Can Britain’s best brains explain Love Island’s gruesome fascination?
It’s TV’s crassest show, is a guilty pleasure for millions and gets more applicants than Oxbridge. We forced top academics to watch it. So . . .
MORE than three million viewers watched a new series of ITV’s Love Island this week in which young men and women are filmed in a luxury villa in Majorca and pair off as they hope to win a £50,000 jackpot. And with 85,000 people applying to go on the show, compared with 36,000 applicants this year to Oxford and Cambridge universities, we asked academics to give their verdicts on reality TV’s latest tawdry phenomenon . . .
IT’S SILLY, DEPRAVED AND TREATS PEOPLE AS OBJECTS OF SCORN A.N. Wilson, author and former Oxford tutor
IT’s not surprising that more young people apply to be on Love Island than apply to oxford and Cambridge, because it’s a fact that there are more stupid people in the world than clever ones.
To attend a good university, you have to be clever. To want to be on Love Island, you would have to be very stupid indeed.
The orange-coloured, gym-honed morons who appear in it presumably dream of a future as minicelebrities or underwear models. What they don’t realise is that nearly everyone who watches it does so to mock them.
It is a depraved, silly show. Not just because the participants are for most of the time half-naked. or because they are paired off, and share beds, to see if they might form sexual relationships. But mainly because it encourages viewers to treat other human beings as objects of scorn. There could be no other reason to watch.
The contestants think we are interested in who gets off with whom — yet they are not interesting enough to be the subjects even of transitory gossip. The real interest seems to consist in plumbing the bottomless stupidity of these sad, incoherent people.
In one episode I watched, there were six boys and five girls. None had really formed a pair, and one couple were relieved to discover they need no longer pretend to be more than ‘ just mates’. ‘There’s just sumfink missin’,’ said the female in this pair.
Too right there was, but not what she thought. It was brains that were missing, not sexual chemistry.
The drama of the episode consisted in the arrival of two new girls. This, thanks to the sadists who organise the show, gave the boys a chance to drop the girl they had been paired with and go off with one of the new arrivals.
As one chap called Wes eloquently put it: ‘We’re here to find the f*****g girl who’ll f*****g stick’.
Well, I won’t be sticking with Love Island. Those of us who think civilisation as we knew it ended long ago do not need this depressing bit of TV to confirm our hunches.
I’D PREFER TO CALL IT ‘HATE ISLAND’
Nigel Warburton, philosopher and former senior lecturer at the Open University Philosophers try to distinguish appearance from reality, so for me it’s amusing to watch a ‘reality’ show that is almost all about appearances. The participants are obsessed with how they come across: which bikini or shirt to wear, how pumped their muscles are. one even blowdries her false eyelashes.
They all know they are being watched by millions of viewers, so the result is that nothing seems real. When the contestants speak, it’s as if they have half-learned a banal script full of cliches.
only rarely do lines come from the heart — and when they do, I have the uncomfortable feeling that those speaking them have been manipulated into a state of emotional turmoil because it makes for better TV. Do the directors cheer when one of the participants cries? Is that morally acceptable?
For me, Love Island should be renamed ‘ hate Island’, as it is merely designed to induce betrayal, back- biting and heartbreak as entertainment.
The contestants are willing victims, of course. This is disturbing and fascinating. The voice- over describes the combination of bars, pools and sun-loungers as ‘paradise’, but to me it is a cunningly designed torture chamber populated by good-looking, heterosexual, not very interesting young people.
In the French philosopher Jean-Paul sartre’s play No exit, hell turns out to be a love triangle in which three characters are trapped for eternity, leading to the famous line: ‘hell is other people.’ Luckily, for Love Island’s participants, they will soon be allowed to escape. Nigel Warburton is author of A Little History of Philosophy
SEEING BEHIND THE TANS IS RIVETING
Dr Jan Macvarish, sociologist at University of Kent Initially, I wa s snootily disapproving of what I thought was a terrible platform for contemporary narcissism. The show seemed to encourage brutalised relationships, stripped of intimacy and exposed to the glassy stare of multiple cameras and baying critics on Twitter.
But ten minutes into Wednesday’s episode, I was surprised to find a smile on my face.
The allure of comparing a person’s private thoughts with how they present themself to the world is probably what drew me towards the social sciences — and this, too, seems to have gripped Love Island’s creators.
Despite the producers’ attempts to create tension, what viewers really want is to find out who are the ‘ genuine’ people behind the tans, teeth and six-packs.
reality TV is rooted in the complex balance between social performance and private self, with viewers encouraged to analyse who is ‘genuine’ and who’s not.
While fully aware that the relationships are ‘ not real’, we also know the contestants cannot entirely hide their ‘real’ selves over a period of eight weeks. Dr Jan Macvarish is a visiting research fellow at the University of Kent and author of Neuro-parenting: The Expert Invasion Of Family Life
IT’S LIKE WATCHING ANIMALS IN A ZOO
Roger Lewis, author and former fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford IN The 18th century, people had a good laugh visiting Bedlam psychiatric hospital, finding the shrieks and gibbering of the chained lunatics highly entertaining and diverting. Today, we have Love Island, which is basically Big Brother in the sunshine.
