Nah...not for me..... Review on Temptation Island

To tempt and be tempted are much the same thing.

• Catherine II of Russia

Temptation Island ( T.I.)

I am not going into the details of the cast (incase you are interested in the names you can read a review by Sensiva under this same category by the title “Paradise beckons”). I will just briefly describe the plot.

This “Reality Show”, tries to measure Love…wow that’s innovative isn’t it. It tries to approximate as to how much of betrayal and jealousy can finally kill love. For this experiment, the producer (Chris Cowan for Fox TV) grabs hold of 4 couples (committed but unmarried) and 20 odd single men and women( read models, strippers and massuese) and transport them to an exotic island named Mata Chica. Should admit here that the island was beautiful and that is an understatement. That’s the only good thing that I associate with the show when I look back now.

The men are separated from the women at this stage and stationed at different parts of the island with a group of unattached singles from the opposite sex. They are sent on blind dates, preferred dates, dream dates, intimate dates and whatever. They are on camera and know that their partner (original one I mean) will have access to these tapes. After two weeks of being single (actually multiple), they have to come back and decide whether they want to be “one” again with the original partner with whom they came into the island or choose one of the singles they happened to date during their stay….. (sadly they weren’t given a third option of coming back and doing the same thing all over again, boy that would have been the best option for these people).

Yes the plot is interesting and rest assured there are lots of women in bikinis ( Iam not mentioning bared bodied men, we get to see them in our own bollywood too, don’t we, thanks to you know who), and there is a lot of greenery and crystal clear sea. Now if you wanted to watch that you could probably tune into Discovery or National Geographic.

Why speak against T.I. when there is so much Porn around..?

Now that’s an argument a few members have placed. Why have law, when law is broken all around us? Why try and create awareness about AIDS when it has already caught on like wild fire? Why try to teach values to children, when we know that some of the people who are in the highest offices haven’t played it by the rules..? Why agitate against T.I, well the answer is simple. We can either try to snub out what’s improper or prefer to suffer it. We can either be civilized or remain animals.

Also a counter question can be posed to the people who ask the above question. And that is “Why broadcast T.I. when there is so much of porn around…the people who want it -can find it”. It need not be on Television, as an apology to entertainment .

Reality or Cooked up?

Now that’s another raging issue. Was this show really real..? Or was it stage managed? Well what difference does that make? To me a television program needs to entertain, was it entertaining to me, well not really. In the beginning, the attractive women in the bikinis did appeal to me (dirty me!!!), but as the plot unveiled, I thought the show started to turn from artistic to erotic to vulgar. If someone says vulgarity is entertainment, then I don’t have a case.

Whether or not it was stage managed it did bring out some hypocritical people on screen, who enjoyed every bit of their own carefree dating but burst into tears when they knew that their partner was dating with a carefree attitude too. How and why on earth would a couple that’s agreed to go ahead with the show, after being given understand what to expect, lose their cool in between the show and then miraculously (I am told as I did not watch the most of the final episodes) come together at the end. All this does not point towards “reality” as claimed by the people who made the serial. But then as I said, to me that does not matter.

Moral and ethical issues:

I don’t want to sound prudish so let me clarify that, I am not against dating as a concept. Also, though I might not do it myself, I don’t have anything against couple who decide to date after marriage or after committing to a serious relationship. So I am not voting out this serial on that count. There has been a lot written already under this topic on the moral and ethical lines. I even read a couple of reviews that just went on to criticize the so called “hypocrisy” that exists in Indian society without even bothering to talk about the serial.

What put me off is not the idea of married couple dating to understand if their Love survives temptations, but the logic that their love life and intimate details on their dates should be put on television. Agreed human beings are curious by nature. But to peep into another couples bedroom was called voyeurism not long time back, have they changed the definition now..? If not voyeurism was and is considered a perversion and are we attempting to legitimize it?

I don’t mind a movie that explores human frailties; I can understand a movie that would attempt to study what are the limits in a relationship or sexual perversions but a TV show..? That too in the name of reality…. Well don’t know about you it’s a bit beyond what I call acceptable programming.

Concern is universal :

To all those so called “liberated minds” in India, the show is not something that’s out of place in India alone. In fact if I remember right then it was marketed in India as a “Show that shocked America”. The producers tried to repeat their experiment and this time ended up “shocking” themselves. If the ratings are any indication then T.I.2 was a great flop and if that put some sense into the people who are behind the show, probably we wont have a T.I.3. Now are we going to call Americans Prudish…..?

PS: By the way the two stars are for the beautiful island….