Desensitisation, The Island and a sharp jab of reality

Desensitisation is one of those things you learn as you grow up – either consciously like how to make an omelette or undo a bra or subconsciously like how to talk to old people or how to pretend that troubling growth isn’t really there.
The proliferation of the screen is the big driver here, insulating ourselves from the real world.
While we are now sickened by the sight of some roadkill, if we see that roadkill through the medium of TV or the internet, all fine, bring on the goo. While the sight of some of ISIS’ atrocities would provoke physical sickness if most of us saw it in front of our very eyes, seeing them via a mobile phone clip gives it the effect of not being quite real; an Xbox game cinematic perhaps.
All in all, the effect of impact advertising and shock TV is diminished now to the extent that we could all probably eat our way through Ant barbarically killing Dec, broadcast in graphic, gory detail, provided we were given forewarning.
This is why charities have had to amend their advert MOs incidentally, most successfully done by Cancer Research UK, in my humble one.
But now and then, you see something through which cuts through all that mental conditioning to devastating effect.
The Island, if you don’t know (if you have been living on an island for the past few years for example) is a reality (critics argue constructed reality) show in which everyday British folk are dumped on a Pacific island by unpleasant situation enthusiast Bear Grylls to see how they survive.
A Lord of the Flies meets The X Factor kind of show, a brittle society emerges and the people who started out very annoying end up having some kind of epiphany about how they want to live their lives after stabbing a crocodile in the gut or wrestling a shark.
For the first few shows while everything settles down, most of the victims of this social experiment (which, to be fair, it usually is as there is a valid sociological aspect to it all beyond contemporary Big Brother-esque voyeurism) take on Jack Skellington-style body shapes due to a lack of calorific intake.
As an example of desensitisation, I am usually munching on some neatly-packaged item of food while watching this, without so much of a second thought.
However, in the most recent episode of the current series of The Island, a huge storm triggered flashbacks for Army veteran Hannah and subsequently an onset of phantom limb pain; she lost the bottom half of her right leg in a mortar blast during the Iraq conflict.
The emotions on her face during the storm and her indescribable and unimaginable experience with the bout of phantom limb pain was shockingly upsetting and uncomfortable to watch, scything through the desensitisation fog.
And that is the point here – this did not strike me as shock TV for the sake of shock TV. In the first episodes, great care was made to show Hannah wanted to take on the challenge of the show to push herself to survive in that harsh environment.
How difficult not just living with the physical aspects of trauma bought on by modern day warfare and being an amputee but also the mental aspects is a point which should be understood by us all given the sacrifices our Armed Forces make.
Messages delivered in a challenging and uncomfortable manner do hit home harder and bring that across through the prism of reality TV, when done right as The Island appears to this observer to have done, is an achievement.
One person’s anguish can help bring about a wider understanding of a complex issue.

Another 750 words on Trump

I love but could never live with American-style politics.
It is a swirling, impossible to keep track with vortex of ludicrous storylines, subplots and tangents which neither satirist nor screenwriter would dream to write for fear of being classed as a loon. House of Cards started out so well as Frank Underwood’s actions were so outrageous but also faintly believable but when real-life pushes the envelope so more, what chance do TV producers have
I am not saying Donald Trump has pushed a reporter under a train, but a different kind of boundary is being pushed.
At the best of times, American politics is bizarre due to its focus on leadership politicians rather than policy but with the new wave of Republicanism, not only due to the odd world of Trump but the startlingly right-wing policies of Ted Cruz, it is entering frightening and dangerous territory.
But it remains what it has always been; interesting in a perverse, curtain-twitching kind of way.
A campaign official being charged with battery on a reporter would be enough for any British MP or leadership candidate to meekly resign, and that’s before even coming close to touching all the tubthumping vitriol Trump (whose few policies he has spoken about reveal education and healthcare as key pillars of government, rather un-right wing Republican as it happens) has spouted.
But no, the circus just carries on.
Same with Clinton’s links to Wall Street and email-gate, the attack ads on Trump’s wife by the Cruz campaign and more and more.
That’s why Brits find it so interesting, the discreetly hidden voyeur in us all. It is compelling as it is so different to our system where politicians hide their backers and who they are influenced by and any hint of controversy which could damage the all-important political party is swiftly dealt with.
As a result, most are robots with the same hair and suits and smiles and mannerisms like there is a factory somewhere mass producing them (there is, it’s called Eton, honk! Honk! Honk I say!).
Our answer to Trump or Sanders is the likes of Farage on the right or Corbyn on the left who both share that air of own brand about them and are both very British ways of interpreting the further outreaches of the political spectrum (ie, not in a particularly firebrand kind of way whatsoever.)
But still, can you imagine living with the never-ending cycle of coverage about the size of Trump’s hands and how Sanders is a communist insurgency leader?
Sure it gets people interested in politics but at the cost of turning them in to fanatical zealots it would seem, incapable of taking on board reasoned arguments against their chosen leader.
The ground swell of Corbynistas was an interesting counterpoint to post Milliband-Labour but it appears to have withered on the vine due to our fusty political system – would a similar thing happen to #feelthebern ?
It is all fascinating to watch the operations of Trump and Sanders and how traditional politicians like Clinton and Cruz cope, but only from the other side of the pond.
But it will soon affect us, it is happening in the most powerful country in the world after all