What makes the contestants freakish is that they have beautiful, buffed bodies — if you don’t mind tattoos, piercings, enhanced lips and man-buns.
The girls and boys are like models in a cheap glossy magazine come to life — one of those magazines you flick through without finding anything to read.
They spend hours posing, lolling, lounging and preening. They weep, giggle and cheer.
They gaze into mirrors and at their reflections in the blue pools. If this lot are in an asylum, it is because they suffer from extreme narcissism.
encounters between the males and the females are entirely based on looks, on immediate reactions, like dogs and bitches let out of their kennels.
The language they use is a kind of semi-articulate growling and whimpering.
The programme has a softporn appeal. It is titillating for viewers.
But the build-up to any action is agonising, as when zoologists wait years for giant pandas to mate.
Indeed, I would say that the show is anthropological.
If you watch this tribe for long enough, although the youngsters seem to be making dramas out of nothing, in fact, rich tales of intrigue, flattery, flirtation and deceit develop.
I SEE PARALLELS WITH SHAKESPEARE
Dr Sally Bayley, language expert and Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford University These bronzed, bragging twentysomethings talk big, fantasise and ego-strut.
The whole premise of the show reminds me of a Shakespearean play — it’s similar to the messy romance Troilus And Cressida, which is set during the Trojan war. in the play, all the courtship is done by the go - between figure, Pandarus, on behalf of the hapless young Troilus. On Love island, the go-between is the prying TV camera as well as the other contestants.
Flirtation becomes a consumer sport. everyone gets involved with the ludicrous language games played by these silly infants competing for sexual attention.
indeed, the language they use is childish. (One contestant, 23-yearold Coventry construction worker Niall Aslam, even has a harry Potter-inspired tattoo.)
The contestants are kids who seem to want a Marvel comic-book version of a partner.
Sadly, it is clear they are from a generation who see romance as just a commodity . They view people as ‘things’ and exaggerate everything. The word ‘literally’ is peppered everywhere, especially when recounting an encounter with the opposite sex that is blatantly a fantasy.
Absurdly, they are also obsessed with what they call ‘ grafting’ — modern-speak for a man trying to get a woman to like him by making a meek attempt at flirting.
in the case of 27-year - old A&e doctor Alex George, ‘ grafting’ just means putting on a nice shirt.
The contestants also frequently refer to being ‘nice’, although the show is far from it.
For example, originally there were more boys than girls, which meant one lad, Adam, had to steal a girl, K endall. Air hostess Laura even wears a T -shirt to bed with the logo ‘Be Nice’ across her chest. She discusses being nice while lying in bed with Wes, who in turn tells her she is ‘sweet ’. Neither means what they say. Dr Bayley’s memoir Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books, is published by William Collins, £14.99.
IT HAS THE ALLURE OF A GREEK DRAMA
Professor Tim Whitmarsh, Cambridge University classicist This may sound perverse, but i believe Love island is not just eye candy: it puts a modern spin on themes that are deeply rooted in the Ancient World.
First, the beautiful bodies. in statues, vases and the wall-paintings of Pompeii, the young, sensual, toned flesh of the gods and mortals was celebrated by the Ancient Greeks and Romans.
it’s no coincidence that when Niall complains about feeling threatened by Adam Collard, a hunky , 6ft 5in Geordie personal trainer, he says: ‘he looks like a f*****g Greek god… he looks like f*****g Zeus sh****d Angelina Jolie.’
Then there is the island setting . The idea of a ‘love island’ — a place of allure but also of danger — is a profoundly Greek one.
The Mediterranean islands deeply influenced the Ancient Greeks’ literary imagination. in homer’s Odyssey, for example, the warrior is offered mind-bending drugs on one island; on another , the beautiful goddess Calypso promises him immortality if he will become her lover.
As with all Greek drama, the audience sees its own anxieties reflected in the spectacle. As viewers, we experience the contestants’ jealousy, hope and rejection. Also, we understand how relationships can change very quickly. in the case of this TV series, the modern- day equivalent of the Gods (TV producers) will intervene to raise up the meek and bring down the arrogant.
Ultimately, the message of Love island is a profoundly Greek one: that while we have little control over the events life will throw at us, we can hope best to succeed by sticking to our principles and playing the long game. Tim Whitmarsh is a professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge and author of Dirty Love: The Genealogy Of The Ancient Greek Novel
IS IT LOVE... OR JUST PUTTING IT ABOUT?
Canon Brian Mountford, a chaplain at Oxford University in Christianity, the essence of God is love. When i speak at weddings, i emphasise three aspects of love: eros, that driven, sexual love the marriage service celebrates; friendship; and agape (pronounced agapay) or selfgiving love, which involves being inclusive and trying to empathise.
The title of Love island forces the question of what love really is. is it just putting it about?
My biggest concern arose when two new girls — Georgia Steel, 20, a part-time barmaid, and Rosie Williams, 26, a part-time model — were introduced.
This made the other women aggressively territorial and the men more predatory . indicating his willingness to change partner , one man said: ‘W e’re on Love island, not f*****g Loyalty island.’
i found something sinister in the manipulation of the participants, but was encouraged by signs of moral resilience seeping through in their self-analysis. i’d love to talk to them about their real values.