Married at First Sight isn’t the only reality show to succumb to controversy and disturbing revelations. There’s Love Island (suicides), Love Is Blind (several American contestants have sued the makers for exploitation), Big Brother (multiple lawsuits worldwide) and America’s Next Top Model, which has now been revealed as horrifyingly toxic.
Talking closer to home, and going back in time, it wasn’t as problematic but it has always been quite problematic. I remember 10 Years Younger (let’s humiliate an older woman on the street), What Not to Wear (poor Jane is a traumatised widow with cancer but this russet cardie will sort her out) and You Are What You Eat, with that Gillian woman to whom I always yearned to say: “What does your poo smell of? Freshly cut grass and the seaside? Jasmine on a balmy evening in July? Give us a sniff.”*
And yet, and yet, and yet. The genre shows no signs of falling away while audiences remain staggeringly huge. (Love Island achieves 50 million streams per season.) I call this genre Shows You Watch While Criticising Yourself for Doing So, Like That Makes It OK (SYWWCYFDSLTMIO, for short). I put it to you that if we take all we’ve learnt thus far, we are all capable of creating our own SYWWCYFDSLTMIO series. Let me talk you through it.
First, your contestants. Ideally they will be super-hot and quite dumb. You must say you’ve held a lengthy auditioning process while scouting from Instagram. “Want to be famous?” you might inquire. You might also ask, “Want to be cyberbullied and left to deal with that?” but it’s probably best not to go there at such an early stage. Or ever. If it’s an Apprentice-type show, contestants are made to order in a factory (just outside Blackburn, I believe) as no one knows anyone like that in real life. It’s a pricey business but you can just revamp those from last season. No one will notice. One overcontoured face looks pretty much like the next.
For the host of an Apprentice-style show, you will need a fella none of us can believe is an actual businessman and who will judge every haggling exercise that fails to turn a profit as if he were presiding over an underworld murder committed in one of those warehouses where limbs are routinely removed with bolt cutters. To spice up your version it isn’t necessary to, say, have them make and star in a porno movie that they’ll then have to pitch to Pornhub, but, hey ho, it does have SYWWCYFDSLTMIO written all over it, and you must up the ante each season.
Alternatively take your contestants to a tropical island, although check first that it hasn’t already been booked by Love Island, Temptation Island, Virgin Island or all the other formats created by a word generator. It doesn’t matter if your participants do have sex or don’t, but if they don’t, why have we flown you all the way out here, Little Miss Party Pooper?
Don’t make anyone cry as no one wants to see that, except we all so do. Or take them to a stunning destination where they imagine they’re going to chill in a glorious mansion and then break the news: today we want you to source water, make a fire and bring down a wild bear with a teaspoon. It’s not a one-sided challenge, it’s just “good drama”. Those toxic males with big muscles who spark warnings from Women’s Aid? Who needs all the traction and publicity from that? You must weed them out in the auditioning process that doesn’t happen.
Lastly, please, please don’t worry if the raw footage doesn’t give you what you want. You can always tweak everything in the edit. That’s why I love SYWWCYFDSLTMIO. You can tell any story you want, however you want, whomever it damages.
*I was always surprised she didn’t have it dried and flaked into potpourri so we might distribute it in decorative bowls to fragrance our homes. She missed a marketing trick there.
Was it such a different time?
While we’re here, the host, creator and producer of America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks, has defended the abuses that went on in that show by deploying everyone’s favourite get-out clause: “It was a different time…” I hear this phrase repeatedly used to excuse what has happened in the past and it’s a pity we can’t revive historical figures to see if they’d go the same route.
Hitler, how do you now account for annexing Austria? “It was a different time.” Henry VIII, chopping your wives’ heads off, how do you feel about that now? “It was a different time.” Vlad, impaling victims on wooden stakes en masse doesn’t paint you in the best possible light. “It was a different time.” Hitler, murdering six million Jews? Really? “Listen, how many times do I have to say it? It was a different time, different time, different time. And now I’m off the hook, good day.”
I’m not convinced common human decency and treating everyone with respect has a sell-by date. But even if we allow for how things might have operated in the past, when impaling was all the rage, can’t people today hold two thoughts in their head? It was a different time and it was awful, wrong, abominable, should never have happened, sorry? If Banks had said, “It was a different time but forcing girls to have their teeth removed, that’s abhorrent, and I sincerely apologise,” it might have actually meant something. And might have displayed accountability and reflection. What do you think?