In 2019, Steve Dymond from Hampshire ended his life one week after appearing on The Jeremy Kyle Show. His death triggered a UK parliamentary inquiry into the treatment of reality TV stars and the cancellation of the programme after 14 years on air. On Tuesday this week, a coroner found “insufficient evidence” to link Dymond’s death with his appearance on the show, instead citing the man’s broader mental distress and the belief his relationship with his partner – who appeared on Jeremy Kyle with him – had broken down “irretrievably”.
The programme has been exonerated and that must be respected. But The Jeremy Kyle Show needn’t be responsible for Dymond’s death to be part of a constellation of programming that debases the public realm and subjects civilians to a theatre of cruel humiliation in pursuit of viewing figures and advertising revenue. The universe created by reality TV – an industry that sniffs out the strange and maladjusted like it’s a blood sport – has always been noxious. It is in urgent need of a redraft.
Renewed scrutiny has been directed to the platforms in the aftermath of last year’s Dublin riot and the more recent riots across England
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The X Factor and its creepy leader Simon Cowell thrived on the delusions of laymen who believed they could make it as pop stars. Jeremy Kyle’s particular focus on the trials of the working class was brazen – about 20,000 people were subjected to his mocking inquiries over the 14 years the show aired. Dwayne Davison, after being voted the most-hated guest ever (nice cheery contest, that), described the entire ordeal as “the worst thing that has ever happened in my life”. Meanwhile, Big Brother was premised on voyeurism and celebrated public indecency. Its malign effects were not confined to the peering eyes of British and Irish audiences; a winner of the Dutch version had a nervous breakdown in the aftermath.
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No more was the ethical squalor of the reality-TV-industrial complex better evidenced than with Susan Boyle – one of the breakout stars of Britain’s Got Talent after her 2008 audition went proto-viral (hard to imagine how big it would have become in the days of X). Her performance of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis was celebrated and met with Cowell’s seal of approval (you could almost see the cartoon dollar signs flashing across his eyes in the moment). But it is impossible to ignore the undercurrent: it was not the singing but the spectre of a strange woman with an odd manner that found a captive audience. And there she was, beamed into the homes of millions to be pitied, laughed at and patronised but never revered.
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But of course we know all of this. There was a nihilism that gripped the media landscape in the noughties and early 2010s that led us here: typified by the obnoxious overtures of Russell Brand and the aesthetically hollow vision of production studios in naked pursuit of cash, no matter the consequences. Who bears responsibility for a media industry defined by cheap shots and ritual humiliation? For every Michael Portillo train documentary, there is a barely dressed Love Island contestant turned into a national pariah by a wily producer and rabid public. This didn’t happen on its own.
We can lay blame at the feet of individuals who should know better not to debase themselves by appearing on these programmes. Or perhaps the crowing public should resist the urge to see the most immiserating aspects of humanity flash across their screens every night (build it and they will come: Love Island’s star is waning but it still draws in viewing figures in the millions). The studios and producers and financiers behind the industry should have a lot to say for themselves too.
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But I wonder if we should think about this in the same vein as social media right now. Renewed scrutiny has been directed to the platforms in the aftermath of last year’s Dublin riot and the more recent riots across England. Only in August did the Government vow to get tough on the likes of X, considering new regulatory frameworks to defang users’ worst impulses.
No more was the ethical squalor of the reality-TV-industrial complex better evidenced than with Susan Boyle – one of the breakout stars of Britain’s Got Talent
The wild west of social media and the morally barren reality TV market are not entirely dissimilar. For both, it is hard to decipher their truths from their fictions. But most importantly, both force the question: is it possible to regulate our way to a better public realm?
[ More Jeremy Kyle Show guests killed themselves, it emergesOpens in new window ]
The free speech absolutists would say no: that more red tape and bureaucracy and computer-says-no style civil servants only make the world a bleak and one-note place; that society has to course correct itself, and a common good can emerge from that. It is lofty and I would like to believe it myself. But we have seen the collective appetite for cruelty, and the speed at which a minor conflagration on social media can turn into a citywide wildfire. A head-in-the-sand approach has never worked.