Wipeout

Tom over at I Hate Paper turned me on to this ABC show Wipeout. I don't wanna like it, but it's really fun to watch. I'm watching it on Hulu, which ABC wasn't really partnering with very much, but they seem to have stepped it up. Since I'm interested in both the business and content sides of popular culture, I thought I'd use my new love of Wipeout to do some exploring.

Wipeout is a collaboration of Endemol Entertainment and Pulse Creative. Endemol was founded in Amsterdam in 1994 but its website says it is now owned by a "consortium consisting of Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Mediaset Group and Cyrte Group." Its credits include Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Deal or No Deal, Big Brother After Dark (?), and Gay, Straight or Taken. Pulse calls itself a boutique agency and it has only 4 other shows to its credit. It is really a branding agency and it merged with Insite Media Group in 2007.

Wipeout is distributed primarily by ABC, which is owned by Disney. Wipeout is filmed on a Disney property in Santa Clarita, CA. Disney also owns Touchstone Pictures, Miramax Films, Hollywood Records, and Pixar, among many other holdings. Of course, Disney owns all of the ABC channels and the Disney channel, as well as SOAPnet and ESPN.

Wipeout lists 21 producers, at various levels like comedy producer, segment producer, etc.

Now let's look at the content of the show.

24 contestants start the show, fighting through the first obstacle course. We meet a few of these contestants, in brief interviews, but most are just seen in short clips that tend to show their worst wipeout moments. The top 12 finishing times then compete in another round where they are whittled down to just 6. Another round takes 6 to 4. The final round produces a single winner who gets $50,000.

The hilarious moments from the first round generally come from heavily overweight people who have especially awful falls. One memorable moment was of a woman who fell while jumping from one enormous rubber ball to another, hit her chest on the side of the ball while her legs flew up to her shoulders (impressive flexibility), and then she dropped into the water. Round 1 is basically about making fun of the things fat people can't do.

Once the fat people are eliminated, the remaining contestants tend to be gender diverse, and they tend to be a good mix of athletic and non-athletic people. At some point in rounds 2 and 3, thick people are eliminated. These are either big breasted women or muscular men. The obstacles definitely reward the skinny. The final round is a competition between athletic and non-athletic skinny people, and usually the athletic skinny person takes home the money.

The show has three hosts. John Henson and John Anderson appear to be in a booth up above the events, but most likely are filmed after the fact, in a completely different location. They don't interact with contestants at all. Their role is to provide funny running commentary, and they are sincerely funny. Their jokes are crude, and they make a lot of sexual references, including jokes about 'blue balls', referring coyly to the big blue balls used in some of the obstacles. John Anderson's previous work was on SportsCenter. John Henson is most recognizable from his years on Talk Soup, and more recently Entertainment Tonight. It's an interesting combination that seems to work.

Jill Wagner is down on the field with the contestants and she offers interviews before and after the competitions as well as amusing responses to brutal wipeouts. Her previous work includes Punk'd, as a field agent, and some small parts in movies and TV shows.

The sociologist in me has to point out the power position of two White men who are isolated in the safety of a commentators booth high above the events, made even safer by the fact that it is taped after the actual competitions. Meanwhile, the White woman is down on the field, which makes her available for the jokes of the other two hosts. Non-white people appear only as contestants, and they don't even comprise a big portion of the contestants. The social class of the contestants isn't visible, although job titles are sometimes mentioned (and then used as source material for jokes). Class is really present through the design of the show itself. The show is basically a variation of Fear Factor, but that show is really a middle class (or mass class) version of the redneck games. If you're not familiar, redneck games are competitions held at various county fairs and family reunions in the south, and include bug eating, mud wrestling, and wheel barrow races. Wipeout is a cleaned up version of redneck games. What wipeout takes from redneck games is a celebration of spirit over skill. Athleticism may help you win, but it is not prerequisite to play. Wipeout also borrows an interesting version of dignity from the redneck games. The competititons in both may look completely undignified to an outsider, but there is a strong insider feeling that dignity comes from being there and participating. If the participants are caught in some embarrassing situations, we are meant to feel that we would do even worse if we tried. This version of dignity is rooted in class divisions, the celebration of some class cultures over others, and the rebellion of lower class groups against a hegemonic constuction of dignity. (Wow, that either sounded smart, ridiculous, or both.)

Wipeout is a mix of new and old. It is more interesting to watch and also funnier than most shows of its class. But it's not radical TV. No real inversions of racial, gender, or class hierarchies here. It's not exactly the same old shit, but it's not too far past it either.

Still, it's pleasurable to watch, and that counts for a lot when we're talking about popular culture.