reality tv – The Orbital

Writing this, I am sat in a dimly lit, overpriced coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. It is the morning after the seminal event of our times, the cultural zenith for all those who dare to be ‘edgy’, ‘hip’ and part of the ‘in’ crowd. This is of course the day after the Love Island final. Love Island is the most recent evolution of reality TV, in which first came Big Brother, some strange show in which an ever dwindling group of people (contestants are ‘evicted’ by the public each week) are forced to live with each other for the length of the series until there was 1 winner left standing. Big Brother takes its name from George Orwell’s 1984, in which ‘Big Brother’ is always watching. One of the issues I have with the name in particular is that it implies that we’re always watching, which ...

On the 7th December, a most undesirable event befell me. I had the misfortune of seeing, for the first time, the abomination that is I’m A Celebrity. It so happened to be the final, which, helpfully or unhelpfully, provided a recap of the whole series - meaning I was presented not only with the most recent trials, such as the consumption of unappetising parts of both camel and ostrich, but with a horrific past instance of a contestant drinking deer’s blood. I had heard a great deal about this show prior to seeing it, of course. It is extremely difficult to avoid, what with the painful media focus on bikini bodies and jungle flirtations, and the fact that it seems to dominate headlines throughout the few weeks of its run. What I had not realised, however, was the sheer depravity of it. D...

Tag: reality tv

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