I can’t help but think that there must be some grim historical parallel buried deep in the world’s vast lore to the story of a young man offered the opportunity to set sail for the cryptically named La Isla de las Tentaciones (Temptation Island), who would come in short order to find that the potential rewards suggested by the name disguised nothing but bitter reality and ruin.
Having started cryptically myself, you might well be asking, grim historical parallel to what? Well, to just that story outlined above, but rather playing out in the present day, on our screens, before the eyeballs of hundreds of millions of people across the world.
Cue the Spanish edition of TV show, La Isla de las Tentaciones (Temptation Island), based on the American show of the very same name which ran for three brief seasons over two decades ago. Of a similar theme to Love Island, the show sees a bunch of unmarried couples placed on an island, but – and here’s the twist – separated. They are instead to spend their time living amongst singletons whose entire purpose is to convince the committed paramours to have an affair.
Disclosure time: I am about as far removed from shows of this nature as it’s possible to be. Other than watching some I’m a Celebrity back in my school days, I have seen neither sight nor sound of the reality TV industry, other than that which I’ve unavoidably come across during my (admittedly extensive) internet use. Which is precisely where ‘Temptation Island’ comes in.
If you’re at all like me, despite your natural aversion to reality TV, you’ll have been genuinely unable to avoid clips and memes featuring a Temptation Island contestant being spiritually torn asunder by the spectacle of his girlfriend getting down to business with one of the island’s male offerings.
No wonder it’s taken off: it’s entertainment-slop gold. The segment that broke the language barrier with its dramatic hook saw contestant José Carlos Montoya standing on a beachfront, watching on a screen as his girlfriend Anita succumbs to the advances of one of the men in her proximity. As they…progress…Montoya’s reaction ranges from stunned disbelief to screaming rage. He falls to his knees as the treacherous lovers switch the lights off. Clearly able to bear no more, Montoya sprints down the beach towards the scene of the crime as lightning flashes in the distance.
He screams various things as he runs, which I understand translate as “You’ve broken me” and “You’ve destroyed me,” with the exasperated host following him down the beach at a trot pleading, Montoya, por favor. His desperate dash is intercut with shots of the couple’s, for want of a better way of putting it, vigorous session, heightening the drama.
Lest I lose you here with excessively lengthy details, it will suffice to say that the scene was apparently preceded by Montoya’s acceptance of a lap dance, which in his girlfriend’s book constituted sufficient betrayal to prompt her own amorous encounter, which was beamed to the eyeballs of the world. And it was, as you might expect of lewd TV, followed by no few attempts to one-up the other.
Undoubtedly, despite my best efforts, I’ll have lost at least a few readers at this stage, who will have struggled to understand why I wasted my precious time considering such trash. Well, by way of explanation, I wasted that time considering it because so many of my fellow men and women have wasted so much time watching it, posting about it, thinking about it and being moulded by it.
I am always fascinated by that which becomes culturally relevant at any given time – no matter the topic – for what it has to say about modern appetites and how they’re met. That Montoya and his trial (and his girlfriend’s) on Temptation Island can be considered “culturally relevant” at the moment seems to me beyond doubt, given the insane virality it’s achieved, raking up millions upon millions of views and almost that many social media posts. To the point that people like me see it splashed all over their own feeds.
What it has to say about modern appetites is that they’re not so much different from those of old. People love drama, and apparently the Spanish do it better than anyone else. That’s at least one of the reasons why Shakespeare has such enduring relevance: the dramatic scenarios he concocted are eternally potent, and there’s little better to base those scenarios on than infatuation and sexual desire, the very stuff of modern productions like Temptation Island.
How those appetites are met though is where depression sets in, at least for this writer. It’s hard not to see the stunning success of this show and its outrageously provocative excerpts and the ongoing decline in IQ as being linked. Much of that research has been done in the US, but that’s also where the reality TV format found its feet, and so again: no surprise.
I am not here going to view the past through rose-tinted glasses and pretend that once upon a time, our baser desires for scandal and gossip were raised up by engagement with great works of literature, theatre or other forms of art, but I am going to suggest that they weren’t satisfied so readily and gaudily. We didn’t previously have anything into which so much money, time and effort was poured with the intention of stoking and satisfying those instincts as we do now, in the form of these shows.
Another obvious parallel that springs to mind is that of Rome’s obsession with gladiatorial combat. While you might split hairs about whether watching Temptation Island can be compared to watching men fight to the death, the point is that it was a tremendously popular form of entertainment in its day, catering to our baser appetites for stimulation and entertainment, and – I would argue – producing duller intellects and, more importantly, hearts as it did so.
So yes, those tuning into Temptation Island are likely having a better day than poor José Carlos Montoya and Anita, but that’s to take a fairly short-term view of things. Stack up a lifetime of breathlessly following the exploits of the Montoyas and Anitas of the world and while I’d suspect you’ll probably be the poorer for it, your children and your children’s children definitely will be.