Masquerade Coming to America

Why was I not surprised to read this morning that Vin Di Bona Productions, who brought us our beloved America’s Funniest Home Videos, has bought the rights to the famous Japanese television show, Masquerade?

The competish, which has been on the air since 1979, features contestants using props and costumes to perform visual illusions.

My first thought was, here we go again. First, FOX announced that they were bringing Human Tetris to our shores (and they’re casting now! Who wants to join me??) so it would only make sense that the rest of Hollywood would start dabbling in the pool of available (and pretty crazy) formats from Japan.

My second thought was, they better not ruin this awesome show. Actually, my real second thought was, what the heck is Masquerade? It’s always weird to think about Japanese shows in American terms, especially because it’s always incredibly hard to translate or explain in English.

Like this morning, where an email newsletter described Masquerade as,

Competitors perform live acts with the help of “invisible” people dressed to blend into the background or act as props all in the effort to trick the eye.

What? OH. This is Kasou Taisho, the semi-annual competition that would air on NTV. In other words, one of my favorite game shows EVER that I would watch with my cousins, where groups of people reenact clever scenes by using their bodies as props…or something like that. Dammit, even I can’t explain it.

Some really awesome clips can be watched here.

Overall, I think this acquisition reveals how the television industry is developing–we’re not only reinventing formats from overseas (are we really running out of original ideas??) but we’re also acknowledging the creativity available abroad. That could just be my naive everyone-can-get-along attitude, but it makes Fox’s old show, Banzai, look pretty stupid now, doesn’t it? First you mock our television shows, and now you remake them. Yeah, that’s right! I said it! We Asians are always there first!