May was Mental Health Awareness month. It's interesting and really positive to see how much more open the conversation around mental health has become. Expressing how you feel and taking time for yourself has become a lot more accepted and understood. The mental health charity Mind reported that 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience some form of mental health problem each year.
Reality TV offers escapism. Shows like Keeping up with the Kardashians or Selling Sunset offer viewers an insight into luxurious lifestyles that feel foreign to them. Every now and then I dabble in a bit of reality TV. Right now my YouTube homepage is full of compilations of "cringe" moments from Survivor and recently I've got into Kitchen Nightmares. I often feel second-hand embarrassment watching Gordon Ramsay tear into restaurant owners who for some reason are blissfully unaware of the fact raw chicken is being stored next to cooked chicken in the kitchen, there's saucepans full of mould, and dead mice ready to greet customers. In one episode, Gordon spotted a mouse and the staff accused him of planting it there for drama. Now I'm laughing while I'm writing this 😭
We've reached that time in the year when ITV's Love Island returns to our screens, and I don't plan on watching. I used to be a fan, it started off as a guilty pleasure and then I found myself defending the show against critics. The first I heard about Love Island was in 2016 when a clip of people screaming at each other in the villa went viral. I thought to myself, that looks like absolute trash. Fast forward to a year later, I heard someone talking about the new series and how good it was. Suddenly my Facebook feed was full of memes about someone called Marcel and something about "Blazin' Squad". I didn't know much about the show, but assumed it was similar to Ibiza Weekender or Ex on the Beach, two shows that weren't my cup of tea. When I started watching, there were about five episodes already up on ITV Hub, and I got hooked pretty fast.
I was expecting people on the show to be kind of insufferable, but was pleasantly surprised by a lot of them. A big part of Love Island's appeal for me was the 'live' feeling of the show, and the discussion around the episodes online after each episode was released, I enjoyed watching After Sun too. The episodes aren't streamed live, but watching it knowing that the Islanders were in the villa in real time made it more interesting for some reason. It felt like you were part of an event that was happening right here, right now. One Islander I rooted for throughout was Camilla Thurlow. Love Island hadn't really seen a contestant like Camilla before (I've watched series one and two now so feel like I can make this assessment). She was quite an unusual candidate for this type of show, prior to appearing on Love Island she worked as a bomb disposal expert.
Topics like feminism had never come up before Camilla's season. During a conversation with Jonny Mitchell who she was 'coupled up' with at the time, they got onto the topic of paying on a date. Jonny said if a woman he was on a date with wanted to pay he would feel "emasculated". Jonny's comments were met with warranted criticism online. Camilla asked him "Surely you believe in equality?" to which he responded that he believed in equality, but claimed that feminists "believe in a slope towards them instead of men".
Shouldn't we all be feminists?
I remember this moment made me massively disappointed in Jonny and it became clear that Camilla and Jonny weren't compatible, as much as we wanted them to be. "We" being the audience. I respected Camilla so much for standing up for what she believed in. The purpose of feminism is to establish the political, economic and social equality of the sexes, but far too often it's redefined and misunderstood. Camilla is one of the biggest success stories from the show. Towards the end of the series, she coupled up with Jamie Jewitt, and nearly six years later they're still together! Another one of my all time favourite Islanders was Ovie Soko from the 2019 series. Ovie was like a breath of fresh air, he never tried to create drama and instead tried to deescalate situations when it felt like things were getting out of hand. He did a documentary with the BBC called Life After Reality TV where he interviewed former reality stars. Vicky Pattinson from Geordie Shore had this to say: "I definitely sacrificed respect for attention. I was under a certain amount of pressure to be what everyone was expecting...I really lost who I was on Geordie Shore and played to the cameras." This seems to be a common thread, reality stars feeling like they get lost in a persona.
Editing can certainly make a person look better or worse, but I would argue that it has to originate from somewhere. RuPaul's Drag Race US practically has its own hall of fame for "villains". Some past examples of queens who fit the villain trope are Phi Phi O'Hara from season four and Roxxxy Andrews from season five. There has been a lot of discussion around the "villain edit" and whether it's a real thing or not. Phi Phi O'Hara now goes by his real name, Jaremi Carey. He has spoken about the backlash he received following his appearances on season four and All Stars 2. He found it difficult to get bookings after season four, and received a lot of hate. In 2020, Jaremi announced that he was retiring the drag name Phi Phi O'Hara. A lot of Drag Race fans felt that Roxxxy Andrews treated Jinx Monsoon poorly, but it's clear that they're on good terms, as we can see from the post above.
