M6’s new program, Opération Renaissance, was broadcast on Monday January 11, 2021 for the first time, then stopped for lack of an audience. This new type of reality TV, coming straight from the United States and criticized from all sides, has raised a real ethical question.
- Launched in January 2021, the program “Operation Renaissance” was stopped for lack of audience
- It offered a television follow-up of the journey of overweight people having recourse to bariatric surgery
- Obesity would affect 17% of the population in France
After hitting the headlines, the show “Operation Rebirth” silently disappeared from the screens of the M6 channel, for lack of an audience. A good thing, according to its detractors.
The program, produced and presented by Karine Le Marchand, made a lot of noise because of its theme: 10 obese people were followed for three years in their course of bariatric surgery and in their struggle to change their silhouette. “I wanted to understand the mechanism of weight loss. Why the body was racing at some point. I wanted to give a voice to those who don’t usually take it. That’s what I like to do in life”, explains Karine Le Marchand, who surely did not expect the outcry aroused on social networks by her show.
A “dangerous” and “guilty” program
In a column published on Médiapart, signed by more than 170 people, caregivers or collectives, the anti-grossophobia association Gras Politique denounced the “dangerousness” of the program, which idealizes bariatric surgery, yet sometimes bears failures and many health risks.
The multi-factorial dimension of obesity is also minimized, to the benefit of the sole will of the patients. “It is indeed the obese that we are attacking. It is up to him/her to change, it is up to him/her to do. The sacrosanct myth of willpower, the first pillar of grossophobia , makes it possible to deny all the violence suffered by fat people, and to send the obese back to their guilt: we don’t know how to do things, we don’t know how to love ourselves, we don’t know how to eat, we don’t know how to lose weight, we we would by choice put out of society which only wants our good. Our salvation depends on weight loss, even if it means losing our physical or mental health: it is the only way out that is put forward, to the detriment of the prevention of violence and inequalities, or the fight against discrimination suffered”, adds the collective.
The relevance of the experts chosen is also debated. “It’s a grossophobic program, which relies on experts who are not. Personally, I never meet them, neither in congresses, nor in learned societies and even less in working groups”, notes Anne-Sophie Joly, president of the National Collective of Obese Associations (CNAO).
“Voyeurism” and “grossophobia”
France now has around 17% of people suffering from obesity, and projections for 2030 are around 25%. As a result, obesity surgery is experiencing rapid development in France. 240,000 operations were carried out between 2006 and 2014 and 450,000 were scheduled between 2006 and 2017. Since 2010, more than one in a thousand women aged 18 to 54 is operated on each year.
M6 has therefore put its finger on a real social issue, but in a very clumsy way, according to nutritionist Arnaud Cocaul, specialist in the care of obese people. “I understand that this program shocked obese people. Already, Karine le Marchand is a former anorexic. How can a former anorexic correctly present a program on people suffering from obesity? It’s impossible, because she is at their antipodes. And the way she has of lying on the couch, with her slender and shapely legs, facing women suffering from obesity, it is a form of grossophobia”, judges the health professional. “The concept is intended to be empathetic and didactic, but it is only voyeuristic. However, the speakers of this program are serious and respectable: it is the staging that is wrong”, believes Arnaud Cocaul.
Reality TV and disease: an ethical question
In addition, Karine Le Marchand’s show raised a real ethical question: can the concept of a reality TV show be based on a pathology? The answer is no, according to Anne-Sophie Joly. “The way in which obesity has been treated by this program does not in any way promote therapeutic education, it is pure voyeurism. Moreover, the slender image of Karine Le Marchand establishes a non-verbal dialogue with people suffering from obesity who have participated in the show. His physique tells them: “You see, you are obese and I am not”. To me, this is an abominable media concept, and I worry about the people who took part in it. Would we do a similar show with someone who has brain cancer or arthritis? I do not think so”, she concludes. What discourage Karine Le Marchand from producing her new show on transgender people? Nothing is less sure.
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