Entertainment or exploitation? The uncomfortable truth about reality TV - Jenny Lindsay

Getty Images

After the cancellation of Channel 4 series Married At First Sight, is it time to reassess the ethics of reality television altogether? Is it ever possible to keep participants fully ‘safe’ when the stakes are real human emotions and interactions, particularly on shows entirely predicated on hook-ups, ‘love’, and forming relationships?

The scrapping of the popular show, confirmed last week, follows a BBC Panorama investigation. A subsequent documentary, ‘The Dark Side of Married At First Sight’, aired in May. Ahead of its broadcast, the documentary makers made Channel 4 aware of serious allegations made by some of the show’s previous participants.

Three women reported experiencing sexual abuse and psychological coercion at the hands of their on-air ‘husbands’; two alleged rape, one a non-consensual sex act. All of the men involved deny the allegations and no charges have been brought. However, a police investigation is reportedly ongoing, at the time of writing.

An external review of the show’s procedures – separate from any criminal investigation – found the channel had followed Ofcom protocols, dealing with the women’s complaints and subsequent aftercare appropriately. A suggestion was made that producers should nevertheless introduce new safeguards such as separate bedrooms for the couples, ‘safe words’, and installing panic buttons in the ‘newly-weds’ accommodation.

Surely we should instinctively balk at the idea any form of entertainment could possibly require such measures? Any reality show where sex – never mind assault or rape – is a possibility has always struck me as deeply disturbing in the first place.

From Big Brother to Geordie Shore, to America’s Next Top Model, situations have arisen – some would say via purposeful manipulation – where female participants have ended up in sexual situations they later come to regret.

Vicky Pattison, in her early 20s when a cast member on the youth-focused ‘constructed reality’ show, MTV’s Geordie Shore, has repeatedly said having sex on camera is one of her biggest regrets.

There was ‘almost a pressure to do it,’ she has said, describing an atmosphere of heavy drinking, partying, and excess. The entire show is made purely for entertainment, with the wider benefit for cast members the opportunity of achieving a level of notoriety or celebrity, with subsequent brand deals or wider fame.

Straight away, you’d need a thick skin to deal with the inevitable split opinions of family and friends, never mind the fiercely judgemental viewing public, after making such a life choice.

But, these are real people, not just the parody of themselves they become on screen. Many who take part in such shows struggle afterwards, particularly these days, with the viciousness of the social media age.

One might say they’ve chosen the grubby pursuit of infamy, and all their actions are voluntary. Pattison doesn’t claim anything she did was ever non-consensual. However, her account of being immersed in a purposefully constructed high-drama environment rather complicates matters.

You don’t need to channel the spirit of Mary Whitehouse to recognise the potential for harm here, regardless of whether sexual acts are fully broadcast. Geordie Shore routinely did, however, with blurring where necessary, in the show’s frenetic early days.

It’s quite clear, when in ‘reality’ situations it’s possible to throw caution to the wind, forget the cameras are there, or, alternatively, perform for them. Subsequently, what should always be a private matter being aired publicly is far from the only problematic scenario these shows broadcast.

Big Brother is widely recognised as a pivotal moment for reality TV. First broadcast in the UK in the year 2000, it seemed an audacious social experiment. It’s easy to forget that’s how it was initially sold to us: a sociological study of human behaviour where participants are aware they’re under constant surveillance. That wasn’t something ordinary in the early years of the new millennia.

The same cannot be said for recent incarnations of the show: the personality contest, the bear-pit boos or cheers that greets banished ‘contestants’, the over-the-top – sometimes inauthentic – personalities who enter the house, the playing to the camera of most participants. All of these factors swiftly revealed the true point of it all, grabbing the nation’s attention, addicting us towards investment in the outcome.

The wider ethical point, then: at what point are we, as viewers, complicit here? After watching the finale of this year’s Big Brother – purely for research – I experienced the moral equivalent of having consumed an entire Domino’s pizza: a little grubby, distinctly unproud of myself, and aware that if my late grandmothers had witnessed what I’d had they’d shake their heads sorrowfully.

This year’s show – which I admit I haven’t followed closely – has been ridden with controversy. One male contestant’s controlling behaviour towards a female housemate prompted a statement from Women’s Aid titled ‘Abuse Is Not Entertainment.’

Eventual winner Rochelle – an apparently very opinionated and sometimes offensive housemate – received the most Two Minute Hate style reception when leaving the house I’ve ever seen.

This is a show that should have been chucked in broadcasting’s memory-hole long ago. At some point, we must realise our beady-eyed surveillance of simulated ‘real-life’ is inherently exploitative of perfectly natural – but sometimes destructive – human impulses, whether intense desire for love, fame and riches, or, for us viewers, to be hateful and judgemental.

Married At First Sight differs from Big Brother or Geordie Shore. But, while worlds apart in terms of style and content they all fall under the banner of ‘constructed reality.’ This is very different to something like The Traitors, where the game is front and centre, personalities secondary.

These are real people, thrust into unnatural – sometimes dangerous – situations, for our amusement. The human cost of these ‘experiments’ has long been clear. ‘Constructed reality’ is perhaps the most perfectly Orwellian phrase to sum up exactly where loving Big Brother would lead us.