The wildly popular Netflix cooking competition show “Culinary Class Wars” is facing criticism for employing “villain marketing” – highlighting contestants’ negative aspects to draw viewer attention. As contestants singled out for inappropriate behavior during the competition face personal attacks, concerns are rising that “villain marketing”, a chronic feature of Korean variety shows, is being replicated in global OTT entertainment programs.
Particularly, Chef Kwon Sung-jun, known as “Napoli Matfia”, who won “Culinary Class Wars” and claimed the 300 million won (approximately $220,000 USD) prize, recently posted an apology on his social media account, saying, “Despite not being young anymore, I acted and thought immaturely.”
Mentioning fellow contestants Edward Lee, Triple Star, and Cooking Maniac, he confessed, “When these three remained at the end, I thought they were all tough opponents to beat, and I put on more of a front to avoid feeling intimidated.”
Kwon Sung-jun stirred controversy in the final competition, which was released on Netflix on the 8th, by showing disrespectful behavior, such as telling his opponent Edward Lee, “I’m going to crush you slowly.”
These “villain market” tactics drew a lot of attention to the show, yet at the same time also led to contestants suffering from a stream of malicious comments.
Regarding the topic of “villain marketing”, cultural critic Jeong Deok-hyeon said, “It is true that some entertainment programs are causing damage to the cast through evil editing,’” adding, “However, in the case of ‘Culinary Class Wars,’ it is not that there was malicious editing, but rather that the public is reacting rather sensitively because the program has become such a hot topic.”
Meanwhile, PD Kim Eun-ji, who produced “Culinary Class Wars”, explained the “villain marketing” controversy by saying, “It’s something that happened as contestants with unique personalities immersed themselves in the competition, and we didn’t intend to portray a specific contestant in a bad light.”
She continued, “In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that there are no villains compared to other survival programs, but I think people with unique characters ended up getting more attention.”
Source: Daum
