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“Shipwrecked” Sails Beyond Tokenism

The British reality series Shipwrecked: Battle of the Islands began its new season on Channel 4 two months ago and immediately became mired in controversy. Allegations of racism, classism and homophobia dominated the British media as soon as the first 10 castaways stepped foot on two remote islands in the South Pacific. In the season premiere, 18-year-old Lucy Buchanan announced that she hates ethnic minorities and fat people, is pro-slavery and finds lesbians “sinister.”

But the reality series has more than made up for its initial homophobic stumbles by presenting two well-rounded lesbian contestants – Terri Jones and Jo Davis – who are quickly becoming island favorites.

Now in its fifth season, the premise of Shipwrecked is fairly simple. Two teams are placed on different islands and must fend for themselves over a five-month span. Every week a new contestant arrives and spends a few days living with each team, and at the weekly beach party they must decide which team they want to join. By the end of the competition, the team with the most members wins £70,000 in prize money.

Although it is marketed as an adventure reality game, Shipwrecked is really a social experiment with a pretty backdrop. Teams are provided with a wide range of amenities – from building plans and raincoats to barbeque beach parties – and the only competition between the teams is for the loyalties of new contestants (and the occasional luxury prize). This social aspect dominates the series, and the teams – made up entirely of young, attractive, mostly white 20-somethings – resemble an island version of The Real World more than Survivor.

Playing off last year’s success, Channel 4 has changed the format only slightly for this season, starting this year’s game with all-male and all-female teams. What they didn’t anticipate was the controversy their handpicked contestants would cause. The offensive remarks made by Lucy Buchanan, an upper-class boarding-school girl, made it appear as if viewers would be in for a long five months of conservative proselytizing.

Manual laborer Terri, who came out as a lesbian right after stepping onto the all-girl island, bore the brunt of Lucy’s homophobic views. “I’m surprised that I’ve become friends with Terri,” Lucy said. “Not only because we come from completely different backgrounds and have completely different values, but she’s a lesbian as well. Not that I don’t like homosexuals; I just don’t like what they do.”

Lucy’s comments sparked a deluge of complaints from viewers as well as demands to cancel the show. Reruns of the debut episode, which would have aired throughout the week on digital channel E4, were quickly scrapped in an effort to quell the furor, and the status of the hit show’s international syndication was even in jeopardy. The potential for positive lesbian representation on Shipwrecked looked pretty bleak, as once again the token reality show lesbian seemed to have been cast only to cause controversy.

Surprisingly, however, the real loser in the scandal turned out to be Channel 4. Since the controversial debut episode, Lucy has espoused very different opinions on-camera, and she is now best friends with Terri. This suggests not only that Terri’s presence has normalized homosexuality for the previously sheltered Lucy, but also that the producers might have used selective editing and Lucy’s own naiveté to garner higher ratings for the show’s first episode.

Having Terri on the island not only offers a learning experience for close-minded people such as Lucy, but also gives viewers a full five months to see a nonstereotypical lesbian on TV.

Terri is a much-loved member of the cast — both by viewers and the other contestants — and most of the girls in the Tiger Tribe consider her their best friend. Whereas most of the cast members come across as shallow and vapid, Terri is approachable, funny and seems able to fit into any situation. The opposing Shark Tribe, made up of mostly men at this point, has even tried to convince her to switch tribes on several occasions, going so far as to offer fellow lesbian Jo as a potential love match on their island.

Jo, a DJ from London who came to the island about a month into the contest, is very different from Terri. From her modern, punkish hair to the fact that she has bonded better with the men than the women in the game (she eventually chose to live on Shark Island due in large part to her friendship with one of the male contestants, Lorenzo Preecha), she is the polar opposite of blue-collar Terri in almost every regard. Perhaps Jo’s only similarity to Terri is that she has never hidden her sexuality on the show, and she came out to everybody during her first night with the Sharks.

Jo does present a very interesting dichotomy in societal acceptance of homosexuality. She is living in the same tribe as Joe Stone, an openly gay Spice Girls fan, but while the Shark team has not had any negative reactions to Jo or Terri’s sexuality, Joe has been bullied a lot, particularly at the beginning of the show. His teammates, who largely represent the macho straight male culture, have made fun of his quirks, and one of them even called him a ” nancy boy” early on in the competition. This illustrates a very common social construct: Straight men love the idea of lesbians but feel threatened by gay men.

Thankfully, the lesbians on the show so far have rarely played into the stereotypical straight male fantasy of lesbianism, and the cheers and howls that Jo received when she came out to her all-male team are as bad as it’s gotten. Jo and Terri have been accepted by both tribes, and their sexual orientation is rarely addressed on-screen (possibly because, short of hooking up themselves, there isn’t much to talk about).

One thing is certain: It is wonderful to see a reality show that makes such a determined effort to be gay-inclusive. In addition, because of the format of the show, the gay and lesbian contestants are guaranteed to stay for the duration of the season.

It is easy to write off Shipwrecked: Battle of the Islands as a poor man’s Survivor or another Real World clone, but for lesbian viewers, the show offers one of the only long-term, guaranteed chances in Britain to see lesbians represented on TV each week. Since Bad Girls was cancelled last December and Sugar Rush is not due back on Channel 4 until this summer, Terri and Jo might be our only hope this spring to prove that lesbians aren’t as “sinister” as some viewers once thought.

For more on Shipwrecked, visit the show’s official website.

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