The Tragic Lie Behind the Beautiful Dream of Terrace House

June 8, 2020 9:13 PM

Vox [CW: suicide]:

The show, then, is a perpetual commentary on what it means to be a public figure living an “authentic” life in the intensely private space of the Terrace House, nonetheless aware at all times that you’re being filmed. As the house’s residents watch the show on TV, they frequently cringe at themselves and adjust their behavior week after week, trying to recalibrate their expectations of themselves and each other, according to the edits onscreen and the social media reactions of the show’s viewers. Where other reality TV shows normally sequester their stars, Terrace House crafts dramatic narratives for its seasons by doing just the opposite. It allows residents to interact with the world as the world reacts each week to the show. This meta-layering creates what Ridker called “genuine literary excellence.” But it also may have created a parasocial illusion of intimacy that was always destined to blow up — though not in a way anyone could have predicted, staged, or scripted.

More on Terrace House:

Netflix's Terrace House finds meaning in mundane human interaction

‘Terrace House’ Is a Harrowing, Emotional Adventure That Makes You Rethink Reality Television

Terrace House: Reality show cancels season after Hana Kimura death [Hana Kimura's passing, previously]

Plague Comforts: “Terrace House,” the Anti-“Tiger King”

Terrace House fixes what’s broken in reality TV

On Netflix; discussion on FanFare

posted by MoonOrb (7 comments total)

Terrace House has always been misleading. As much as it was billed as 6 "normal" people just living their lives, just the absence of a script or events doesn't make it any less fake. Even the very introductory season had a member of AKB48 (one of Japan's most famous idol groups) with a house member shocked upon realizing they would be living with them.

Many house members are models, actors, and a sizable number actually come from various rings of association... even members you would think are "random" are actually connected to someone in some way. There are some that are genuinely from an application, but they don't make up the bulk of the house. You bet while the producers aren't making "scenes," they certainly craft the narrative by selectively choosing members to join the house to spur action. While the first season (Boys and Girls Next Door) was relatively calm, we still had minor moments of controversy in the following season in In The City (meat incident, detective barnes, etc).

Yes, I am a fan. I've watched all seasons and episodes, up to the current season that most recently aired in Japan. The show's popularity has surged especially when romance is involved, so you could really tell as the seasons went on that it was crafted more towards "let's get these people to date each other" rather than the original intent of "hey let's see what happens when you put six people in a house together." Well, of course most of these six are attractive models, musicians, or athletes. The other unfortunate side effect of a show's gained popularity are members more willing to outright shill their brand and using Terrace House as a way to gain marketing leverage.

But the most unfortunate effect is one that may not be known as much to the international viewers (like Americans)... the depth of cyberbullying, stalking, sexism, and racism in Japan. Members are constantly harassed and threatened on social media, where most of the users still hide in anonymity. Women take on much more criticism than men. And in a country known for xenophobia, racism also runs rampant. "Half" (happa, or half Japanese) members that are white are praised for their beauty and command of the Japanese language. While "halves" that come from a non-white ancestry have been criticized more harshly.

Unfortunately, all of these elements added up for Kimura Hana, which ticked too many of these boxes. Having a more forward personality and in a non-traditional profession for a woman? Check. Disagreements with a male character and seen as a "bitchy" character? Check. Not an "acceptable" half (she was half Indonesian with a darker skin tone as a result)? Check. Unfortunately she was not able to endure the intense cyber bullying and mainstream criticism that came even from the commentary panel of the show.

So Terrace House took a dark turn for the worst for me. A show which I ADORED ended up a show in which I look back in extreme sadness and disappointment. I was duped into a fantasy that ended up breaking my heart in the end.
posted by xtine at 10:16 PM on June 8, 2020 [19 favorites]

I loved the commentary panelists, and that The Ringer article does a good job of capturing the psychosocial vastness of the "boring/mundane" Terrace House world.

