WE TV’s new show wants to have its smut and censor it, too.
From the article :
“The salient piece of information about Sex Box, the new reality show starting tonight on WE TV in which couples have sex in a box on stage, is that viewers of it will see and hear absolutely no sex. This is both a reassuring and disappointing tidbit of information: What is the world coming to if couples are having sex in a box on basic cable for our titillation? But what is the point of a show called Sex Box if there is no sex in it?
Sex Box, which is based on a British format, is like any number of reality shows that purport to help people: Whatever help is being doled out, that assistance would surely be better provided outside the context of a reality TV show. And yet like all do-gooder reality TV, Sex Box takes its mission on with stone-faced self-importance. In each episode, a couple with a relationship problem walk into a theater in the round, sit down on a couch, and hastily explain their issues to a trio of couples counselors: a Beverly Hills therapist in the yenta mode, a black female pastor, and a tattooed clinical psychologist who was presumably cast because Dan Savage said no.
After having a hurried chat about their problems, the couple are invited to use the sex box, a room into which we cannot see or hear, plopped down in the middle of a reality TV show set like some inverse Panopticon. Whatever happens inside the sex box stays inside the sex box. There are no cameras or mics. To make up for this lack of sexiness, the show resorts to comically juvenile gambits. The participants are timed, so that a couple who spend a whole 30 minutes in the sex box are greeted with a knowing “woooooo” from the audience—even though, for all we know, they could have been discussing groceries and fiscal policy. Upon leaving the sex box, the participants are asked to wear silk pajamas, as if the specter of Hugh Hefner were the best way to reinsert a jolt of sex appeal to the situation.”
Read more:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television
What a hilariously absurd and cynical concept ! It’s somewhat reassuring that the original series failed in the ratings, and the US version is likely to suffer the same fate.
Amanda x
