Alberto Angela and Temptation Island: Rai was right to suspend Noos

It takes perhaps a slight effort of immedesimation to overcome the knee-jerk reactions to theIndignez-vous that yesterday provoked uncontrollable disgust among culture-goers, stunned to learn that Rai decided to suspend and reschedule Noos, Alberto Angela’s cultural popularization program, to avoid (without declaring it, but we all thought so) incurring the ruthless competition of Temptation Island on Channel 5. In the meantime, it must be said that Rai did very well: Alberto Angela’s program had to be safeguarded, protected, rescued from the clutches of an unbeatable antagonist, whom it is also difficult to imagine as a competitor with whom to engage in competition. Immersion serves to easily understand why Rai is right, perhaps even in lashing out against “any fanciful reconstruction of the story,” as it took care to point out in the laconic statement on the affair: can the adventures of a female leopard from the Serengeti have any faint hope of being more compelling than the cazziatone in narrow Neapolitan that the hairdresser Alessia directs at her faithless boyfriend Lino, guilty of cooing with the temptress on duty and evading confrontation with her companion several times?

It is worth reminding then, to those who should not be familiar with Temptation Island (that is, to a small minority: the roster obviously does not include those who on social media are racing to be the first to flaunt feigned ignorance on the subject), what the program consists of: a few couples, strictly heterosexual (and strictly unmarried: Mediaset knows we are all good bourgeoisies and avoids the risk of taking the side of one or another homewrecker), are translated to a vacation village in Sardinia, after which the males are separated from the females and the divided couples are placed in two different, non-communicating areas. Males and females will later interact with so-called temptresses and temptresses, i.e., single comprimarios who in the course of the program are supposed to test the fidelity of the participants.Throughout all this, each participant is allowed to see, via video recordings, how his or her partner or companion is behaving on the other side of the village. When a participant has had enough of his or her boyfriend’s or partner’s filth, he or she is entitled to request a “bonfire of confrontation,” which is a vis-à-vis discussion with his or her partner in front of a fire on the beach, at the end of which the couple will consider whether to continue “the journey,” as the participants call it, or withdraw from the program.

We don’t know if this is all true or if the participants are all actors, a doubt that arises every time we see males over 30 in the throes of unstoppable hormonal crises triggered by the first pair of boobs capable of inducing them to behave like ridiculous chameleons, heedless of being filmed by dozens of cameras. And to tell the truth, it matters little: the program works brilliantly because it is all about that activity across eras, latitudes and social classes that is the gossiping about other people’s romantic situations (“for what do we live for but to be the object of our neighbors’ mockery and to laugh at them in our turn?”: Mr. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice wondered). Temptation Island works because once a week it grants millions of viewers the opportunity to get the dicks of seven different couples in one fell swoop. It works because we imagine that millions of viewers relive their experience in the stories of the couples who participate in the program. It works because for so many it is like seeing themselves in the mirror, since we assume that in Italy Laclos’s Valmonts are in the distinct minority compared to the Tonys and Lukes. It works because for so many others, on the other hand, it is a very easy injection of self-esteem (if one is male, it does not take much to feel superior to a bully who demands, admittedly legitimately, to mate with anything that moves within a kilometer radius, and then however throws tables and chairs if his partner, more than rightly, calls him to the reciprocity test, and if one is female, it doesn’t take much to feel relieved if one’s husband in the end is not so bad because he has nothing to do with that macho coon on the program). The country that gave birth to Carolina Invernizio cannot be surprised by the success of Temptation Island. And if you have sometimes wanted to pry into someone else’s love affair, then not only should you not be surprised, but you also have no right to be indignant.

This, then, is the colossus that Alberto Angela has to fight against. It would be like making Manny Pacquiao and Mike Tyson fight in the same match: it is impossible, they belong to two different categories. The exact same assumption applies to Noos and Temptation Island : the sport is the same, since they are both two television programs, moreover arranged in the same time slot, but the categories are different. Alberto Angela makes cultural entertainment, the cuckolds of Temptation Island make light entertainment. On the one hand a TV program that focuses on knowledge, on the other hand a TV program that plays everything on emotionality. And this is nothing new: How many times have Maria De Filippi’s programs, starting with the stainless C’è posta per te, outclassed Alberto Angela’s disclosure? The rare times he has succeeded in the feat, those-in-the-culture’s social media have talked about it for days, celebrated as one celebrates when the national soccer team wins a World Cup. But Angela usually wins when the other side is measured by other kinds of programs: he won in May with Pompeii’s New Discoveries, and on the other side was Michelle Hunziker’s Io canto family . He won at Christmas with Tonight in Paris when he had the Vatican concert against it. The year before, Stanotte a Milano, also on Christmas, beat a rerun of a Ficarra and Picone film. If you go and look at Ulysses’ ratings, you will see that the share percentages are quite similar to those of Noos: always around 15-16 percent. Of course, the absolute numbers are higher because one must remember that the comparison with Temptation Island takes place in the summer, when a good part of Italians have better things to do than stay at home and watch TV. But on the share there is no getting away from there.

The point, then, is another. The size of Alberto Angela’s audience at the moment has been sailing on the same percentages for years: it is useless to get indignant because Noos does not hold a candle to the island of tamers. Better then to protect a good popular program, suited to the times, nourished moreover by the contribution of many young experts, reserving its airing for a time of the year when there will be potential to make higher numbers and ratings. It is true that Rai has to do public service and should not reason on the basis of numbers, but since Rai1 cannot afford 365 episodes of Noos, one every day of the year, then perhaps it is better to maximize the effort and work to ensure that an entry level cultural program, as one would say in marketing jargon, reaches as many people as possible. Spreading culture also means realizing what are the best times to get a product that has every reason to be valued and championed to an audience that is not moving on command.

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