I’ve been watching this new series on Channel 4, The Island With Bear Grylls, involving x
amount of blokes being dropped on y island and left to fend for themselves.
They’re from a range of backgrounds, apart from female, and they deigned to
include one typical hilariously fuddy-duddy old dude and one cool, upbeat black
guy. Speaking of deigning, Bear Grylls appears from time to time, giving us
such epiphanic tidbits as ‘when you’re starving you think about food’ et cetera…
Anyhoo, you can read a more concise summary on the C4 site, i’m here for other
things. Namely, health and safety things.
In this
first episode the guys had to look for shelter and water. The main focus over
the forty-seven-and-a-bit minutes (billed as sixty-five) was the water. It’s
the thing that’ll kill you quickest in the bodily-deprivation race, after all (apart
from air, or Jack Daniel’s). They had a bit of fresh water with them, to lull
you into a false sense of security, but guess what? IT STARTED RUNNING OUT AS
THEY STARTED DRINKING IT! So naturally, the drama was high.
Think
about it though - how could a programme like this be commissioned in today’s ‘life-loving’
age if there was a genuine chance of death?
Thankfully
the Grylls voiceover told us exactly how many hours’ drinking water was left,
helping to ramp up the tension. Other scare devices included a ‘piss-colour
scale’, which ranged from tanning salon run-offs to Guinness, going down the
spectrum of dehydratory terror. A little bit was made of the effect dehydration
has on the brain, but mainly they were interested in the colour of the men’s
urine and what would happen if they failed to get a fire to boil and purify
their stagnant water. Of course, every attempt at starting a (controlled) fire
was accompanied by two or three comments featuring the phrases ‘last chance’, ‘we
need to’ and, my personal favourite, ‘fuckin’
‘ell’.
I was
still not convinced of the impending doom, though. Could these fellas’ issue
actually become black as the ace of spades, and could they keel over through lack of orally
induced moisture (steady now)? On the point of getting a fire started, which
was key to their safe water production, Mr Grylls himself said, “If they fail
to get a fire lit today, they will have no choice, they will have to leave the
island.” Hmm, that’s a bit of a let-down, they have to leave the island? Is that it? How
about one of the men, surely since they’re in mortal peril they’ll have a
better soundbite? Well, here’s the ‘green cap-man’, “Getting this fire going is
just crucial, and if it doesn’t happen today, then I think we’re really going
to start getting into trouble. I am concerned now, I am concerned, erm, I
really think we need to pull our finger out.”
Wow.
Edge of the seat stuff.
The
problem is that dehydration is a real slow-motion crisis, devoid of much intensity
when filming. The attempts to ramp up the pressure by repeating the threat didn’t
work. There’s an attempt at tension, sure. The word ‘survival’, occasionally
trotted out, suggests immediate mortal peril, but really there must be a
standby team with bottles of water for dehydration scenarios… They’re not gonna
let people die for our amusement on reality TV. I mean, this isn’t the seventies
anymore, people actually scrutinize telly personalities now.
Also on
the ‘menu’ was a dude emerging from a frolic in the sea with a cut on his foot
(apologies for the rhyme there). The drama came from the fact that he may have
been attacked by a stonefish, heralded by Grylls as, “the most poisonous fish
in the world.” But again, a lot is known about the stonefish (or synaceia verrucosa, don’t you know) and
its pathology, so are we fooled? Since October 1st 2013, there have
been no reported deaths in all Australia. An antivenom exists and the health and safety team will know exactly where to get their hands on it, if they haven't got a stockpile already. So what.
Once the director had footage
of ‘IT man’ hobbling back to camp, blooding dripping (slowly) from his foot, medics would’ve been on to assess him
IF they thought he was maybe possibly in any danger. Of course, the footage (no
pun intended) of the check-up would not make the final cut because it would
interrupt the ‘narrative’ we are being sold. We forget (or not, in my case)
that they’re filming basically the whole day, and all these hours (spanning more than a day) need to be cut down to
a programme’s length. It’s highly selective, to say the least.
So can we really feel jeopardy
anymore? I certainly can’t. Don’t get me wrong, there were times i felt quite
involved with these makeshift heroes, and as dehydration threatened them, and
tension rose around the sacred fire, i started to feel anxious about the
acceleration of their peril. While there are so many cameras and so much
evidence of ‘production’ (titles, voiceovers, superimposition etc), you know
that you’re in ‘civilization’. There’s no actual
danger. The jeopardy is just not there anymore, no matter how often the
programme makers insist it is.
*Sigh*
then you’ve got the adverts. But i’m not going to go on about that. I get tons
of comments from Blogtastic readers, “Martin, do another rant about the
adverts!” But i won’t... Think of all the people that don’t want to hear about how the tension was demolished by frequent
breaks. And i know people certainly won’t want to hear about how the extra
fifteen minutes you could’ve had without adverts would’ve allowed you to focus
on other visceral and emotional elements, rather than simply urine and other
more facile tactics, that would’ve conveyed a sense of danger and human
struggle much more deeply and efficiently. No one wants that. C4 doesn’t want
it, clearly. They’re doing fine on their own.
Good
luck to ‘em. And good luck to you guys - you enjoy your telly.
Peace and love x
