Thank goodness TV execs keep finding new ways to humiliate people or there’d be nothing on the box. We’d have to consume a never-ending barrage of facts that served no other purpose than to expand our knowledge of the known universe, and where’s the fun in that?
You can’t set a black hole a meaninglessly degrading challenge. Unless that Philae probe hacks the comet’s iCloud storage and publishes compromising nudie comet pics, few earthlings will turn their gaze from Colonoscopy Idol, or whatever else it is they’re watching.
Proudly slinging humiliation garbage directly into our willing, open mouths is Beauty and the Geek (Channel 7), the show for anyone cursed with immortality who has watched everything else that exists, even all the videos on YouTube’s vibrating buttock channel otherwise known as Vevo.
In Thursday’s episode, the beauties are quizzed on their knowledge of popular animal idioms. Their reward for getting answers right? Having to eat the animal in question – or at least part of it. As they gulp down fish eyes, meal worms and a pig’s ear, I wonder how exactly this is meant to encourage them to be nerdier or to study more, given that every time they use an idiom from now on, they’ll have a vomit reflex.
But don’t worry. To balance things out, one of the geeks is stripped naked and waxed. Well, not totally naked. Someone kindly drapes a token wisp of cloth over his geeky genitals with all the modesty-protecting effectiveness of a beer mat on a whale’s groin. This human sacrifice is then put in an upright tent and sprayed with fake tan, a pointless addition as the makeover also involves a wardrobe reboot.
This Adonis emerges in appropriately fashionable attire, the onlookers blissfully unaware of the bronzed, hairless, Teflon-smooth human trapped underneath them. As if we didn’t know already, the ritualistic nudity and Kardashian-beating close-ups of his arse crack were for our giggly titillation, nothing more.
Should you miss the next Beauty and the Geek episode, recreate the experience by cramming your penis into a pistachio shell and painting yourself orange. Ladies, nibble on some poached dogs’ nostrils. Either way, make sure the majority of society is laughing at you.
From geeks to G20
Fortunately, the past week has not confined televisual humiliation to the kind of shows that make me pray Skynet sends a T-800 back to snuff out John Logie Baird. Coverage of the G20 in Brisbane has meant you can watch the news and get your fix of nail-biting public mortification all in one go.
Thanks to the Coalition’s ideological fear of discussing climate change at the G20 (seriously, did Tony Abbott fall down a well while playing hide and seek as a kid before thousands of climate scientists flew into his face?), pretty much every foreign leader who’s managed to learn a fact during their career has broadcast climate-conscious speeches that make Australia look like a freshly waxed geek sporting a shrink-wrapped crotch.
Somewhere along the line, there was a strange assumption that limiting mention of climate change to one small paragraph in a communique would control world leaders’ brains. Unfortunately for Australia, Barack Obama proved document-based mind control is not possible and mentioned climate change anyway, as did David Cameron.
By the time Joe Hockey took to Insiders to reject, like an addict in denial, that global warming would impact the economy, G20 was on track to become a superpower intervention: “Look, Australia, we’ve been talking. We think you have a carbon problem.” Now, there’s a TV show I’d watch: Celebrity Carbon Rehab.
By the time Tony Abbott said he was “standing up for coal”, I was happy the G20 doesn’t run all year. You get the impression that if the Titanic were sinking and world leaders were arranging lifeboats, Tony Abbott would be the only one wanting to discuss damage to the iceberg.
