My partner refers to the television reality show “Love Island” as a guilty pleasure. She recognizes that the show is likely fabricated and entirely ridiculous. However, she finds it entertaining and enjoys watching it none the less. She pointed out to me recently that her desire to watch this show is similar to my desire to watch Marvel movies, which are equally ridiculous and pointless. I think she is right about this.
Having said all of that, I think Love Island can demonstrate some interesting ideas, just as Marvel movies do as well. I made reference to the Loki television series and how it related to my topic of free will, and now I will do the same with Love Island.
Love Island is purported to be a show where its participants stay in a resort with other participants with the ultimate goal of developing deep, meaningful relationships with each other. It is classified as a reality show because the participants are supposed to be real people, who are simply recorded in their unscripted interactions with the other people in the resort. It is meant to be a true and honest reflection of reality. However, it has been my experience that very, very few reality shows are remotely related to reality. I believe Love Island, for example, is quite scripted and that the participants are simply performers fulfilling the desires of the show’s producers. As such, everything I am about to describe is from the perspective of recognizing that the participants are simply characters in a story that is loosely scripted (significantly improvised), and that the story is intended to take place in a reality that is virtually identical to our own. So much so, in fact, that one could search out these characters by the names they are given in the story, and will be able to find them in our reality. Of course, upon find those people in our reality, one may be surprised to find that they are not exactly as presented in the Love Island story.
The participants are brought to “The Villa,” a resort where all their needs are met. They have food provided to them, and likely often prepared for them. They have accommodations, including washrooms, beds, and even shelter from the rain. They bring their own clothing and personal items, though it would not surprise me if some of those items happen to be provided by the show as well, similar to a spa providing a robe and slippers for a client’s stay. The resort is a seeming paradise, where the characters have no actual responsibilities beyond propelling the storyline.
Propelling the storyline is done by developing relationships with the other characters. The intended goal, as establish earlier, is to develop deep, meaningful relationships. As the title suggests, the characters are there to “find love.” To go about this, the characters have to “couple up” with each other in heterogeneous partnerships, and about once a week, they are given the opportunity to alter their partnerships in order to better satisfy the goal of developing those deep, meaningful relationships. If a character is unable to “couple up” during these opportunities, they are removed from the resort. There are also other “twists” to the story that can sometime add more characters to the story, or remove them.
One of the first things I would like to comment on with regard to this setup is that it is not outright established that the couples need to be heterogeneous. It is assumed. I have said on a number of occasions that it would be a very interesting twist in the story if a girl were to choose to couple up with another girl, or a boy with another boy. However, a friend pointed out to me that in a previous season of this show, a character was quietly removed from the show when it came to light that he might be bisexual. This might suggest that the producers of the show are against relationships that are not heterogeneous. This, by itself, is a disturbing feature of the show. It would be far more realistic if the possibility existed for couplings that were other than heterogeneous. This comment is a bit of a tangent, but I feel significant enough to point out. It also is suggestive of a deterministic structure in the story. That is, this is one example of where the characters are restricted in their choices, removing an element of free will from them during the story.
The heart of my discussion regarding Love Island is the nature of how the characters are observed to attempt establishment of deep, meaningful relationships. Clearly, despite being coupled up, the characters are often freely encouraged to interact with other characters outside their coupling in order to see if those other characters might make more suitable partnerships. Some of the characters take this opportunity further than others. In fact, most of the characters suffer from a perspective regarding love that I refer to as the Bigger Better Deal (BBD). That is, the characters are trying to find other characters that will afford them the opportunity to develop the best possible relationship, and if it turns out that a newer character might possibly seem to provide that better opportunity, they may decide to terminate their existing coupling to create a new one with the perceivably better character.
It is this viewpoint that I believe is the greatest weakness in the storyline, and in the characters. It is also this viewpoint that I think most closely reflects the idea of faith. It is a very complicated and confusing example of faith, but I will argue it is faith, none the less.
The characters use various information regarding other characters to help them decide who potentially will make the best possible partnership. They clearly use physical appearance as the most important feature to help them in their decision making, supplementing other information they gain through their varied interactions in the resort. Some of the characters seem to be happy to pursue other characters, but once having establish their coupling, they quickly lose interest and begin pursuing other characters immediately. Some characters restrain themselves from developing their relationships with those they are coupled with, on the possibility that another character might produce a better connection. In many cases, the characters will restrain themselves indefinitely, on the chance that a new character that has yet to be added to the story might possibly be a better match. This is the heart of the BBD.
By following the BBD, the characters are always on the look out for a better possible partnership. Never satisfied with any existing partnerships they may find themselves in, their eyes and senses are constantly searching out other relationships with other characters, including characters they have not yet met because they have not yet been added to the story. In following this perspective, the characters are doomed to never find their ideal match, as they are never spending sufficient time and attention on their current partnership. Their eyes wander, and in wandering, their potentially best possible relationship will never be achieved.
The simple solution to this dilemma would be for the characters to adopt a different perspective. Instead of believing in a situation that will happen to them where another character will simply and spontaneously present themselves as the best possible candidate for an ideal partnership (sometimes referred to as “love at first sight,” or “true love”), it would likely be of benefit for the characters to adopt a perspective where they recognized that relationships with other people are developed through spending time together and focusing on their existing partners. If the characters had faith in their existing partners, and focused on them at the exclusion of other possible BBDs, they might be able to turn their existing relationships into the best possible relationships they could become, developing those deep connections the story suggests is what the characters are aiming for.
In this way, faith becomes a significant part of the story, as does free will. The characters are (allegedly) not being unduly influenced by the producers of the show in their attempts to find deep, meaningful relationships; that is, the characters are permitted to exercise their free will to make choices in order to develop their best possible relationships with other characters. By the characters following a perspective of the BBD, they are presenting a significant lack of faith in the characters they are interacting with; that is, they do not believe that any of the characters presented to them will produce the best possible partnership because there is always the looming possibility that another character could be introduced into the storyline that might possible produce a superior partnership opportunity.
It is also at this point that I would like to acknowledge that there may possibly be a few characters who have recognized the alternative viewpoint. Characters who have decided that their existing partnership is the best possible partnership they are going to be able to produce. These characters are seen periodically talking to themselves, reiterating this claim repeatedly, likely trying to convince themselves that this is the case. While I would like to believe that they are being authentic when they do this, evidence demonstrated by these characters throughout the storyline seems to suggest otherwise. It is always possible I am mistaken regarding this.
Ultimately, as I identified at the beginning of this post, I believe that the entire show is scripted and unduly influenced by the producers. As with the example regarding a seemingly heterogeneous coupling requirement, I believe that the producers of the show have various designs that they utilize throughout the storyline. They imagine how best to present their story, and they provide influence and even basic scripting to the performers to fulfill their designs. I could even discuss the fact that the show is assembled in such a fashion, including with the use of musical scores, to present the performers in certain very specific ways to tell the producers’ story in a very particular way. However, that simple idea could become its own post entirely.
Thus, I believe Love Island is simply a scripted story based on a group of real life people. The scripting is light, but still there, and the real people are the basis of the characters, but the characters clearly deviate from their real sources pretty much immediately. I would very much like to meet one of these reality stars in person someday, simply to establish whether or not the performers believed they were the same as the characters they had portrayed. It would disturb me greatly if they did.
In my next post, I will try to be more focused on the topic of free will and faith. For now, I wanted to take a brief tangent to discuss another aspect of faith that seems to me to exist in a simple television show.