Whether we admit it or not, we all enjoy watching a bit of trashy television now and again after a long, hard day. In my case, this is to make me feel like a successful human being; it is the only reason I ever watch Jeremy Kyle. Recently, trashy television has become my new guilty pleasure, especially in the form of programmes such as ‘Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents’ and ‘The Magaluf Weekender’, which have been played frequently on my screen. I cannot get enough of the antics of the drunken teenager. I watch them as avidly as someone may watch David Attenborough’s ‘Africa’, hoping to become educated on this not-so-rare species of drunken teenagers who lack inhibitions. As someone who rarely drinks, I find it hard to imagine why anyone would want to spend this much money flying out to Kavos or Magaluf to get into a drunken state. My first thought is, why not simply stay in England where you could get just as drunk but save around £500? The answer to this seems to be the aforementioned loss of inhibitions. On these programmes, the teenagers shown seem to have a total disregard for themselves, their home lives and everyone around them. Worse than this is the amount of people who go out with the intention of having sex with a different person every night. Having never been on one of these partying holidays abroad, it is hard not to be judgemental, but I worry about how the casual sex and excessive drinking is affecting our culture and reputation, as these teenagers represent our nation.
Now, I may sound incredibly prudish and old-fashioned in being shocked by these summer occurrences, but putting morals aside, most of the people on these shows are seen to place themselves in danger. One of the episodes of Channel 4’s ‘What Happens in Kavos’ focussed on the countless number of causalities that the local medical centre encountered throughout the summer-holiday period. Many of the people had received injuries following drunken fights, including a man who broke his finger punching a wall, and another who punched and kicked through a glass door in a drunken fit of anger. A girl who featured had fallen about six feet from a DJ’s booth and fractured her spine. Alcohol, coupled with newfound freedom away from parents, leads to disaster in most of the cases I have seen. Another familiar issue to the doctors and nurses at the clinic of Kavos was that of STI scares, with Kavos apparently being ‘infamous’ for the spreading of Chlamydia. It seems that in most cases of people having drunken, sexual experiences, they completely forget about the existence of contraception, and their own health.
Generally, I do not believe that I form negative feelings towards the people on these shows, apart from one instance where a man on BBC3’s ‘Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents’ ‘fingered some girl’ in the sea and asking another girl to ‘get her fried eggs out’. However, I do dislike how the shows portray British teenagers; I would dislike being coined under the same description as them. I am aware that this may make me sound as though I view myself as culturally superior, but it has nothing to do with that. I think I find it hard to understand these drinking holidays because I have never had a desire to experience one. Nonetheless, I realise that it is still not my place to judge the lifestyle of others.
A more recent television series of the holiday type that I have been hooked on is ITV2’s ‘Magaluf Weekender’, which is filmed in the ‘Lively’ hotel on the island of Majorca. The programme follows four British holiday reps and the various groups of people who come and stay at their hotel. Never having given a thought to the reps before, it surprised me how involved they were in the lives of their guests. They often asked intrusive questions, such as their sexual orientation and whether or not they were single, within five minutes of the groups arriving at the hotel. More surprising was the forwardness in mentioning their wishes to fornicate with the guests; this was a rule broken by the majority of the reps. Another common topic within this particular series was how ‘gutted’ people were after getting too drunk to have sex with the people they had planned to ‘pull’. In many situations, this resulted in disappointment, as it meant going home early and alone. Then again, I doubt the aim of the ‘pulling’ was a quest for true love, but instead to add another notch to the bedpost, so little is lost.
I am aware that I lead a rather sheltered life in this liberal, modern world, with the majority of people I know going on holiday with their friends to Rome, London, or Paris for the galleries, and tut-tutting at drunken girls with short skirts, but I do not feel as though we judge. That said, I do think that the focus on getting drunk and having casual sex in this culture shows both the increasing pace of change in the modern world, and most people’s need for instant satisfaction. The groups are in Magaluf for three days; they claim to fall in love with each other and with the reps in a whirlwind of experience, and then they go home. This is odd because the viewer sees the reps of the ‘Lively’ hotel carry on as normal in their absence, perhaps half-heartedly claiming that they will miss these particular guests, then getting ready to entertain the next party and treating them like their best friends too. I do believe that people should feel free to do whatever they want, but I find these decisions interesting; this kind of holiday is a marvel to me. I do not believe that these holidays are something I will ever be taking part in, especially not after watching these programmes.
Image sources:
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