THE most unhinged show on Netflix (and why I was glued)

Honestly I don't know why there isn't UPROAR about this

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Pop Star Academy: Katseye. With respect: You need to f*cking calm down.

I went into watching this thinking it would be a similar vibe to Cheer and the one about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Talented young people competing gently against each other with a few single, crystalline tears falling at appropriate moments.

HOW WRONG I WAS.

If you haven’t watched it yet, spoilers are littered throughout this piece so if you’re planning to watch it, read this afterward.

When KATSEYE, the new global girl group from Korea’s HYBE and America’s Geffen Records, finally revealed its members live on YouTube and Weverse in November 2023, it was a painful moment to witness. This comes at the end of the eighth episode of the reality show, and is a fitting crescendo to the previous episodes which were equally painful to watch.

Painful, but captivating. I couldn’t look away, as uncomfortable as I was.

Pop Star Academy, a new Netflix series filmed over 18 months by Becoming director Nadia Hallgren, captures the raw and unfiltered experiences of more than 20 young women, picked from 120,000 applicants worldwide, as they throw themselves into an intense K-pop inspired ‘Trainee’ program in Los Angeles.

Billed as a thrilling, high-energy reality show that combined the glam of pop stardom with the gritty process of turning ordinary (if preternaturally talented) girls into literal overnight global sensations (or ‘icons’ which is the correct K-Pop term, which I have come to learn), this sounded RIGHT up my chewing-gum-for-the-brain, lighter than air TV street.

But no. Ohhhh no.

What transpired instead was a ‘survival show’ so unhinged, so uncomfortable, and so deeply unsettling that it felt more like a slow-burning psychological horror than a fluffy TV reality competition. The premise was simple: young girls from various backgrounds, different countries (but all of the startlingly similar tall, thin, flawless skin aesthetic – how predictable) were placed in a hardcore K-Pop bootcamp where they would be trained to be the next big thing.

There were mentors akimbo. Singing coaches, dance trainers, even mental health professionals to help the girls ‘process’. There were performance coaches and physios and the best in the industry producers speckled throughout the series. The sheer amount of money funnelled into this thing was mind blowing.

One of the groups behind the endeavour is a company called ‘Hybe’ – I’d never heard of them, but apparently K-Pop sensations (and money printing machines) BTS and Le Sserafim are the brainchild of their chairperson, a somewhat creepy-seeming man named Bang Si-Hyuk. I’m not sure if it was the language barrier or the man, but he made me nervous and I was watching him through a screen in Ireland. If I was 15 and sitting in a room with him, I’m sure I would’ve been so nervous I’d be shitting through the eye of a needle.

What could have (nay, should have) been an uplifting narrative of dreams being realised *quickly* descends, and keeps descending, into more and more uncomfortable scenes of girls as young as 14 being told their genuinely incredible talents were trash by any number of the show’s teachers, mentors and producers.

“Human potential”

Director Hallgren said in an interview with TIME Magazine: “One reason why I personally wanted to do this show was I have a particular interest in human potential and what it takes to perform at the level of elite performers, whether it be as sports or pop stars. We see a lot of male characters do that in stories, just being really tough and to be able to see that in girls, that's the stuff that inspires me every day.”

Reading the above, I tried to call to mind ANY instance where I’ve seen the same thing happen to men/boys on reality TV. I’m certain that groups like BTS went through that trainee process, but was it filmed and put on Netflix? I think not.