Behind the
Gag when you see something icky? Don’t turn away just yet – tvplus is investigating why there’s more grossness on our TV screens these days.
Ten years ago, if you said “gross” while watching telly, chances are you’d have something on like Survivor (2000- current) and the contestants would be challenged to eat a portion of something like fafaru – it’s a French Polynesian delicacy of rotting fish pickled in fermented seawater, a guaranteed recipe for on-screen retching and vomiting. But that’s nothing. Nowadays, thanks to medical dramas like The Knick (2014current) and fantasy-horror hit show American Horror Story (2011- current), our screens are filled with beating hearts mid-surgery and clowns with half-blown- off faces. Gross? Sure, but the audiences love it!
GIMME THE GROSS
There are two trains of thought when it comes to why gross makes for “good” viewing. And instead of psychologists, who study and understand the mind, the ideas come from two respected TV critics, who know audiences and entertainment. Says Tim Goodman from HollywoodReporter.com, “The Walking Dead (2010-current) is the grossest show on TV, but I watch immediately. I’m grossed out enough to flinch but not to miss an episode. My willingness to endure comes from the fact that zombies aren’t real, so I can justify the gore.” Fellow critic Omar L Gallaga from RollingStone. com reasons that there’s an increase in gross-out viewing and gore because “the effects are easier to pull off now [thanks to cheaper, better make-up and computer graphics] and it’s a way to get attention”.
TALK MORE, CHARGE MORE
Why do TV shows want people’s attention? The more word spreads of “did you see this? But then that fell off and it was so disgusting!”, chances are more viewers will tune in. And a higher viewership means the networks can charge more for advertising. For example, look at The Walking Dead – as each season progresses, the zombies get grosser. In the beginning, skin was still pink-ish, they had both eyes, lips and just looked slightly rotted. Now, in season 6, we’re dealing with exposed ribs, half faces, skin that’s greeny-grey and literally falling to pieces. And yet hardcore fans (and those just getting into the show) are tuning in in their droves. Just under 15 million viewers watched season 6’s premier episode in October 2015 and the hit show’s average has increased from 5 million for season 1 to 14.4 million last year. In terms of money, The Walking Dead’s owner AMC is charging an incredible $520 000 (nearly R8 million) to each advertiser per episode of the show – although that’s for a package deal of the same ad being aired multiple times, unlike music drama series Empire (2015-current), which charges the same price per 30-second advert per episode.
THE REALITY OF IT ALL
While imagination runs wild on shows like Supernatural (2005-current), where you’ll see everything from soul-sucking demons to vampires and the devil himself, and The Walking Dead with its wasting-away Walkers, it seems that the TV scenes with the power to make people go palest is real-life stuff, like the surgeries in The Knick. “The grossest thing on TV these days is not a decaying zombie face but perhaps a human one on the operating table, like in The Knick,” explains Tim Goodman, adding that “there seems to be no end to people on the show reaching inside bodies they’ve just cut open to see what they can grab. It’s a brave new world in clamping, draining and scalpel-wielding. Clive Owen’s character Dr Thackery treats a woman whose syphilis has completely eaten away her nose and another doctor stuffs a man’s hernia back where it belongs”. Grossed out? Good! Now start counting the days until The Walking Dead and its rotting Walkers return in February 2016.
PART 1 Go outside and get some fresh air before reading part 2 of this gross-TV special in the 20 January issue (on sale 15 January), where we’ll look at how shows make gross
look great.