Posted: 03/14/2001

Series 7

(2001)

by Joe Steiff

Series 7 shows what could happen if “reality TV” were taken to extremes.

Though it may not always be fair to compare films, Series 7/The Contenders is everything that 15 Minutes wants to be: a sly, intelligent and thought-provoking comment on reality television (and perhaps even modern America). In writing about 15 Minutes, I offered a possible distinction between Films and Movies. After watching this film, I need to add that Films operate as if their audiences are intelligent. Movies generally do not (which would explain their often heavy-handedness).

Series 7 is basically designed as a back-to-back marathon screening of the last few episodes of the seventh series (or season) of a reality television show entitled The Contenders. The premise of The Contenders is that a small group of people are randomly selected to play the ultimate game of cat & mouse, life and death. The contenders are armed, and win when he or she is the only person of the group left alive. At which point, as reigning champion, the winner has to face a new set of contenders bent on killing each other and the champion: to become the new champion.

In the seventh series of The Contenders, Dawn, the longest reigning champion to this point, has to defend her status (and life) against five newly selected contenders. Rather than something as mundane as voting her competitors off the show, she has to kill them (or hope they kill each other).

The show’s episodes are strung together as if prepared for a network’s broadcast, complete with the commercial break tags and hooks (just waiting for “insert commercial here”) and ending with a preview for “Series 8.” Stylistically, this is consistent with a variety of shows, even relatively innocuous shows like “E! True Hollywood Story,” which use these devices to create enough suspense to carry us through the commercial breaks or the summer hiatus. With no actual commercials in Series 7, this device works more to foreshadow upcoming developments, but more importantly to the content and intention of Series 7, reinterpret the story.

And Series 7 is all about how images and “factual information” are interpreted for audiences. Specifically how this interpretation is not for clarity (which one might assume), but rather to enhance (often missing) dramatic elements of the real events. From voice over commentary to dramatizations, the material is constantly shaped for the viewer. In fact, we are so used to this on-going commentary from television news reports, documentaries and reality shows, much of Series 7’s humor (and point) can slip by.

For example, one of The Contenders takes his baby hostage in an effort to get out of the game. After leading the cameras and producing staff on an O.J.-like highway car chase, he is apprehended. With a knife to his throat, he gets out of the SUV, holding the baby, as the voice over commentator describes the action, misrepresenting the image as the Contender holding the knife to the baby’s throat. Cut to our apprehended Contender in the hospital, being treated for a “self-inflicted knife wound to the back.”

As the film progresses, this interpretation of material moves beyond voice-over commentary to “dramatizations,” particularly of the final climactic confrontation, which has to be recreated because the original footage was lost “due to a technical glitch.” Do you believe for a moment that the original footage was lost? Or was it just not “dramatic enough” for The Contenders’ producers? As dramatized, the climax is drawn out, milked for all its melodrama and surprise. By relying on dramatizations, the TV show’s producers can manipulate and interpret the situation for maximum effect, shock and editorial comment (the blood on the movie screen).

The Contenders’ producers are the hidden characters of Series 7, manipulating, setting up and encouraging “drama,” most notably in this seventh season with the “random” selection of Dawn’s former boyfriend as one of the new Contenders. Or for that matter, even in the earlier selection of Dawn herself, a pregnant woman now on the verge of giving birth.

The producers are an unseen force to be reckoned with. Punitive when any of the players try to break the rules. Savvy enough to spin and interpret and manipulate these very subversions to increase viewership.

The ironies extend beyond the structure and aesthetic approach of Series 7 to the characters themselves. Jeff, who abhors violence and is already dying from cancer, begs Dawn to kill him by injection. Then when an injection seems inevitable, he fights to live. The parents of an 18-year old enthusiastically encourage their daughter to follow her destructive path despite their initial misgivings, making the best of the fate they’ve been handed.

One of my favorite moments is Connie going to confession, asking for absolution for white lies and lustful thoughts about a celebrity, while completely ignoring her sin of murder. It reminds me of my days working at an STD hotline, where people would call in asking questions about HIV transmission. Inevitably many would obsess on an event that held no risk of transmission and completely ignore the ways in which they were highly at risk. You know, the guy who is absolutely sure he’s going to get HIV from sitting on a toilet seat, but who refuses to consider that his continuing unprotected sex with multiple partners could possibly put him at risk.

Written out so bluntly, the ironies seem to be simply devices, but they work because they reflect the ironies of day-to-day life, the contradictions we find in people around us all the time. The ironies that make reality television shows, at their best, so watchable.

But if this were simply a film filled with irony and stylistic devices, it would not hold up. At the heart of Series 7, writer/director, Daniel Minahan (who previously penned I Shot Andy Warhol) finds poignant moments that resonate at a deeper level than simply satire, especially in exploring Dawn and Jeff’s relationship. Brooke Smith’s and (in particular) Glenn Fitzgerald’s performances bring to the film one of the most important elements: engagement with characters. Even the most provocative premise (in film or reality television) can fall flat if the audience doesn’t care about the people involved. And in Series 7, just as in The Contenders, we care about Dawn and Jeff both individually and as a couple, and we want both of them to “win.”

Though I am not a big fan of reality TV shows (expect for the sporadic MTV Real World series), and though I could read larger allegorical elements into Series 7, ultimately the film works because it says something about being human. The best films always do.

Joe Steiff teaches at Columbia College Chicago.

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