American stunts, the British press and reality TV

Today marks my 43rd day living across the big pond. In that month and a half long span, I have eaten quite a bit of food. Even my English major ineptness with "numbers" hasn't stopped me from figuring out that, averaging three meals a day, today's lunch marked my 129th meal.

I would rate about half these meals at very good to excellent. These were the ones I bought in a restaurant. The other half I cooked myself. Actually, after a few false starts, I have become something of a culinary artist, preparing several elegant (spare) meals involving pasta, chicken, jarred sauce, and one night — in a frenzy of inspiration — trout. Presentation is everything.

This past Sunday, as I prepared for meal number 120, another American spending the fall in London came out of his box for meal number one. The fun-loving Yank was illusionist David Blaine, who had spent the last 44 days suspended from a crane in a glass container with, he claimed, nothing but water to sustain him.

Blaine, as some may remember, encased himself in a block of ice for a ridiculous number of hours in New York a few years back — or at least pretended to. The British press had a field day with the current Blaine story, and concocted numerous theories to explain away the illusion: The glass was lined with nutrients; the man was actually a hologram projected into the box; the water was laced . . . it went on and on.

Although I didn't follow the coverage at home, any slow news day here guaranteed some fresh disaster for the boxed-up New Yorker — "Blaine Attack!" was one memorable headline. In the first few weeks of the stunt, which attracted a massive crowd daily to the foot of the Tower Bridge, a few ne'er-do-wells launched eggs and other food items at Blaine, or barbecued nearby in the hope that wafted essence of hamburger would break his resolve.

Apparently it didn't, and by the time I saw the sight firsthand, the public seemed a little more supportive. One guy, a few pints under, thought he was having an intense conversation with Blaine via sign language. Other people just waved. Small American flags were taped to the fence protecting Blaine, who, as a friend pointed out, may have been inspired by the Kafka story "The Hunger Artist." He definitely looked hungry when I saw him, although he emerged from the ordeal looking bulkier than, for example, me. Suspicious? Definitely.

What interested me about the exhibition, illusion, performance art — or whatever it was Blaine had in mind — was his choice of locale. Why move the stunt to Britain? Why not the United States? The answer is pretty simple: The press here is rabid. Most Americans' perception of British media comes from the assiduously reputable BBC. But the channels' staid, well-spoken commentators represent only one facet of the nation's press.

For serving some of the most literate, sensible citizens in the world, much of London's popular media feels more like "Journalists Gone Wild" than journalists gone objective. Even the reputable newspapers don't claim strict neutrality, and gossip columns serve as the mainstay for the less reputable, along with a dollop of hard news and the ever-present Page 3 girl.

Blaine picked his audience well. Even after paying substantial fines to the police department for failure to notify them in advance of his public starvation, he is sure to make many thousands of dollars for every pound he shed.

Yet Blaine fails to take the cake for best media stunt in the scant number of weeks I've been tuned in to "the Beeb." That honor would instead go to Derren Brown, a "psychological magician" who claimed to play Russian roulette live and in prime time.

His convincing TV special showed him narrowing down a large group of contestants he thought he could "read" easily to one man, who put a bullet into a blinded revolver with chambers numbered one to six. Whether the bullet was live or not — most likely not — has been a matter of controversy. Brown proceeded to pull the trigger with the gun at his own head. He faltered once, then fired the last chamber into a sandbag. The stunt was pure entertainment in the base tradition of the Coliseum — but it was, to say the least, enthralling.

On-the-edge British TV has a way of colonizing the U.S. tube — "Survivor," "Big Brother" (which, in a special "student edition" here last week, showed the first-ever in-house sex scene) and "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" all made it big here before being optioned by U.S. networks.

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So are nihilistic, flirting-with-fatality stunts the last hurdle to clear in the drive to put "reality" on TV? I think there are pretty strong ethical and sociological reasons to hope not. Or maybe I just don't trust myself — for all the vulgarity of Brown's show, no one I was watching it with could take their eyes off the screen.

Andrew Bosse is an English major. He is studying abroad this semester at University College of London.