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The Mayflower\u2019s transatlantic voyage took 66 days. Love Island\u2019s has taken six years. But at last, the grotesque staple of Britain\u2019s late-2010s summer evenings is having its moment in the Yankee sun. We should only be surprised that it took so long.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one of this week\u2019s episodes, the islanders competed in the traditional heart-rate challenge \u2013 a pseudo-sexual ritual where the winner is whoever most dramatically spikes another contestant\u2019s pulse. Huda Mustafa, a 24-year-old influencer from North Carolina, caused villa-wide fervour with her performance. She straddled and kissed her friend\u2019s partner, before doing something so outrageous that the cameras cut away. Other islanders fumed. Social media frothed, speculating furiously. Not long afterwards, Child Protective Services received reports from viewers accusing Mustafa of being unfit to look after her children.<\/p>\n
Love Island USA first aired in 2019, but it was only with this season, the seventh, that steady growth has exploded into cultural ubiquity. Some 39 per cent of this season\u2019s viewers are new to the show. The entire American internet has put in their two cents, then their next two cents, again and again, like addicts at a Vegas slot machine.\u00a0Each plot twist has been dissected with the feverish moralism once reserved for cable news. Debates about who\u2019s right and who\u2019s toxic have established Love Island USA as reality TV royalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
British fans hardly need reminding of Love Island\u2019s 2017-2018 <\/strong>heyday: Casa Amor, Ian Stirling, \u201cI\u2019ve got a text\u201d, \u201cCan I pull you for a chat?\u201d, \u201cheads being turned\u201d, \u201cmy type on paper\u201d, Molly-Mae. They also hardly need reminding what followed it. In 2018, a former contestant, Sophie Gradon, died by suicide. In 2019, Mike Thalassitis, another contestant, died the same way. The following year, the show\u2019s host Caroline Flack took her own life.\u00a0<\/p>\n There have been countless attempts to translate British television for an American audience, but very few successes: something about the sarcasm, the derision, the ironies of class, schooling and character simply do not translate. One notable miss was the \u201cbus wankers\u201d scene from The Inbetweeners: \u201cbus turds\u201d just didn\u2019t hit right. Shows that did thrive \u2013 The Office, Shameless \u2013 did so only by sanding off the sharp British edges and offering cleaner, happier arcs.<\/p>\n But one side of British TV has always flourished in America: degrading reality TV. Simon Cowell\u2019s scornful empire of false idols and no-talents was a smash hit when it transferred to the States. And American audiences delighted in Anne Robinson\u2019s savage put-downs with gleeful surprise. The British recipe for humiliating members of the public proved a covetable commodity, which stateside producers and viewers alike salivate over.\u00a0<\/p>\n The French artist Antonin Artaud developed the concept of the \u201cTheatre of Cruelty\u201d. In theatre, he said, we should make a <\/strong>\u201cbelievable reality which gives the heart and the senses that kind of concrete bite which all true sensation requires\u201d. But Artaud was writing in the 1930s: he did not foresee how catharsis would curdle into abuse.<\/p>\n The American version of Love Island turns the screws even tighter. Ad breaks come twice as often, so scenes must be faster, louder, crueller. There\u2019s no time for exposition <\/strong>or heart-felt scenes. <\/strong>Every overproduced moment has to be a sound-bite or a story. And of course, viewers watch with one eye on their phone, the online reaction being as much part of the entertainment as the show itself. Love Island may have reached American shores but the transformative #BeKind movement that emerged in the UK after Flack\u2019s death must have drowned somewhere in the Atlantic. Britain imports crude oil from America, but exports something far filthier: cruelty.<\/p>\n [See also: What does Adam Curtis know?<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n
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