Raven Smith on Love Island

Audio Transcription:

Hello, this is Raven Smith. I am a writer, columnist, all around gobby person and last year I got completely addicted to Love Island — I’d never watched it before. In the three months it was on TV I’d binge watch loads of the old series of it and it basically, like Diet Coke, it changed my DNA.

I was constantly pissed off that I wasn’t on holiday, even the most horrible, like not sexy, not attractive people I left the door open for recoupling – I always left the door ajar. I guess the most extreme influence it had on me was that I shaved all the hair off my body from the eyebrows down like a kind of super sexy, Manx cat — the regrowth has been hideous, but it’s back. I also had a WhatsApp group with my mates, where we would just be snarky about what was going on in the TV show and I actually think it’s not even a guilty pleasure, Love Island, we’re all watching, we’re all talking about it and now I am in the process of building a podcast where we do exactly the same thing.

Now Love Island is, of course, sort of about people shagging, but it isn’t just about two hunks of flesh mating. There’s just something so special about falling in love on holiday like it’s just so magic to be falling in love and all the stupid chemicals that are going off in your brain when that’s happening. Falling in love in the sun is probably the best thing you could ever do I have heard. It’s essentially why they invented L.A. and I think although Love Island is about falling in love it’s stripped away all of the bumph that most reality TV has. You know, if you think about people falling in love on Big Brother it took like 12 weeks and then they were like I dunno if I like you, like any normal human thing and I think watching people go through the motions of falling in love repeatedly on such a high turnover is what’s really interesting about the show and I think it says a lot for this new culture we have of expressing on a surface level.

Building a platform seems to be, you know, this great millennial desire and I think Love Island is an instant platform builder and I think what Love Island is interesting and what we will hopefully touch on in this podcast is where we are going as, kind of, an all broadcasting culture. Each of us is broadcasting and I just think that’s part of the sweet spot. We know obviously there’s been criticism, just questioning of the vulnerability of the contestants, how well they’re looked after before, during and after the show and I think we’ll touch on that. But for me, the bigger themes about love that we all have is what I’m hoping we will talk about. I’m getting great guests to come and talk to me about Love Island because everyone loves it and I would love to have like a really snappy, sexy, cool, like a really good catchphrase‑y sign off for the podcast but I can’t think of one.

In the meantime, send in any topics you want me to talk about to audio@​theface.​com, audio@​theface.​com. I’m gonna go away and have some media training so I get better at catchphrases and calls to action. Love Island’s on today – enjoy it! We’ll be back with another episode of the podcast.

Please send in any topics you want discussed to audio@​theface.​com

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