Ten steps to make Love Island truly representative
How refreshing to see the BBC publish a story that says what everyone has been too afraid to declare aloud: Love Island is hideously unrepresentative of the British people at large. Its narrow-minded notion of what viewers wish to watch is not just cringeworthy but grotesque; its hazy behind-the-scenes methods of contestant selection bespeak an almost imperatorial arrogance. In reality, the show wilfully hides the myriad flames of Britain’s candles under a very ugly bushel. Just take a look at the ‘chosen’ contestants set before the public, and answer me this: is the full range of ages, accents, body shapes, ethnicities, faiths, politics, sexualities, marital statuses, occupations, attitudes and thoughts being given due pride of place? As the meticulous Twitter research of the article shows, the answer is plainly and painfully, ‘No’.
A lot of nonsense has been talked about Love Island being ‘light-hearted entertainment’ by a ‘private company’. Is that really what evening and weekend television has come to? No, not in my name. Nor yours, either, I expect. Mercifully, however, it would be a relatively minor matter to move Love Island from an outmoded, unrepresentative fleshpot to a fairer, purer, profounder viewing experience. I therefore implore the producers to consider following this ten-step route to due diversification.
1. The first thing to say is that, with the stakes so high, Love Island needs to find a premium island that combines a surfeit of sun with a scarcity of space, to guarantee an enforced but ethically-sourced large-scale love-in. Various satisfactory possibilities present themselves, but much the simplest option is Malta.
2. Next, transfer the Maltese populace abroad for a three-month spell; of the several viable destinations for these temporary emigres, the easiest in logistical terms is presumably St Helena. With the right PR, this relocation can be successfully billed as a long-lasting and long-deserved national holiday – albeit one rigorously policed and enforced. With Malta thus opened up for business, it will be feasible and frictionless to import the entire population of Britain.
3. Once installed, instruct the 66.6 million contestants that they are free to do as they please, within the strict remit of the Love Island terms and conditions. They must be free to sleep, roam, feed and moan howsoever they desire.
4. Welcome, then, to Love Island – a Love Island that reflects the complexity of the British people truly and perfectly, in fact with a precise one-to-one mapping. But this Love Island Rebooted is, of course, fully representative of Britain alone, and can make no claim beyond the nation. It is therefore quite obviously essential that the show be screened exclusively to Britons.
5. No less obvious is the fact that there will be no British public at hand to watch the show back in Blighty, which is lying dormant and vacant. The 400 episodes, filmed over three months, will need to be recorded in advance, carefully stored on off-shore servers, and screened in sequence to the British populace only when they have collectively returned.
6. But how will Love Islanders be voted ‘off’ without a real-time viewing public? Good question. It will be easiest, I assume, to divide each region of the newly-populated Malta into a few thousand voting wards, each with constituency powers to vote out of their immediate living area those whose presence they no longer desire. Since it is unconscionably divisive, problematically disproportionate and legally doubtful actually to send off the island anyone deemed less welcome, the unfortunate votees could, with some mild co-ordination, simply osmose from one ward to another, where they can seek to rebuild their Love Island lives. By the same process ‘new faces’ would constantly be introduced to each border-fluid community.
7. There is, I own, some complexity in overseeing all of this. In order, then, to manage these various processes throughout the course of the programme, a higher body – a parliament, for want of a better term – will need to be brought into play, and given a clear charter of rights and responsibilities. Members of the Love Island Parliament should be selected by random lot-drawing, to keep at bay the banquoesque spectre of democratic favouritism. To incentivise elected Islanders to carry out the role diligently, instead of spending their days punch-drunk on a cocktail of sexual pursuit and flight, such positions will need to be stipendiary, the cost of which should be defrayed by taxation of the majority not serving as MLIPs. This rudimentary scheme of taxation should continue for the relevant financial quarter, provided that Parliament is itself held accountable in spending that money appropriately – maintaining civic institutions, building and staffing community resources, and committing to a minimum 2% spend on defence against intrusions from foreign paparazzi. (Needless to say, none of the production team, camera crew or standing make-up and body-paint army can be British.)
8. There is no need to worry about minors – or, for that matter, new-borns – who can be located indiscriminately in the Kids’ Quarter, a promontory with a free-wheeling laissez-faire mentality somewhere squarely between Butlins and Lord of the Flies. If parental consent is mandated, and the Islanders very properly accept due devolution of powers to a KQ regional government, few or no issues should crop up.
9. Since the show will be unable to profit from selling broadcast rights abroad, lest it become even more disturbingly unrepresentative of its unknowable viewing audience, there will be an appreciable shortfall in revenue. However, the production company will be able to recoup these losses easily by under-the-radar quantitative easing, and trading any freshly-minted currency for GBP as far as their budget requires. This, of course, will require the Maltese to make a prior change in currency from the Euro, the ECB and the EU, but a swift and no-nonsense Mexit will happily spawn a new currency, whose notes may proudly bear the winners of Love Island Rebooted.
10. The Maltese proper need not worry about any unfortunate effects on tourism. The island will be able to boast not only that it has the highest concentration of churches in Europe, but also that during the filming process it has – by a marked degree – the highest concentration of Britons in the world, at 545,000 per square mile. Nor would Love Islanders themselves become embarrassing Little Islanders with their back turned on the rest of the world: on any day of Love Island Rebooted any other country across the world will be sure to have the second highest concentration of Britons.
This is only a blueprint, and its creases doubtless need a little ironing. But if entertainment companies are to get serious about fair, equitable and honest representation, they must first get serious about honest, fair and equitable representation. I, for one, will only cast my hard-won vote for the show’s – and nation’s – sexiest couple when I can be sure that the show guarantees that no Briton is being chosen ahead of any other.
Some have had the temerity to say that a society that complains about the precise make-up of gameshows has lost sight of the battles that are worth fighting. But those cocksure panjandrums do not understand that Love Island is about, and is worthy of, so much more.
David Butterfield is a contributing editor of The Spectator.