Recap: What Is ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!’, And Why?
'I'm A Vaguely Familiar Lovable White Person Falling Over A Lot In Africa!' would be a much more honest title for this show.
I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! is the reality television equivalent of the Logies; a voter-fuelled battle royale between semi-famous people that ends with somebody grimly clinging to victory, with a token American celebrity shipped in to legtitimate proceedings. Only at the Logies, the overseas guest is seldom forced to shit in a hole in the forest.
The format, imported from the UK where it launched in 2002, is simple: Take a bunch of quasi-famous people — preferably as white and inoffensive as possible — deprive them of food, make them dump live insects and poo on each other, and then watch as they kill one another off, one by one, until only the victorious District remains. Or something.
After a prolific media campaign that’s been vomiting feigned excitement all over your screens for weeks, Australia’s take on I’m A Celebrity launched last night on Network Ten. But what exactly IS this show, and who is it for?
Hosts Dr. Chris Brown and Julia Morris scream for help as the bridge begins to buckle and collapse into the ravine below.
Network Ten took pains to keep the cast of this a secret until launch night; producers apparently used code names when internally referring to the ‘celebrities’, and the ramp-up campaign centred upon their unveiling. But with the show’s premise relying on how fun it is to watch the rich and famous get taken down a few notches, the show needed to feature a cast that was, you know, rich and famous.
In Australia, it wasn’t to be.
If you need to write their names in bold on the back of their singlets, they’re probably not that famous.
This group of people aren’t “pampered celebrities” at the top of the A-list; they’re relateable types, somewhere between the middle and the bottom. They seem lovely, sure – but with B- and D-listers, the “bring down the big guy”-based narrative of the show gets flipped into an inverted pyramid of desperation and sadness. No longer is it a crucible in which those above us get toppled and forged into better people, learning lessons along the way; instead, what we have here is a pit. A pit into which are flung those desperate to either achieve fame or reclaim it — and at the top of which dangles a single, glimmering, figurative ticket back into the fame-game (and a prize for charity).
The walls of the pit are smeared with faeces. There’s a jaunty soundtrack. It’s showtime, bitches.
Footage taken moments before Channel Ten doused a national park with napalm.
In a chilling sequence seemingly lacking in self-awareness, the show recreated the infamous Ride of the Valkyries scene from Apocalpyse Now, with a fleet of helicopters buzzing the South African jungle.
Each helicopter contained a celebrity: Leisel Jones, olympic swimmer! Merv Hughes, cricket player, national legend! Laura Dundovic, Miss Universe Australia! Andrew… Daddo! I knew we’d get a Daddo! Tyson Mayr, model, blogger, and boyfriend of Lisa from The Bachelor! Lauren Brant, ex-Hi Five member! Joel Creasey, talented comedian! Barry Hall, AFL player! Chrissie Swan (nawww she’s lovely), and…
WHERE’S SABRINA, DAMMIT?
When Melissa Joan Hart began adding Australian celebrities en masse on Twitter a while back, everyone assumed she’d be one of the cast. Seeing Marcia Brady arrive instead, before immediately getting her heels stuck in the decking, was emotionally confusing.
On the one hand, Marsha Brady is going to collapse like a flan in a vacuum. On the other hand? The Doctor got to do this.
I think I love you, Dr. Chris.
After introductions, there was a brief and off-putting demonstration of “how exotic and African this African Africa is”, as the all-white group walked past a group of native dancers in what, let’s not forget, was supposed to be their introduction to hell. They were herded into a small clearing, where a “critter specialist” with a thick accent ran them through the myriad of ways they could die at the hands of the wildlife — a somewhat adorable display given just how much Australia’s fauna wants to kill us each and every day.
Then the hosts gave a closed, “private” tour of the campsite for viewers; a tour which demonstrated what she show can do, and what it can’t. Julia and Chris are lovely; the show, however, is already feeling stifled, stiff and awkward. You can just feel the invisible, gnarled hands of imagination-free execs around its throat — who are, in turn, being choked by the invisible, gnarled hands of the decade-old show bible. (Nobody is choking the show bible. It’s a book. You can’t choke books.)
“How long? Six weeks? …It’s too long.”
Soon, the celebrities were hiking from a river to their camp. Barry Hall bitched about Maureen, Maureen was bitching about damn near everything, and Chrissie fell over and had to sort of shimmy back up. Basically, this part was devoted to several perfectly lovely people you vaguely recognise almost falling down. Which is what I’d call the show, if I had my way.
The single weirdest part was The Tucker Trial, a food challenge that will feature in every episode. In last night’s debut, the tortuous ordeals which the celebrities underwent to obtain food seemed less like Australian reality TV, and more like a softcore Game of Thrones excerpt. The UK and US variants of this show have had time to evolve into theatres of cruelty. In Australia, though, we’ve hand-picked the gentlest, most harmless, likeable vanilla personalities, all of whom seem to genuinely have a soft spot for one another, then taken the nice of them — Chrissie Swan — and had her tied down and covered in maggots, offal, cockroaches and worse.
It clashes with the family friendly vibe the show seems to desperate to cultivate, begging the question once again, ‘What is this show, and who is it for?’ You can’t take a scene from Hostel, show it in prime-time, and then have people vote on it.
Six star trial, ten star selfie! pic.twitter.com/Jaj4VAfiip
— #ImACelebrityAU (@ImACelebrityAU) February 1, 2015
The camp itself, meanwhile, had the exact same structural affectations as an amusement park: you’re in the jungle, but you’re not really in the jungle. See all those “spooky” lamps, fences, sconces, and other architectural flairs? They’re visually in-keeping with what most people might associate with “Africa”, but to make that connection you have to play to stereotypes and exoticism, wrapped up in a bizarrely colonial notion of “the dark continent”.
All of this makes watching ten privileged white people “slum it” in a country with an ongoing history of poverty, violence, and strife (and where, let’s remember, Apartheid only ended in 1994) seem a little like Pulp’s ‘Common People’. If Pulp’s ‘Common People’ were riddled with cultural insensitivity of the highest order.
The moment when Joel realised he’d wandered onto the set of Hook.
“What IS this show and WHO IS IT FOR” I yelled once again at the television. But then, I finally got it. Everything clicked. This entire show is actually a coma hallucination being had by Marsha Brady; that she was just an actor in a show called The Brady Bunch, and that, as an old woman, she needed to accept a role on a reality show in which she was trapped in the jungle, and forced to wear a really stupid but practical hat.
The finale will end with her winning I’m A Celebrity, waking up in her bed, and brushing her hair orgasmically for a full hour. Then she’ll remember the man that she met in her coma. Tyson. And she’ll never let go the image of him, comforting her that day in the jungle.
All that said, I’m A Celebrity is like all reality TV; I probably won’t be able to look away. And if you can boil this show down to “a bunch of nice people doing gross things for charity”, it can’t all be bad.
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The next 90-minute episode of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here airs tonight at 7.30pm, on Network Ten.
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Paul Verhoeven writes for TheVine, and is a presenter on Triple J. He tweets from @PaulVerhoeven