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TW: Mention of sexual assault and coercion
You’ve probably heard of Love Island. In just nine episodes, the newest season had garnered more than 1 billion minutes viewed worldwide. Love Island’s cultural presence felt inescapable this past summer, dominating online discourse. In a sense, it still does, with the recent premiere of Love Island Games and stars like Olandria Carthen managing to consistently stay in the headlines. Love Island is a reality TV show about hopeful singles looking to find their forever partner and win $100K in the process. It is no doubt an interesting social experiment to watch unfold. However, I can’t help but wonder: Doesn’t the Villa feel like a modern-day Panopticon?
Panopticon is a prison that’s meticulously built so that the guards have full view of all the prisoners, but the prisoners can’t see the guards. The prisoners, not knowing when or if they’re being watched, police their own behavior. This effect of constant surveillance provides a philosophical lens for analyzing the ethics, or lack thereof, of Love Island.
For example, a few fans noticed how “forced” the “girl’s girl” hurrah was. As soon as they met, the girls declared each other as sisters, and as the show went on, they seemingly based their actions and votes on preserving that image. This led to an outcry of, “this isn’t friendship island!” from the audience. I’m sure the girl’s commitment to those relationships had nothing to do with Love Island season 6’s breakout stars, Leah, Serena, and Jana, also known as ‘PPG’, who gained notoriety for their strong friendship. Nothing at all…
The need for contestants to self-police their behavior to appease the audience is compounded for Black female islanders, who must navigate the additional pressure of trying to avoid the “angry black woman” stereotype. And of course, they had the right to be cautious because when black contestants did voice their actual feelings, they received disproportionate backlash. See Buzzfeed threatening Chelley Bissainthe with a “knuckle sandwich” and influencers pretending Olandria and Chelley were their punching bags.
And finally, it’s no surprise that the Islanders are conventionally attractive. After all, the first episode of each season shows contestants coupling up based largely on initial physical attraction. But this comes at a cost. It’s not uncommon to see female players who have undergone cosmetic procedures like lip fillers, boob jobs, and BBLs to fit society’s rigid views on beauty. Contestants also have a limited amount of time to get ready, and female contestants spend a good portion of their time doing makeup. This is all part of the “look” they have to maintain at all times.
So, what are ethics anyway? Ethics objectively identifies right from wrong and is not defined by laws, feelings, or religion. Before you object, think about it like this: if someone’s religion, feelings, or government said that cold-blooded murder is okay, does that make it right?
“Hurricane” Huda Mufasa took the internet by storm when numerous of her antics went viral on social media. At the beginning of the season, she received a lot of backlash for verbally assaulting other female contestants that she perceived to be a threat to her relationship with Jeremiah Brown. This led to her popularity tanking, with her being at the bottom of the 2nd popularity poll.
To punish her, viewers voted to break up her and Brown because her “crash out” (emotional breakdown) would be “hilarious”. Crash out she did. In one scene, a disheveled, tear-stricken Huda can be seen pacing around at night and waking up other contestants to vent about the whereabouts of bombshells and seek comfort. Her emotional state was so fragile, producers almost removed her from the show.
By holding those kinds of votes, Love Island triggers emotional reactions for the drama of it all, and viewers eat it up every time. The show is structured in a way that fast-tracks connections (no media consumption and contact with the outside world, etc.), which makes heartbreaks hurt more. Is that ethical? Probably not, but it’s fun to watch, right?
The article can’t end without talking about the most despicable thing Huda did on the island: trying to coerce Chris, her partner at the time, to have sex with her after an argument. She counts down, and after he keeps refusing, she asks just to cuddle and threatens him with her wrath the next day if he doesn’t cede. Had Chris agreed, his assault would’ve been livestreamed to the world. Despite such an obvious lack of virtues on screen, the show and network have yet to address the issue. Why? This failure to act suggests a shocking prioritization of ratings over ethics.
If I haven’t already driven the point home, I’d like to introduce Kant’s Moral Theory of Ends: People shouldn’t be used as a means to an end. You can use people to achieve your goals (a means), you just have to always remember their humanity (not an ends). Huda should have been barred from the spotlight following that night, but they continued to profit over her misdeeds by letting her stay on the show.
Was letting the “show go on” the ethical thing to do? Is a show like that worth your support?