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In 1969, then-famous director Sydney Pollack made an impressive film about such dance marathons called They shoot Horses, don’t They.
John de Mol once invented Big Brother, but otherwise he’s good at milking old ideas like talent shows, which are always presented in a different form. For his latest find, he plunges into the past: the dance marathon. The first edition of this phenomenon ended at ten o’clock on Saturday. Hundreds of couples showed up. Whoever managed to move the longest came home with a hundred thousand euros. Unfortunately, when the closing signal sounded after fifty hours (!) There were still twenty couples on the dance floor. The others had given up despite the fact that presenters Wendy van Dijk and Jan Versteegh tried to encourage the participants as much as possible.
In the end, the ton went to the couple Tawatha and Jermaine because they – according to SBS6 – had taken the fewest breaks. The other perseverants let themselves be tempted by a weekend at Disneyland in Paris.
Dance marathons spread to the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s organized. Enough of the unemployed poor who let themselves be dragged into such shows in the hope of making a few cents. In 1969 the famous then-director Sidney Pollack made an impressive film about such dance marathons titled They shoot horses, don’t they. In one of the main roles Jane Fonda.
The film was a huge success. Despite the tragic content, audiences came out with a good feeling at the time. I remember it well. We would never have such horrible conditions again.
It was a mistake. John de Mol brought out the model of the dance marathon, which destroyed participants in the most literal sense of the word in the 1930s, in the hope of making a hit. Scenes occurred that were reminiscent of what was going on in those American dance arenas at the time. And to what has been portrayed so impressively by Sydney Pollack. The exhausted participants went cry at home. And then insensitive guys like. Jeroen van den boom also prepared for a performance to keep couples exhausted. René Karst there was even the lead a polonaise.
The celebrities who took part in the Dance Marathon made themselves known by providing their cooperation – no doubt lucrative – to this bastard, Wendy van Dijk and Jan Versteegh in the lead. It is amazing that John de Mol himself did not realize that dance marathons are dangerous and ethically totally unacceptable phenomena that civilized people hoped would be a thing of the past. He shamefully abused naive people whom he unscrupulously tried to exhaust himself in his arena. What SBS6 gave them were tears.
Fortunately, many viewers reacted with outrage. They have proven to be the guardians of a civilization that De Mol and his companions have long left behind.
For the rest, I am of the opinion that the subsidy scandal should not disappear from the public’s attention, nor the case of the natural gas of Groningen.
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