The artifice of Terrace House was always so much easier for me to bear than the bombastic chintzy fakeness of most American Reality TV, however, Hana's suicide 😭 does leave me questioning how implicated we (viewers/fans of Terrace House) are in this this tragedy...
posted by nikoniko at 1:39 AM on June 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

So like Big Brother except you interact with viewers. yeah that sounds like a bad idea
posted by LizBoBiz at 1:50 AM on June 9, 2020

You can break people, you know?
posted by lextex at 2:32 AM on June 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

I binged Terrace House when I was in bed with a broken leg, which I suffered because I was trying to show off a flying side kick with ppl the age of the inhabitants. I’m really sad for Hana Kimura’s suffering and for her family.

I knew it was artificial but I loved the way the housemates tried to negotiate their conflicts, the slow pace, the aesthetics, the kind of...insistence on the validity of emotion. The characters, and they are mediated characters by editing and casting, not exactly just people, seemed touchingly concerned for each other. This was possibly partly because as a cultural outsider I may not have picked up on things but I also think it’s because in the North American reality show landscape there’s just more framing around conflict than compromise, exclusion rather than inclusion (for a narrow value here - all the characters are good looking, etc.)

The myths and stories we tell ourselves are so important and although I personally have watched the minimum of certain kinds of reality shows (The Bachelor, Wives of, etc.; I used to have to be up on them for my job) Terrace House really got into my psyche because of its insistence on showing people trying for harmony over (overtly)) upstaging each other, with a few exceptions. That was left to the panel, which always bothered me a bit, particularly the naive girl inclusion, which I know is a thing in Japanese culture but still rankled.

Anyways, I never poked around on social media much but it is a cautionary tale about toxicity and the mob. It strikes me as ironic in a week that so much of the same energy seems to be being brought to bear in discriminatory practices in media.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:22 AM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I mostly watched the older seasons for the glory of watching Seina being Seina (and whomever was responsible for the set design, bc I very much loved spotting random salads on bookshelves for no reason), but I've fallen behind on recent seasons. Even though it's tamer it its presentation, Terrace House is still very much the same premise of UK's Love Island just with sexy modern architecture instead of mandatory bikinis. These things are often played for trivial sugary consumption, that yeah, can admittedly make for some easy mindless media consumption, but the real story is how it plays out off-screen.

I always tell people that watching these shows is like watching a new season of Black Mirror, but you have to wait several years after it finishes to see the full story play out and its always depressing. How many suicides has Love Island indirectly produced? I've sadly lost count and I was super saddened to hear this phenomenon catch up with Terrace House. But what can you expect, when you're putting handfuls of humans in a room and essentially psychologically manipulating them and then dropping them back to the public that has been spoon fed a very specific narrative of their life's "character" its bound to create more devastation than a bountiful instagram following.

This shit should be regulated man.
posted by zsh2v1 at 7:44 AM on June 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

My partner is Japanese, we've lived in Japan on and off over the years, and I can speak reasonably well so Terrace House was a show we often watched together when the kid was finally in bed. We are not standard reality tv viewers, but Terrace House ticked all of our boxes being more reserved and full of Japanese in jokes that we both could laugh about and reminding us of places we wanted to go or food we wanted to eat when we moved or traveled back.

Hana's death is the worst possible wake up call, both of us were...no, are shocked and gutted over it. A young, visibly strong woman who just seemed to carry a real gusto for life, gone so quickly.

If I'm honest with myself though, I had been feeling a little weird about things earlier than that. After Tokui was put on hold with his tax scandal I noticed a lot more of the negativity of the hosts, and I was not ignorant of the incredible amount of Japanese netizen hate going on online or even in the English speaking reddits I would breeze by now and then.

Like nikoniko mentioned, I cannot escape the knowledge that I am a part of what cost Hana her life. I share some blame in what happened even if I wasn't out there bullying her.

Absolutely mirroring xtine here in saying that Terrace House broke my heart and I can't even be mad about it because I'm part of the problem. There's no way I could bring myself to watch the show again, and I'm done with reality tv. I was ignoring it before, I'll avoid it now.
posted by AaronTheBaron at 7:50 AM on June 9, 2020 [4 favorites]