Cruelty is Britain's biggest export

New Statesman​

2 days ago

The Mayflower's transatlantic voyage took 66 days. Love Island's has taken six years. But at last, the grotesque staple of Britain's late-2010s summer evenings is having its moment in the Yankee sun. We should only be surprised that it took so long.
In one of this week's episodes, the islanders competed in the traditional heart-rate challenge – a pseudo-sexual ritual where the winner is whoever most dramatically spikes another contestant's pulse. Huda Mustafa, a 24-year-old influencer from North Carolina, caused villa-wide fervour with her performance. She straddled and kissed her friend's partner, before doing something so outrageous that the cameras cut away. Other islanders fumed. Social media frothed, speculating furiously. Not long afterwards, Child Protective Services received reports from viewers accusing Mustafa of being unfit to look after her children.
Love Island USA first aired in 2019, but it was only with this season, the seventh, that steady growth has exploded into cultural ubiquity. Some 39 per cent of this season's viewers are new to the show. The entire American internet has put in their two cents, then their next two cents, again and again, like addicts at a Vegas slot machine. Each plot twist has been dissected with the feverish moralism once reserved for cable news. Debates about who's right and who's toxic have established Love Island USA as reality TV royalty.
British fans hardly need reminding of Love Island's 2017-2018 heyday: Casa Amor, Ian Stirling, 'I've got a text', 'Can I pull you for a chat?', 'heads being turned', 'my type on paper', Molly-Mae. They also hardly need reminding what followed it. In 2018, a former contestant, Sophie Gradon, died by suicide. In 2019, Mike Thalassitis, another contestant, died the same way. The following year, the show's host Caroline Flack took her own life.
There have been countless attempts to translate British television for an American audience, but very few successes: something about the sarcasm, the derision, the ironies of class, schooling and character simply do not translate. One notable miss was the 'bus wankers' scene from The Inbetweeners: 'bus turds' just didn't hit right. Shows that did thrive – The Office, Shameless – did so only by sanding off the sharp British edges and offering cleaner, happier arcs.
But one side of British TV has always flourished in America: degrading reality TV. Simon Cowell's scornful empire of false idols and no-talents was a smash hit when it transferred to the States. And American audiences delighted in Anne Robinson's savage put-downs with gleeful surprise. The British recipe for humiliating members of the public proved a covetable commodity, which stateside producers and viewers alike salivate over.
The French artist Antonin Artaud developed the concept of the 'Theatre of Cruelty'. In theatre, he said, we should make a 'believable reality which gives the heart and the senses that kind of concrete bite which all true sensation requires'. But Artaud was writing in the 1930s: he did not foresee how catharsis would curdle into abuse.
The American version of Love Island turns the screws even tighter. Ad breaks come twice as often, so scenes must be faster, louder, crueller. There's no time for exposition or heart-felt scenes. Every overproduced moment has to be a sound-bite or a story. And of course, viewers watch with one eye on their phone, the online reaction being as much part of the entertainment as the show itself. Love Island may have reached American shores but the transformative #BeKind movement that emerged in the UK after Flack's death must have drowned somewhere in the Atlantic. Britain imports crude oil from America, but exports something far filthier: cruelty.
[See also: What does Adam Curtis know?]
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