Love Island, if you haven’t seen it, is a giant dollhouse of Kens and Barbies, tanned and toned castmates plucked straight out of their gym-and-Instagram lives and dropped in a villa on the Spanish island of Majorca that’s decorated with 69 cameras, super-sensitive microphones and fake plants. The reality-TV show (the UK version, that is; accept none of the now many substitutes) juices them up for a couple of months on cheap Spanish wine as they seek “love” and the winning couple's prize of £50,000. In the first episode the men, identikit slabs of bronzed pecs and abs in swim shorts, choose a partner, the women, in diminutive bikinis and often sporting degrees of augmentation, waiting like a prize to be picked, first stepping forward if they are interested. The couples are then allocated double beds together.
Of course it’s nonsense. It's buff people playing silly games in the Spanish sun trying to get it on with one another. The failure rates for long-term relationships out of these programmes approaches 100%. A more honest goal for many contestants, surely, is the slim chance of parlaying time in the villa into something financial; or at least a year of ribbon-cutting celebrity and product endorsements, a pile more social media followers.
But it’s expensive, tightly directed, arguably regressive, often highly enjoyable nonsense. And its anthropological pleasures are many. Seeing this group of televisual twentysomethings, speaking in a surprisingly varied set of regional British accents as they sear and simmer while competing for the best-looking partner with the goal of lasting to the end and not be jettisoned from the show by its harsh text-voting audience (deep breath), can be mesmerising. Like watching a trussed and fake-eyelashed chicken cook on a rotisserie. There is much drinking, though no drunkenness, some eating (breakfast), and endless sunbathing – mostly hatless, presumably so as not to confuse the cameras. The first coupling is excruciating for everyone, but over the weeks the women get to choose as much as the men. So the women bond and plot. The men bond and plot. And they grieve and support each other when a relationship goes phut. Sometimes the men pump weights together (swoleness and single-digit body-fat ratios are a fulltime job) and occasionally even shave their chests in public. And they all go on naff dates. New people arrive to shake things up and the less extrovert and, let’s say it, posher contestants struggle to find a stable partner. Every twist and turn is commented on by a sarky bloke, Iain Stirling, sitting in a booth somewhere close by, and the host, Caroline Flack, swoops in at pivotal moments to direct ingoing and outgoing traffic.
The grieving thing is real, or as real as anything here under the director's Christof-like gaze.
Contestants are clearly also chosen for their basic decency. Sure, last season super-alpha Adam gaslighted one woman after another. But his fate was to be sidelined out of the final running. Withholding sex is seen as a positive and, despite weapons-grade gameplaying and the sight of supposedly blissfully paired housemates saying things to their pals such as “I'm happy but could I be happier?”, love-rat behaviour and ungracious decoupling is punished – if not within the villa then by the audience. Still, you get people like Megan, from last year, saying things like “The only couple I wouldn’t want to break up is Laura and Wes because I can tell they really like each other.” Just before hooking up with Wes.
Think of it as a Gen-Z morality play with sunburn.
And not only does the show catch every clever come-on, verbal misstep and piece of dimness, but contestants also have their own slang. I've watched for two seasons, and each year words are carried forward and some new ones introduced. Some are clearly in vogue among this subgroup, others just seem to be made up.
For example, last year, aggy = aggravated with someone; snake = to make romantic moves on someone behind another's back; sticking it on = making the moves on someone; dicksand = male sexual quicksand; extra = going above and beyond (getting so extra); grafting = putting in work to get someone's affections; the ick = finding the point at which you start to dislike someone romantically; melt, melty = getting soppy over someone, or derogatory about a male in general; mugging = to treat disrespectfully, or like a mug; pied = get rejected by someone; salty = angry, getting angry, agitated or aggressive with someone.
While contestants clearly watch previous years, some coaching seems likely.
One of this year's contestants, a surfer-model type called Lucie, has already tried to introduce her own slang – bevnished, fwoofed off. No idea.
In the past couple of days the show tweeted a catchword, bevvy, to mean good looking. A bevvy in the UK is a drink, and someone tweeted back “Stop trying to make fetch happen” from Mean Girls. You can't just magic up slang, though it doesn't stop them trying.
Very little of this slang will make it into Jonathan Green's dictionary, you suspect.
Shows with their own jargon are not new, of course, even if Love Island takes it a step further. A “constructed reality” show about Maori expats in Australia's Gold Coast, The GC, talked about things like neffs and aunties. It also was fascinating, if mainly in revealing that otherwise deeply masculine blokes spent so much time in front of the mirror.
Ben Elton proposed (my interview) in his new novel, Identity Crisis, a fictional version of Love Island that embraced all sexualities and gender presentations.
Of course (spoiler) it was a total failure. It had to be. The appeal – and mechanics – of Love Island is that it is Instagram-ready, straight and mainly white.
This year, the show has already been criticised for lack of diversity. Body diversity, that is. All the women, except one, are slim and petite. All the men, as mentioned, are shredded and brotastic. This is Fantasy Island 21st century-style, and god help you if you change a thing.
Love Island is showing on Three in NZ, but not in the US unless you use a VPN. If you must, Love Island USA is on CBS in July.
(Image: ITV 2)
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