I don’t watch this show often, because although I do like the tight-rope walking, and jumping between speeding boats, I don’t like seeing people eat nauseous crap. I wonder if tonight’s show hit a new low.
There was one event where whichever contestants had the most needles stuck through her arm advanced! The needles were stuck into the skin, then back out the skin, so that they lay somewhat parallel to the skin, not directly in like acupuncture needles. Plus they were of increasing diameter. The woman I saw having this done to her was in tears.
It seemed to me that this crossed a new threshold; to be sure it is unpleasant for Americans to eat centipedes and Tarantulas, and this kind of thing is not new for reality TV. It is a staple of FF, done on Survivor etc.
But causing physical pain? Sticking needles into your arm? Standing around and watching while somebody plays pincushion with a cute girl?
Am I wrong that this is the first use of physical pain as an event on a reality show? On Survivor Thailand, the final challenge wa similar to what they have done on previous shows: It was to stand in an uncomfortable posture, and whoever could do it the longest won immunity. To be sure, this is eventually painful, but bodies are designed to move, sometimes briefly to uncomfortable postures. To me this is essentially different from being jabbed with a needle.
Some clarifications: I only watched as much of this as I did because I was at a friend’s house, in fact I cut short my visit because of this. I realize the contestants on the show were complicit in their torture; I consider it less bad than grabbing someone and jabbing needles in them without their permission.
I also am not saying I think a program like this should not be shown. One could choose to not watch it. I’m just saying when Fox starts running ‘Mutilate Yourself for Money’ I will not be tuning in.
I don’t watch that show much. Sometimes I catch a bit of it, but when they start gagging on the spinal cord of a cow I turn it off. To me, gag reflex is not good TV.
I do like the bits where they dangle from ropes, fall out of helicopters, get covered in snakes and try to walk across a tightrope. To me that is more “fear” then anything else. Granted, the person has to be afraid of heights to make tightrope walking a fear related challange. As goes with sitting in a box of snakes.
Jabbing a pin into your arm or eating pigs penis isn’t really fear IMO. It’s just people doing stupid things for money. I’m not interesting in seeing that.
A couple of corrections: They each had to have 10 needles of increasing diameters put in. It was an all-or-nothing deal, not a how-many-can-you-take deal. And everyone completed it.
Second, the woman who went first and was doing all the crying and whining said afterward that she was intentionally trying to freak out her opponents. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as she was pretending it did. She ended up winning the $50K.
However, I do imagine that a lot of viewers changed channels during that segment. Unlike a lot of their stuff, that one played on a real fear that a lot of people have. I know a lot of people who couldn’t force themselves to watch that, let alone do it. On the other hand, I don’t think the largest needle was as big as the ones I give blood through regularly. Those hardly hurt when inserted by an expert.
Really though, the very nature of a show like this is that they’ve constantly got to keep topping themselves in order to keep viewers interested. As far as I’m concerned, if these people are willing to go through it for the pursuit of money, let Fear Factor do whatever it wants to people: stick needles in then, drag them naked through the streets, horsewhip them, make them eat their own feces, can’t say as I care. They signed the waivers and they’re willing to utterly degrade and humiliate themselves for money. That’s the Post-Modern American Dream, that is!
And just a people can choose to get needles stuck through their skin on national television, I can choose not to watch it.
But was it the first time (on this show, or on any Reality Tv show on U.S. TV) that they used an event that was scary because of pain as opposed to being nauseating or scary because of potential pain. It is not painful if you successfully hang upside down from a helicopter grabbing flags, it just may be painful if you fall off. Sticking needles in your arm is painful at the start.
I usually do not watch this or any other “reality” type shows…but they got me on this one. The needles in the arm was bad enough, but that damned rotten ass maggot laden cheese was the grossest crap I’d seen yet.
and think about the girl who won & ate it with little problem…talk about rank, if she can eat that…?
A few weeks ago on Real World: Battle of the Sexes, they made them do an endurance stunt that involved sitting on blocks of ice for hours on end. Some of the people got frost bite. In Jamaica!
Well, first off I remember sticking safety pins and similar sharp objects under my skin plenty of times as a kid all the time. It’s just one of those things you do to gross people out, especially girls.
As long as you were careful, it didn’t hurt at all.
Anyway, anyone remember that short lived FOX game show, The Chamber, where contestants were asked questions while being subjected to extreme heat and cold?
This thread reminds me of the movie “Series 7”. It’s a spoof on reality shows where the contents win by killing each other. Kinda makes you wonder if it could really happen.
Yeah, that show sucked hard. The idea was that people would be so flustered by the extreme temperatures and the situation that they’d miss the easiest questions. They were right, a lot of people couldn’t spell their name under those conditions.
The problem was, unless you’re really just a sucker for punishment, it wasn’t fun to watch, since there was little point in playing along. Sitting on my couch, I watched a whole episode and I don’t think I missed one question.
