A few days ago, the BBC reported on what seemed to be the ultimate reality TV show.

A terminally ill woman, known only as Lisa, wants to donate her kidneys when she dies. Dutch TV company Endemol, who grew monstrously large from thinking of Big Brother, lined up a bunch of really sick people who need a kidney. Viewers will vote to decide who gets them as they literally plead for a chance at life.

Newspapers around the world happily reported the story, along with the public puking of medical ethicists. I too felt a little sick. But the station mounted a determined defence:

“BNN chairman Laurens Drillich has defended the show.

The former director of TV station BNN, Bart de Graaff, died from kidney failure aged 35 after spending years on a transplant waiting list.

“The chance for a kidney for the contestants is 33%,” said the station’s current chairman, Laurens Drillich. “This is much higher than that for people on a waiting list.”

“We think that is disastrous, so we are acting in a shocking way to bring attention to this problem.”

“For years and years we have had problems in the Netherlands with organ donations and especially kidney donations,” agreed Alexander Pechtold of D-66, the Dutch social liberal party.

“You can have a discussion about if this is distasteful, but finally we have a public debate,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.”

The Dutch were embroiled in a controversy which reached to the Prime Minister. 75% of the population had decided to boycott the show, according to a survey. Dozens of news crews poured in from all over the world, all to watch the twisted Dutch and their weird ethics.

BNN is an extraordinary joint, by our standards. It started as a TV show called Bart’s News Network, which became a complete channel in which the BNN stood for Brutaal News Network. “Brutaal” means “flagrant”, and the channel fed its young audience with shows like De nationale IQ test, Kannibalen, Try before you die and Spuiten & Slikken, which is about drugs and sex. As in Inject and Swallow.

Bart’s kidney failure started with a car accident, after which he permanently looked like a twelve year old child. My mind boggles at the Wikipedia line:

” In his career as a television presenter he often used this fact to his advantage.”

He died some years after his body rejected a donor kidney.

In his memory, the station was renamed Bart’s Neverending Network. It is a government funded station, by the way. I guess the media and officials in Holland felt they had no chance to actually stop this truly monumental exercise in tastelessness.

On Friday, the show went ahead. Here is the Beeb again:

“The programme began, not with the contestants, but with the prospective donor.

As “Lisa” walked out into the bright studio lights, the audience rose to its feet and applauded “the heroine of the evening”. Sharp, intelligent and perhaps a bit cool, is how she came across to this viewer.

The three contestants, on the other hand, were nervous, emotional and well versed in the cliches of reality television.

“How are you going to beat the other two?” presenter Patrick Lodiers wanted to know.

“By just being myself,” two of the three answered.

Three slices of life. Three people eager to show that their lives were worth living, yet could be so much better if they no longer had to go through dialysis.

Getting to know them through a montage of photographs, bits of video and testimonials by friends and relatives was hardly cutting edge television, but to be fair on BNN it was nothing like a freak show either.

In the end, it was the most vulnerable of the three who made the biggest impression.

Twenty-nine-year-old Charlotte talked about the fact that she cannot even drink more than a pint of liquid per day, because that is all her body can handle.

It must have touched a nerve with viewers, who had been encouraged to send text messages to help the donor decide.

Some 38% of those text messages were votes for Charlotte. However, just as “Lisa” started to announce who she was going to give her kidney to, the presenter intervened…

The show was a hoax. Lisa is an actress. But the contestants are real, and they are genuinely waiting for a kidney, in a society with a donor shortage.

Bart de Graaff’s “taunting laughter rang out posthumously, on a recording, before the credits rolled and everyone was left stunned.”

Afterwards, according to Wikipedia again,

“the director of Endemol, Paul Römer, stated “Let there be no misunderstanding, I would never make a program such as ‘The Big Donor Show’ for real. I do understand the massive outrage very well. But I also hope for people to understand why we did this. It was necessary to get the shortage of donors back on the political agenda. I call up everybody to get very angry about that, and to fill in a donor form.”

Twelve thousand people did.

I reckon that was an act of genius. it is up there with San Serif, the spaghetti tree and the public auction of Mick Jagger’s sperm. Unlike the others, it has a compelling social value.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 8:44 pm and is filed under ideas and society, visual media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.