Snow business

Written in 1983, The Running Man by Stephen King envisions a dark future where society is kept pacified and entertained by broadcasts of criminals being hunted by trained assassins. The reward for participation is money and freedom if they escape, death if they don't.

This theme continues to crop up in film and literature: Battle Royale in 1999, The Hunger Games in 2008. We are constantly reading about a dystopian future where the increasing stakes of TV reality and game shows lead us to watch dispassionately while some poor schlub risks life and limb for our entertainment.

So, I've recently become addicted to The Jump. I'm not sure how much longer it can go on for. Every year, another batch of celebrities rock up, hoping to get a bit of free publicity, maybe have a bit of fun, and every year half of them are carted off to hospital before the credits have finished rolling. It's gotten to the point where they no longer even have a backlog of ex-Towie stars and failed Big Brother contestants to bring on when the current line up inevitably disqualifies themselves through injury. Instead, they bring back previous contestants or, most recently, the person who was voted off the previous week. It's looking less and less like a competition of skill and more and more like a game of last man (or woman) standing.

In case the show has passed you by, here's the set-up. Twelve celebrities, most of whom have never skied before, are taken to the Austrian Alps where they are given a few weeks to learn how to compete in a number of high adrenaline winter sports, including skeleton bobsleigh, snow cross, and ski jumping. The last of these involves sliding down a hill at the speed of a small car, launching yourself into the air off a 50 foot ramp, and hoping that you land on your feet rather than your head. This is scary for accomplished skiers. For people who struggle to get down a green run and remain on their feet it beggars belief.

I guess the question is, does this really indicate the final slide of society into depravity and decay. After all, this isn't the first time we've engaged in activities where what we're really hoping for is spectacular failure rather than achievement and success. Just look at Formula One.

I suspect every generation judges the new generation less genteel than the last. We think of the sixties as a time of peace and love and groovy music, when it was a time of drugs, violent protest and the Vietnam War; we think of the 1920's as being Bertie Wooster, flappers and the Charleston when it was, in fact, a time of illegal drinking, drugs and gang warfare.

But perhaps, rather than thinking that previous generations were just as bad as us, we should think that we are just as good. Every era in history can be cherry picked for the worst or the best parts depending on our fancy. Even ours. We currently have the most tolerant society of all time, with multi-culturalism rising in almost every nation on earth, and international work environments meaning that even national boundaries are no longer a barrier to friendship. Thousands work tirelessly in hospitals, or in charities, or international aid agencies, in jobs whose reward is far more humanitarian than monetary, especially when valued against the time and energy put in. We have built a global communications infrastructure and we use it to share pictures of cats, we have created artificially intelligent robots and get them to play table tennis, we have created flying drones and miniature cameras and we use them to get awesome footage of extreme sports.

Sci fi was wrong. We don't create the seeds of our own destruction. We take everything that could be used for war and we turn it, first to entertainment, and then eventually to our own betterment. Robots are used in automated testing for anti-cancer treatments, drones are used in rescue operations, the internet is used to communicate ideas and provide freedom of speech to those that have none.

And sometimes, technology is used to watch an ex-Eastenders star, flying down a hill, out of control, and ending it all with a big smile on his face and a hug for his opponent. Because sometimes a game show is just a game show. And if everybody takes part with a smile on their face and a willingness to participate, then watching is not an admission of our own basest instincts, but an admission that we like to watch people enjoying themselves, working together against adversity, being part of something bigger. And if we stop looking for the negative, we can start to be part of something bigger too. We can participate. We can start to share the joy.