Postmortem
ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ✖ DO OR DIE — Fringe Entertainment's new survival show
As most of you know, I started this project out of frustration with the industry and their fixation on survival shows (or I hope you know since it's literally in the foreword xD). The treatment of trainees and idols in the industry is abysmal and that never sat right with me no matter how often survival shows pull me in. So. I wanted to explore the unfair practices and the human aspect of the survival show. Most of all I wanted to show how unfair it can be towards the people who are actually participating, and how what is shown can be so very different from what is actually happening.
You never know what is real and what isn't on screen. Interviews taken out of context, scenes cherry picked to bring about the biggest drama, and some people just not getting any screen time at all. Everything you see in a tv show is manipulated. Any kind of editing is a conscious decision and every kind of reality show needs editing, just like a fictional story makes statements with the scenes that are written and those that aren't. Your perception is always manipulated by what the editor or the author wants you to see, such are the rules and limitations of the medium, and nothing taught me this more than Do or Die.
Read only the episode content of this story and do you really know who these people are? Would you understand Changui's struggles with the lack of permanence in his life? Or would you just see a flighty guy who drags his team down? Would you understand Daebak's struggles with his identity or would you just see his misguided discrimination? Would you have known that Hugo was more than a pointed comment and an eerie grin? Or seen Haneul come to terms with his own unfair decisions and privileged position? Understood what was happening to Jeongha and seen him pick himself up and dust himself off and build himself up again? Truly understood the fallout and implications of the Hanjin and Inho friendship, and building it back up stronger than ever?
If you were to read only the episodes you'd get a shallow representation of the events. An incomplete understanding of the why and how and sometimes even what. It is important to realize that the humans represented on the screen are much more than what you know of them and it is impossible to truly know them. Who they are. What their aspirations are. What their fears are. Their doubts. Their flaws. Their strengths.
Which then takes me to a decision I made before even starting the story, and one that some of you might not be too happy about: aside from the final vote, none of your votes actually influenced the eliminations. It was a decision I made for two re
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