Thanks to Temptation Island, love is back in the public eye

Temptation Island 26 has concluded with extraordinary success, achieving impressive viewing figures during a period of television ‘re-colonisation’, with a haul of newly formed couples and broken-up couples, likely spin-offs for some of the characters, and widespread recognition of the calm wisdom and reliability of Filippo Bisciglia’s relationship advice (almost on a par with Defillipian heights). In hindsight – or rather, very much in hindsight, since it went extremely well last year too – we reveal the secret. The crux of the matter lies in the re-publicisation of love. The emotion that moves the world is stripped of the neurotic idealisation of the romantics, yet at the same time is saved from the total devaluation of the materialists, and this process takes place by laying everything bare, albeit at times in a grotesque or parodic manner.

The public discussion of love and other people’s love lives – that is to say, the bulk of conversations in Italy and around the world – is being restored to its role as a major social stabiliser. Relationships are being wrested from sentimental liberalism and individualism and, indeed, brought back into the public sphere. It is that touch of socialism we want and are happy to indulge in, to experience from the comfort of our sofas the thrill of controlling other people’s lives; and it is the greatest intellectual elevation that could ever have befallen the eternal gossip of busybodies, that desire to point fingers surreptitiously yet in full view of the public. The protagonists are driven by this very mechanism and, once thrust into the public arena, they grasp its utter lack of nuance and surrender to their roles, embedded in a crude yet ironclad dialectic. And all of this works on television, uniting people of different ages, geographical backgrounds and cultures in their curiosity.

Do not raise an eyebrow, because the story that emerges is closer to reality than much of the ‘fantasy sociology’ that fuels the fabricated narrative of Italian life. News reports and personal experience confirm this. Among investigative journalists in their ‘temptation newsrooms’ and intellectuals with their ‘temptation awards’, conferences and university departments. In the original – and not in the imitations just mentioned – there also lies the last hope of maintaining meaning and social value in couple life and in the pursuit of so-called ‘life projects’. It’s all caricatured, of course, but at least it’s being discussed, and at length. Squeezing out a dreadful vocabulary made up of ‘paths’, ‘respect’, ‘needs’ and ‘trust’. Heavy nouns, treated with even greater weight during the long solitary reflections or in the didactic dialogues that punctuate the ‘tempting island’ (an island in a relational rather than geographical sense, a separate place). And they are chewed over by the campfire in a constant cycle of attacking, judging, and yet respecting. A weak lexical arsenal, but better that way. There are no intrusions from the world of (horrendous) complexity, and the cooking, despite the obvious amount of fiction, yields flavours that are debatable yet genuine because they are unadulterated. This is aided by the participants’ non-celebrity backgrounds. The credibility of the characters counts for more than their fame. It is romantic love that emerges diminished, to everyone’s satisfaction. It is the undeclared enemy, yet clear to all, burnt on the triumphant bonfire of 29 July in an earthy orgy of viewing figures.