The celebs have a choice, what about the animals?
I’m a Celebrity... is nothing more than an ‘entertaining’ extravaganza of cruelty and poisonous production values. We gawk with glee as we watch celebrities squirm and suffer, turning a blind eye to the real suffering. We have had 18 years of senseless animal torture and death.
Animals are routinely crushed, frightened, dropped, thrown, chased and stuffed into highly stressful situations on the show for no other purpose than to provide us with entertainment.
Celebrities are showered with snakes who get screamed at. Furry rats are flung and crushed into little coffins. Insects are stuffed into noses, ears and eyes, and for what? The welfare of these creatures seems pretty low on the show’s priorities.
If the celebrities sign up to be flung around and injured then that is their business. But these animals did not sign up for anything. They can’t beg for their lives. They cannot get up and shout: ‘I’m a Celebrity… get me out of here’.
The show shamelessly subjugates the idea that certain animals are worthy of our scorn, that they are ugly, frightening or nasty and therefore deserving of their fate. Close-ups of spiders and snakes are routinely plastered across the screen with menacing music to reinforce the notion, making it far easier for viewers to passively watch and distance themselves from their dilemma. The producers do not want you to consider that the animals crushed underfoot are feeling and thinking creatures.
You might find snakes, rats, lizards and insects creepy but that should not demean them.
In the 2009 series, celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo and his fellow contestants were accused of animal cruelty for catching and cooking a rat. This blew up in the media but there was no mention of erasing other harmful animal content that was far more prevalent on the show. Catching and eating a rat might be no better than stamping on one but at least eating it was out of a necessity to subsidise hunger. Though this hunger need not be created in the first place.
It’s all about the punishment.
Be it human or animal it should be a just game and not a way for us to constantly violate the vulnerable.