Introducing myself on the Cherwell Instagram page, I claimed that the Culture section is “about the media you consume outside of your degree”. For this to be true, it’s only fair that I dedicate an article to my occasionally borderline addiction to reality content. This article shamelessly considers the arguments for and against Love Island.
My personal motivation for watching reality TV is definitely comfort: there’s something reassuring about the way the extremely familiar plotlines are edited to seem shocking. Unlike certain TV dramas which release a handful of episodes at a time, reality TV producers churn new seasons out once or twice a year, thereby removing the element of choice. I also like how they become a talking point – the final instalment of this year’s season of The Traitors, for example, drew 9.4 million viewers, and provided a point of debate amongst friends for months before that.
Naturally, reality TV takes many forms, its less family-friendly iterations being romance shows (Love Island, Love Is Blind, Ex on the Beach to name a few). Especially in an environment like Oxford, where philosophical conversations are genuinely commonplace, watching these shows feels like a bit of a contradiction. As a 15 year old, gleefully discussing last night’s recoupling the next morning at school felt normal. A few years on, I’ve realised that it’s impossible to see these shows uncritically, and wondered if they can legitimately be seen as dangerous. My instinct to rely on them for comfort becomes questionable.
Shows like Love Island profess a commitment to contestants’ mental health that constantly falls short. Where The Traitors makes bumbling members of the general public complete tasks against each other, Love Island sees highly aestheticised young people compete for each other’s affections, with far more painful results. During each episode, ‘drama’ erupts, and scenes of women crying after the news that their partner of six days wants to ‘explore other options’ are accompanied by dramatically crescendoing soundtracks. Inevitably, the situation resolves itself, the contestants go to bed, and the cycle begins again.
Recently, these formulations have begun to seem increasingly sinister. Last summer’s season (series twelve) saw a particularly high number of viewers and a particularly high number of Ofcom complaints. In the context of a media landscape where voices like Andrew Tate’s are becoming more popular, certain Love Island scenes start to feel slightly chilling. The season highlighted the ability of articulate older men to encourage lost younger men to turn to misogynistic modes of seduction. Viewers noted how contestant Harry Cooksley, the eldest in the villa at 30, made it his personality not to commit to any of the girls. He spoke about them in largely objectifying terms and jokingly ‘taught his ways’ to younger contestants such as Harrison Solomon. Solomon’s behaviour ( breaking ties with contestant Lauren Wood shortly after sleeping with her) in turn led to 221 Ofcom complaints in response to a single episode. No action tends to be taken by Ofcom in relation to the comments;: the watchdog argues that Love Island is beyond criticism because it does not frame the men’s behaviour in a positive light.
Reality TV as a genre does not always create such controversy. I’d say Love Is Blind is viewed as a much more humorous, wholesome version of the show, in which contestants’ external appearance is (rightly), deprioritised. When it seems to be creating harm rather than good, there is an argument that Love Island needs banning altogether.
The issue with this statement is that it is not directly the fault of the show that the men act that way. Love Island survives because of its high viewership. Its popularity has intensified rather than decreased now that short-form content is so popular: influencers make careers out of dissecting each episode. The producers receive almost 100,000 applications per season: while complaints continue, young people are still keen to get involved. Producers have become more creative with how they find contestants, going as far as to walk up to people in nightclubs. This tells us that people see themselves in the contestants and romanticise what the show could bring them. The ideals it represents are therefore ones that resonate with today’s youth.
Someone once joked to me that Love Island is a social commentary; given its huge popularity, I think this has validity. In context, they were justifying watching a show that is framed as such a ‘guilty pleasure’. Perhaps it retains its standing because it is in fact familiar – it magnifies the relationship worries that young people feel day to day. If the show’s misogyny is so apparent, we should assume not that the producers encourage it, but that these are attitudes towards women which are acted upon every day in society. If a man behaves this way on camera, one worries about how they talk behind closed doors. As much as we’d like to see reality TV as a falsified ‘bubble’ in which feelings are expressed in their most extreme form, the intensity of emotion expressed on Love Island can reveal how young people see relationships. Any superficiality within that is an issue wider than the show, and one which needs addressing.
