Last summer, I volunteered at Sheffield DocFest and every showing of The Contestant sold out. Long queues of industry staff and volunteers tried to grab those last few seats that ticketholders hadn’t shown up to. Though not for lack of trying I failed to see it then, so if this film wasn’t widely anticipated it was at least highly anticipated by me.
It follows Tomoaki, who, often bullied as a child, used his natural humour as a way to make friends. As an adult he moved from Fukushima to Tokyo to pursue a career as comedian, with a single promise to parents as he left that he wouldn’t get naked. Then, in 1998, he was the ‘lucky’ winner of a TV audition based solely on chance and was immediately blindfolded and taken to a mystery apartment. The first thing the producer said to him: ‘Strip.’
His life became a segment called ‘Life in Prizes’ in the Japanese reality show Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, which accrued a strong following through their extreme and often cruel challenges. He was isolated in the apartment, with no food or clothes. Only a stack of magazines and a telephone. His challenge was to win 1 million yens worth of magazine and radio competition prizes, surviving on his winnings alone. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, the whole ordeal was being broadcast to millions of viewers, who knew him as Nasubi after the producers relentlessly compared his face to an aubergine and used an image of one to cover his genitals in the footage.
At its core the film creates a testament to Tomoaki’s resilience, who even when stripped back to the very basics of existence, found phenomenal willpower
The documentary, mainly comprised of footage of Tomoaki, is totally gripping and had my jaw dropping more than once. The cruelty of the producers is effectively juxtaposed with Tomoaki’s simplistic and immense joy each time he won something, even if it meant living off dog food. At its core the film creates a testament to Tomoaki’s resilience, who even when stripped back to the very basics of existence, found phenomenal willpower and retained an evidently innate ability to entertain and charm an audience.
Yet while I appreciate that the film wishes to respect the privacy of its subject, when so much shows the extreme exploitation that happened to Tomoaki, it is impossible not to feel as if there is a wealth of untapped potential to be grappled with. In particular, The Contestant only scratches the surface of the relationship between Tomoaki and ruthless producer, Toshio Tsuchiya, and its lasting effects. Titley presents Tomoaki’s slow descent in madness then wraps up the story up pleasantly, skimming over many aspects of his traumatic experience, his social readjustment and the show’s ripple on the global reality TV industry. The sensitive tone and empathetic approach of the film is, of course, vital but nonetheless raises a number of unanswered questions and doesn’t get to grips with the very voyeuristic impulse that had so many of queueing to watch at DocFest.