Just When You Thought TV had Gone As Low As it Could Go...

[Jillyvn]

If you thought the U.S. had set the bar on reality shows as low as it could go, you haven’t heard about the latest reality-TV show to hit British TV: “The Guantanamo Guidebook,” which will be broadcast on the U.K.'s Channel 4, will trace the effects of 48 hours of torture (sorry, “torture lite”) on seven volunteers, three of them Muslim, holed up inside mock Guantanamo prison. The seven volunteers, who responded to ads asking how “hard” they were, will be subjected to sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, “mild” physical contact, and periods of “enforced nudity and religious and sexual humiliation.” No, you’re not the only one who feels a little sick now. (The Guardian)

http://www.salon.com/ent/col/fix/2005/02/09/wed/

[FinnAgain]

Eh… I think “Who’s your daddy” stateside beats that on the ultimate scale of that’s-just-not-fucking-right.

But yeah, pretty slimey.

[andros]

@FinnAgain

But yeah, pretty slimey.

Hater!
::d&r::

[Revtim]

I fear for what US TV is going to come up with to beat this.

Maybe a reality show where contestants try to escape a collapsing building made up to look like one of the WTC towers. Or one where contestants avoid being captured by Iraqi insurgents, and if they get caught then computer-generated footage is created that is made to look like the contestant is being decapititated.

[gobear]

I wonder if any of the geniuses behind reality TV have read Robert Sheckley’s “The Prize of Peril”? Truly a man 50 years ahead of his time.

[gobear]

Here’s a link to the story.

[Lord_Ashtar]

It won’t be long until this is a reality.

[matt_mcl]

I dunno, it sounds like pretty effective satire to me.

[Enderw24]

I actually think this is a good idea and wish Fox had come up with it. I have no worries though. Fox will steal the idea if it’s successful over in the UK.
Is it in poor taste? Yeah…probably.
But, unlike other “reality” shows, this one is based on, you know, reality. Prisoners are being tortured and they’re being tortured in the same ways this show is attempting to portray.
The only differences seem to be that in real torture situations

1. they probably won’t stop just because the interregators have pushed things over the line
2. There aren’t videocameras set up to show the public what torture is really like.

Was this set up as a grand sociological experiment or because BBC producers had a message they wished to send out to the viewers? I doubt it. More likely, they just thought it would make money.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t actually have an impact.

[WCOT]

@gobear

I wonder if any of the geniuses behind reality TV have read Robert Sheckley’s “The Prize of Peril”? Truly a man 50 years ahead of his time.

I just read that, its hard to believe that its that old. gasp good stuff.

[Briny_Deep]

Watch for future defenses of torture to use the argument “it’s nothing worse than what you see on reality tv shows.”

[Otto]

Remember that sequence in the movie Network? Where Faye Dunaway is pitching program ideas and comes up with the idea of following around a group of urban terrorists as they make weekly attacks on American citizens? Remember how outrageous that idea and some of the other ideas seemed at the time?

That being said, I don’t have a real big problem with this show as long as the subjects are volunteers. I don’t know how things are in the UK, but there’s a large segment of the American population which seems to think that what’s going on in Gitmo and what went on in Abu Ghraib wasn’t really torture or if it was it wasn’t that bad. Maybe seeing “torture lite” will knock some sense into them.

[Stringer]

Is this really that different from a more immersive Fear Factor?

[Nanoda]

@Lord Ashtar

It won’t be long until this is a reality.

Some of the other gameshows in the book were worse - ‘Treadmill to Dollars’ comes to mind.

I’ll have to check out that book that was mentioned - personally I’m starting to think that the makers of Series 7 didn’t go far enough.

[Miller]

@Otto

That being said, I don’t have a real big problem with this show as long as the subjects are volunteers. I don’t know how things are in the UK, but there’s a large segment of the American population which seems to think that what’s going on in Gitmo and what went on in Abu Ghraib wasn’t really torture or if it was it wasn’t that bad. Maybe seeing “torture lite” will knock some sense into them.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. I’m catching the faintest whiff of a political agenda off of this thing. Although, depending on how it plays out, it could be either a leftist slant (Look how horrible this is!) or rightist (It’s not that bad. See? Any Joe off the street can handle it.)

[Voyager]

@gobear

I wonder if any of the geniuses behind reality TV have read Robert Sheckley’s “The Prize of Peril”? Truly a man 50 years ahead of his time.

I hope not, unless they have someone who looks like Ursula Andress.

[Kal]

The Salon piece links to this story.

Presented by Jon Snow, Channel 4 says the programme is designed to examine the widespread use of torture and whether it can ever be justified in what the US and UK governments have called the wider war “against terror.”

“The use of torture or of information gained through torture has been justified as essential on the war against terror,” said the Channel 4 head of news and current affairs, Dorothy Byrne.

“This season of programmes challenges the viewers to watch torture techniques we know are used in Guantánamo [and asks whether] can such torture ever be justified. Does it work? And how the values of western society are undermined by the use of such torture.”

So. Not exactly a gameshow.