OK, but isn't that the point of him sensationalising the things he does, out of all proportions to reality! That is the US tv show way after all, with reality tv over there especially isn't it? Look at those Jackass tv show US idiots for another example! Born Survivor is not a British tv production show do not forget there, Shaun! It is a US tv production filmed as 'Man Versus Wild' and simply re-hashed and re-edited over here for the UK audience. Otherwise it would have been Survivorman would it not!
The over the top sensationalisation of everything is the reson most folks really are complaining about that start speech of his at the front of every show. Where he claims to show 'anyone being stranded out there in that same location in a true life survival situation, just how to get out of it alive'. OK, maybe not his exact words used there, but he is essentially saying just that isn't he! Yet, what he delivers is nothing like that in reality. THAT IS THE TRUE REASON WHY LOTS OF FOLKS THINK HIS SHOW TO BE A DANGER TO SOME PEOPLE WHO MIGHT WELL TRY TO COPY HIM. No other reason! If he did what 'it says on the tin' as it were, then he would end up delivering a survival skills show more like Ray Mears, Survivorman or the great Les Hiddins The Bushtucker Man. Instead he, or possibly rather more likely his production team in the US, chose not to go that line in the show. Instead we get Ray Mears meets Jackass for tv with Bear Grylls in Man Versus Wild/Born Survivor as a tv show product. I do actually truly like Bear Grylls overall, although I must say I prefer watching the whole individual adventure as one in a dvd format, usually containing what is otherwise fed to us as two separate tv episodes of the British show here, plus some few edited out extras sequences not shown before here on tv.
I'm not trying to defend the practically, to all due intents and purposes I really feel, indefensible as stated, as I and very many others apparently do see it in the above here. I do honestly myself think it will not be long now though maybe, till someone or other - sooner or later - is badly injured or killed, in someplace or other in the globe whilst engaged in actively trying to copy some of the incredibly crazy stunts that Grylls pulls off in some of his recent survival style extreme travel-adventure shows there. But I really just wanted to state what is arguably the specific facts of the case in point there maybe with Bear's show - that to is designed to attract viewers through sensationalism more than all else, a shock value factor like the 'survival in the jungle' type reality 'king of the jungle' shows too. What with the eating and killing of any life encountered along the way, especially swallowing revolting bugs etc. Grylls revels in the extreme nature of his travel survival adventures for these shows we can easily see; and that is what will arguably, eventually I have no doubt, get others that copy him very sadly killed outdoors in extreme environments pursuits there, one day.
I for one though was a good deal especially intensely shocked at the unnecessary cruelty shown to the skunk there filmed for the Baja, California, Mexico adventure episode the other week though. And the insensitivity on teatime British tv to almost gleefully show an animals head severed, and stuck on the end of his knife to show off to the camera. Just a thoroughly poor taste judgement piece of programming, of a cruel incident filmed there, and rather unneccessarily and insensitively presented I thought, is all I was meaning in first above mentioning that particular rather distastefully shown incident, here upon the forum in this thread.
Posted: 29/10/2008 at 12:37
