what is this megalomaniacal mess?

This December 19, 2024, Amazon's streaming platform launched the broadcast of an extraordinary competition. We no longer present MrBeast, the American content creator who has built his notoriety and his empire thanks to constant one-upmanship. But his latest creation is far from unanimously appreciated by spectators around the world. If the concept of reality TV Squid Game from Netflix has already shocked you, hold on tight. Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast has teamed up with Prime Video to break the record previously set by the red N. Since Squid Game : The Challenge offered its participants to win 4.56 million dollars, the videographer recovers the crown with a grand prize of 5 million dollars, to be won following equally stupid and dangerous tests.

Subscribe to Journal du Geek

A simple search “Beast Games” on social networks is enough to come across the same kind of reaction: these games are a disturbing consecration of MrBeast’s madness of grandeur. 1000 participants were grouped together in a city built especially for the occasion (for a budget of 14,000,000 dollars), in order to give birth to the craziest reality show in history. The show will offer 10 episodes during which 50 world records have been broken. But it only took one first episode to create a bad buzz.

“It's a dystopian level worthy of the Hunger Games“

Even before their broadcast, the Beast Games did not fail to cause controversy. Just like the production of Squid Game : The Challenge had marked participants both physically and mentally, candidates for Amazon's reality show turned against the broadcaster and the videographer for multiple reasons, each as shocking as the other. Sexual assault, inability to pay minimum wage and overtime, lack of meals and breaks during filming, injury and after-effects… The filming is presented as hell which even ended up pushing some players to the hospital.

And it is clear that the first episode goes straight in this direction. The images of candidates released under chain traps keep coming back, accompanied by ever more virulent reactions. “This new MrBeast show is on a dystopian level worthy of the Hunger Games. The way they make fun of these people trying to win $5 million is psychological warfare and the way the contestants treat each other is crazy” can we read on X. “Is it just me or do the Beast Games look completely crazy and twisted? Half of the 'challenges' are just psychological social experiments. 'Entertainment' is watching poor people suffer in despair” says another user.

It is certain that the Beast Games question what is entertainment and what is not. If some of these candidates had to sign to live a unique experience in the world, others had to do it out of pure desperation, in order to hope to escape poverty or a difficult situation. This therefore calls into question the notion of consent in the face of ordeals. The weight of a life-changing reward is not without consequences. Squid Game : The Challenge did not hesitate to emphasize the pain of the losers, and it is this same unhealthy aspect that the Beast Games try to highlight. If the morality of dystopian works like Hunger Games et Squid Game lies in the twisted and shocking nature of entertainment at all costs, shouldn't we avoid reproducing these patterns in our very real society?