The Breakfast TV Shock

It’s very rare for me to be shocked by anything on TV these days *.

Today was one of those days.

I’m eating my Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, flicking the channels from one breakfast TV programme to another. Channel 4’s Rise is running an “entertainment” story about an independent US video entitled Bumfight. Bearing in mind it’s 7:48 am, my cornflakes go soggy as I watch snippets of the video slack-jawed. They’re showing graphic scenes of homeless guys beating the crap out of each other and images of the film-makers kidnapping homeless people, snatching them off the street, binding their hands and feet with tape, gagging them, etc. Apparently the bums featured were encouraged to fight each other with offers of cash, food and clothing. The homeless guys in the video have clearly been abused and exploited.

It doesn’t look funny or entertaining. Normally Crunchy Nut Cornflakes leave a sweet taste, but today I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth.

The first thing I did when I got into work was to check it out on the net. You can find the official site here. A decent review and commentary on the video – with critical attacks on the filmmakers by homeless help organisations – can be found here (note the date, it’s clearly old news in the US).

The images were violent, graphic and shocking. The activities in them looked highly illegal. But that’s the key word: “looked”. I’m now thinking how much of it was staged in advance? Were the kidnapping scenes set-up and the bums look of terror put on for the camera? As an (allegedly) intelligent person, I should be able to spot the difference, but having only seen just a few seconds of footage – over-dubbed by the Rise presenter – I could not, and this makes me feel uncomfortable.

Which is probably precisely the reaction the filmmakers were hoping for…


* The last time it happened was watching a late-night showing of Jackass, where one of the guys – dressed in chefs outfit – was eating the following raw food stuffs: Red onion, cheese, ham, tomatoes, milk and a large slab of butter. The butter really made him gag. He then jumped up and down for a minute and then spewed up his raw ingredients into a hot pan, adding eggs to make an omelette. Once cooked, the omelette was devoured.

And you thought I was a sick puppy…