On Love Island this week Ekin-Su, an English actor, starts to tell her consort, Davide, an Italian hunk, about a pasta dish she likes. I anticipate an illuminating trans-European discussion of the culinary arts. But I am a fool, for she says: “I just remember it being very big, very thick, very long, very nice, very tasty. It’s got, like, a creamy white sauce.”
On Love Island this week, Luca, a sullen fishmonger on whom a child has scribbled, is annoyed because, in a game where the girls are instructed to act like sexually aggressive flight attendants, his partner acts like a sexually aggressive flight attendant. He does not respond to this causal loop in an emotionally intelligent way. His rectangular face gets longer and his random tattoos start to frown and he acts like a complete pasta dish about it.
On Love Island this week, when “the boys” offer to give “the girls” massages, several of “the girls” run upstairs to check in the mirror if they need to shave their arses. I have nothing on this one. My brain has completely emptied except for a possible thesis title: Arse Shaving in the Last Days of Britain.
We are at the stage in the annual Love Island life cycle where the young hunks and hunkettes act as though their weeks-old terrible relationships are actually years-long terrible marriages
This may be the moment when the ghost of Kenneth Williams appeared, bleeding from the eyes while shrieking the Benny Hill theme. The moment when a be-winged Cilla Black emerged from a rift in the time-space continuum, flanked by a retinue of Chippendale/Cherub hybrids, holding a burning copy of the Kinsey Report. The moment when it was decided that next Monday’s finale would be replaced by footage of Queen Elizabeth solemnly explaining that heterosexuality is officially over, accompanied only by a lone beefeater playing Rod Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? on a mournful bugle.
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It’s clear now that heterosexuality isn’t working. Love Island has, all along, been twerking on its grave. By the end of next week there will probably be a ban on straight marriage, and frankly that’s fair. “We’ve just had enough,” will read the letter of explanation, signed by tens of millions of Love Island viewers. There may also be a class-action lawsuit taken against the producers of Love Island and God. God will eventually apologise. The creators of Love Island probably won’t.
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All that aside, we are at the stage in the annual Love Island life cycle where the young hunks and hunkettes act as though their weeks-old terrible relationships are actually years-long terrible marriages (much like the one we all have with Love Island itself). Monday’s episode is particularly bleak. In it, the seemingly elderly hunks languish around the villa as though in a sexy retirement home (the kind I’m destined for) or possibly a hunk creche. They faceplant in bean bags or loaf near the firepit or loom like antelopes around the watering hole (swimming pool) all the while being bored or sullen in the company of the newfound hunkspouses to whom they are half-heartedly committed. To some people half-hearted commitment reads as “love” when televised. But don’t be fooled: this is basically Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days with extra sun damage and top bants.
In particular, the passive-aggressive narkiness of Davide and Luca is something to behold. If these geezers are ever in a war (and please God they will be) they’d just ignore the other army until that other army asked what it did wrong. And then Davide and Luca would say coldly, “Why? Do you think you’ve done something wrong?” and then the enemy army might get insecure and go on a totally unnecessary diet. But more likely they’d just ask why Luca and Davide aren’t wearing shirts and have no weapons (see: Hunk Armies in the Last Days of Britain, Routledge, 2052).
Whereas once ‘I love you’ was a sentence said only to a loved one at death’s door, now, thanks to Love Island, I frequently find myself saying it to bus drivers, shouting it at chaffinches and signing off with it in letters to the bank
It can’t be overstated how repetitive and formulaic Love Island has become. Unwilling at this stage to be emotionally honest for fear of public eviction, the hunks wrangle over the minutiae of their relationships, about whether, for example, being “exclusive” differs from being “boyfriend and girlfriend” (this is what postmodernists call “the discourse”) or about whether one half of a couple is “punching” (above their weight) or not “punching” (above their weight) in their loveless Jack and Vera Duckworth–style relationships.
Sometimes the more optimistic hunk-folk say the words “I love you” to the person they’ve known for weeks. Whereas once “I love you” was a sentence said only to a loved one at death’s door, now, thanks to Love Island, I frequently find myself saying it to bus drivers, shouting it at chaffinches and signing off with it in letters to the bank.
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At this stage the Love Islanders seem so hopeless and bored I’m surprised they’re not themselves watching Love Island. Although, if this TV zombie groans its way into another series, they’ll probably do just that. We’ll tune in to watch the Love Islanders watch Love Islanders watch Love Islanders, and we’ll all get to contemplate infinity and have a good cry.
It’s weirdly mind-numbing now. This week there’s a “talent show” (they forgot to add a question mark) and then the flight-attendant-themed role-play game. (My report: “These so-called flight attendants kept sitting on the passengers’ laps while wastefully pouring drinks over their ill-fitting uniforms. This was neither comfortable nor safe. In conclusion, I will not be hiring them for my Sexy Airline.”) On Wednesday each couple is given a creepy doll child to care for. I’ve seen worse (my nephews), so my mind still wanders.
I stare at the pristine white sheets of the communal bedroom where they all sleep together like Care Bears or hill folk. The Love Islanders never clean it themselves so there must be stains, terrible stains
I wonder: Is this how the hunks think babies arrive? Is this actually how hunk babies arrive?
I wonder: Why is Davide, who is basically a triangle of muscle on legs, wearing glasses? Is he just mocking us normals by aping our myopic ways?
I wonder: Should I be arse shaving? Could that be why I’m not the editor of The Irish Times yet?
I wonder: What happens to the Love Island villa when not in use? Perhaps, if heterosexuality survives the series, it will become the norm to spawn abroad in pods of 12, like salmon.
I wonder: Are the hunks salmon? I’m no scientist but... probably?
I wonder: Who cleans the Love Island? I stare at the pristine white sheets of the communal bedroom where they all sleep together like Care Bears or hill folk. The Love Islanders never clean it themselves so there must be stains, terrible stains.
It stands to reason that there’s an army of secret Love Island servants who emerge when the hunks are asleep to scrub the place down. Every Utopia is somebody else’s dystopia. I bet the whole place smells of Dettol and furtive union organising. Also: Who Cleans the Love Island? is a great name for a work of 21st-century intersectional feminist class analysis. It’s up there with Arse Shaving in the Last Days of Britain.
Of course, there are still touching moments of romantic innocence. “This place is magical,” says Ekin-Su to Tasha as they gaze from the balcony across their piece of enchanted-love real estate. “If we have kids I want to take them here.”
Tasha does not say: “Here? Seriously? With all the stains?” Instead, she role-plays with passion: “This is where I met your dad.” And then they both start to cry — and to be honest with you, because I am thinking of the creepy doll children, so do I.
