Channel 4 brought you day to day coverage of Ramadan this year along with broadcasts of the calls to prayer. Now, something that will presumably offend Muslims as well as others! Couples, gay & straight, having sex in an opaque cube on stage; then coming out to talk about it with psychologists in front of a studio audience.
According to the Channel 4 website the show, which debuts Monday October 7th, features participants who “discuss their experience with the programme's host, agony aunt Mariella Frostrup, in front of a studio audience and with a panel of experts: internationally syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, sex body language and relationship expert Tracey Cox, and psychotherapist, broadcaster and author Phillip Hodson.” Notably, host Mariella Frostrup, 50, was formerly voted the woman with the sexiest voice in Britain.
The station continues to say “Sex Box is part of Channel 4's Campaign for Real Sex: a season of programmes that aims to reclaim sex from porn.” Which leads to the ingratiating question of what is real sex supposed to be.
Dr Brooke Magnanti, writing for the Daily Telegraph is somewhat more skeptical of the show advancing any value to British society at large. She wrote “There's a danger that the discourse we are ending up with is creating a false dichotomy of porn sex versus real sex. Obviously, porn is often performance, but some of the folks who bang on about "real sex" seem worryingly keen to define for everyone what is and is not acceptable behaviour in the bedroom - what qualifies as real. Seems to me "real" sex is rapidly acquiring just as many rules and mandatory aesthetics as the plastic stuff is.”
As with most television we need to discount the claims of producers that they are actually doing something for the public good. Some people do create programming for ideological reasons but the bottom line is usually ratings and sex sells, even if it’s on the other side of the wall.
While Channel 4 markets a concept of combating porn the reality is that it’s just more unveiling of that which our creator intended to be private. Ideally a young couple enters into sexuality through marriage and the process of discovery, unique to themselves, begins.
So who watches a show like this? First young guys, until they realize there’s nothing of value to see. Second women who want to ‘get in touch with feelings’. Third is people lacking in the soul seeking answers to the emptiness in their lives. These are the ones who may get hooked as they aimlessly explore another path that they hope will bring them fulfillment. They don’t have a prayer – but maybe they should try one.
One of the shows ‘experts’, Phillip Hodson, writes for the Guardian who headlined his piece “yes it's controversial; but it's also inspirational, warm and honest.” However fellow lefty prognosticator Bridget Christie was not impressed and wrote, also in the Guardian, “Looking at the publicity photographs, it's quite a big box, made out of wood or something. It's not a cardboard box. They should've called it Sex in a Box, and have whichever one climaxes first ejected out of the top of the box, while McFly (the house band) plays Pop Goes the Weasel. Apparently there is a sequel in development, called Sex in a Cardboard Box. A moving, insightful and not at all exploitative documentary about the sex lives of the homeless.”
Alas Channel 4 will continue to develop increasingly diverse and weird programming to stand out from the crowd. Locked into the number 4 spot on the channel guide for eternity (BBC1 & 2 come first, ITV1 is always #3) and denied by franchise from being a specialty channel they must continue to come up with original ideas no matter how bizarre.
Sex Box will come and (fortunately) go, probably very quickly since it’s hard to keep re-working the script and coming up with new stuff that a lot of people will keep watching. Unfortunately that means the station producers will have to think of something else even stranger.
