me” before the band takes us out.

This new series promises to integrate Korean and American television styles in fresh and unsettling ways. _Squid Game: The Challenge _arrives on Netflix November 22nd, the show’s second season waiting in the wings…

— Jack Hui Litster