s1ru1

'World Uncanny Story'. From yule.sohu.com.

‘World Uncanny Story’ is a famouse Japanese TV dramas started at 1996. The series is aiming to create some fansy and even horror dramas associating with lates popular topic. Audiences all arond Japan and Asian areas found it entertaining yet profound. The latest dramas released in Sping of 2011 including a short story of prank programme online. The group is dedicated to prank people and put the videos online. Without ethic or even legal consideration, the whole crew especially the boss are targeting at the maximised popularity. However the story ends up with that the boss got pranked by his crew. And the prank didn’t stop until he fall from a skyscraper.

Prank Group in 'World Uncanny Story' directed by 河毛俊作,石川淳一.

The whole story sharply pointed out the largest concern behind such prank programmes online. That is, with no restrictions the shocking level of the programme will only be exploded by humans’ greed and curiosity. Prank videos have fulfilled people’s desire of peeping at others and taking pleasure in other’s misfortune. But for the protagonists in the video, they may find themselves offended and not respected by their beloved joke makers– usually the close friends, relatives etc. If the prank goes too far or out of control, the relationship will be inevitably influenced even though we can’t track what will happen behind the scene.

Pranker fall from a skyscraper in a prank. From 'World Uncanny Story' directed by 河毛俊作,石川淳一.

Superficially, prank programme has nothing to do with our Web 2.0. But the fact is, Web 2.0 extremely expanded the popularity of prank programme. With some convenient video sharing site like YouTube, people tend to prank more and get pranked more. While TV seems to be a much more limited-accessed media, websites give people more motivations. Basicly, they encourage people more on exposing themselves and surroundings

However, as one of the creative works, prank programmes involved not only the copyright problems but also the ethic and safety topics. Hopefully, go back to ‘World Uncanny Story’, the reallife pranker won’t end up with such tragedy out of prankees’ revenges.