Perhaps one of the most morally reprehensible reality shows in history is Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, a Japanese TV show which aired from 1998 to 2002. It was massively popular, averaging 17 million viewers. It featured aspiring comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu who became known as Nasubi. For fifteen months, he was held in a tiny apartment and lived off of winnings from sweepstakes. For some bizarre reason, I suppose to dehumanise him and make him easier for producers to influence, he was told that he needed to take off all his clothes to participate in the show and wasn't allowed access to the outside world. The goal was to win 1 million yen from the sweepstakes and then he would be released from the show.
Nasubi's social interactions were limited to short exchanges with delivery people and producers. He was not made aware that the show was live, and was under the impression that the footage would be edited so he would walk around freely, completely naked and unaware that millions of people were ridiculing him. When Nasubi thought the show was finally over after reaching his goal, the producers found another way to coerce him into staying longer. He was taken to South Korea and told he needed to earn his ticket back to Tokyo. I can't imagine the amount of mental strength it took him to continue. He endured so much. At the end of the show, he was taken into a small room by a producer. The room looked a lot like one of the rooms he had lived in for the show. Without being asked, he started to get undressed because it had become second nature to him. Then much to his surprise and horror, the walls of the room came crashing down and he was exposed to a live TV audience shouting "Nasubi! Congratulations on reaching the goal!" It's one of the most bizarre, sad and dystopian moments I've seen on a reality show.
This video breaks down the show really well.
In an interview, Nasubi spoke about the impact the show had on him day by day:
Everything was harsh, every day was like hell back then. The hardest thing was not to be able to see and talk with anyone. My mental condition was at its worst. I felt like, why only me? Why do I have to do all these things? I’d rather die than feel like this. Although I looked like I was having fun most of the time on the edited show, to me, it was full of pain.
Nasubi's suffering was made into a spectacle. He was isolated and dehumanised for people's entertainment. After his experience, he said he found it harder to interact with people and became a lot shyer, which impacted on his career as a comedian.
The issue I have with reality TV is that it often feels like in order for it to be entertaining, people's mental health has to suffer. Viewers complain that the show is boring when there's no drama, but drama tends to comes from relationships and friendships breaking down, betrayals, and gaslighting, sometimes from the producers, and other times from Islanders themselves.
One of the odd things about Love Island is the lack of privacy, and the feeling of voyeurism. There are cameras everywhere, including the Islanders' communal bedroom. It's reminiscent of Big Brother in a lot of ways. There isn't really anywhere to hide. If an Islander does something that feels inauthentic or calculated, viewers are quick to call them out on it. It's difficult to talk about Love Island without acknowledging the deaths of people who were on the show, Mike Thalassitis from Series 3 and Sophie Gradon from Series 2, as well as former host Caroline Flack. There has been a lot of debate around the aftercare done for contestants on reality shows, and whether enough is done. After being "dumped" from the show, either by public vote or by other contestants, Islanders suddenly have access to their phones again after weeks of isolation from the real world. You can only imagine how overwhelming this is as they're suddenly faced with tweets, Instagram follows, messages, and articles about them. Ofcom receive complaints from viewers expressing concern for Islanders' wellbeing pretty much on an annual basis. In 2022, the main concerns were misogyny and bullying. It's not the first time we've seen this kind of toxic behaviour displayed by Islanders, but this time it was on a larger scale. Viewers pointed out that it really felt like a boys' club, they were seen egging each other on and encouraging each other to disrespect their partners. Seeing behaviour like this almost being normalised on television was concerning. In recent years we've seen the concerning rise of incel culture with the popularisation of raging misogynists like Andrew Tate.
Overall, I think reality television as a whole is not inherently bad, I still watch a lot of it (just not Love Island). I think society in general has become less cruel, and generally speaking there is more compassion for people on reality shows than there was in the nineties or noughties. Personally, I think Love Island peaked in 2019. We will likely never see another season that felt that organically entertaining. The cast were great, Maura Higgins and Ovie Soko in particular (in my opinion) brought some of the best moments to the show. Maybe I'm being overcritical, but I haven't watched any of this year's Love Island, so this is by no means meant as an attack on the new Islanders, as I know nothing about them. I think when the same format is done again and again, it feels far too repetitive. There are still people invested in the show, but I don't think it holds the same power it used to. Viewers need to be mindful. We need to remember that the people we watch onscreen are real people with feelings, and it's important we realise the impact snap judgments can have. Not everything needs to be tweeted, not every opinion has to be said out loud.
I'm sure there's a lot of people still interested in Love Island, but I'm over it.
For now.
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