Below Deck Down Under's swift and serious response to sexual assault and inappropriate behaviour is a lesson to everyone, everywhere
Is reality TV a force for good? Maybe yeah, actually.
Content warning - sexual assault, predatory behaviour, reality tv, me ranting
I barely watch TV. The TV in my flat is a glorified monitor with a broken pixel that my long-suffering boyfriend dragged to Amsterdam in an IKEA bag, all the way from London. Like a little kid, I’d rather rewatch old episodes of Arrested Development or Broad City than try something new. I care even less about reality TV - I never watched Big Brother or the other reality shows from my youth. I never got into Love Island. Years and years after getting home from school and plopping down to watch TV every evening, I have totally lost interest and would rather go to the cinema, a place where I am forced to concentrate. However, I do make a few exceptions, such as my favourite hate watch The Kardashians, and the topic of today’s discussion, Below Deck.
For the uninitiated, Below Deck is a reality show following the lives of luxury sailing yacht crews and the guests they take on their charters. Yes, the people who go on these yachts as guests are rich, but they’re not the 1%. Real rich people have their own yachts. These are the more nouveau-riche startup wealthy, which means they’re generally a bit worse behaved than old money, in the best way possible. There’s a lot of drinking and banqueting, and they all seem to have an absolute blast and leave mega tips. It’s weirdly nice to watch. They’re more human and there’s more of a sense that they’ve earned this little treat and they’re going to make the most of it.
Anyway, this isn’t about the guests. Of the many flavours of the Below Deck franchise, today we’re talking about Down Under. I sat down with Clara of The Clara Chronicles when she came to visit last week for some under-the-weather reality TV. Yes, I’m now 30 and a few days in Berlin can really take it out of me. It’s embarrassing.
Alright buckle up everyone, I’m about to describe everything that happened on S2E7 of Below Deck Down Under in painstaking detail.
The first few episodes go by in typical fashion. The chaotic but lovely chef Tzarina is cooking up a storm. The deckhands (who are all men) do deckhand stuff. The stewardesses (who are all women) do stewardess stuff. Captain Jason is a calm and handsome father figure. Charter guests come and go, there are some drunk gay guys yelling at each other, and some unsanctioned night time swimming (beware of the sharks! this is Australia! everything is trying to kill you!). Various members of the crew enjoy their post-charter nights out by getting drunk and snogging each other. Nothing particularly remarkable here.
That everything is going by unremarkably contrasts with the unexpectedly serious ending of the 6th episode “All Wrong”. I’d recommend all readers with Netflix, Hayu, or Amazon Prime to watch the episode after this - “Turnover Day” - which recaps the end of the last episode and means you don’t have to watch the entire charter before the drama happens. Alternatively, here’s ET Canada covering the whole debacle in four minutes. But the whole episode is obviously more interesting so go watch it.
Let me set the scene. It’s the end of episode 6 “All Wrong”. The squad have gone on their usual post-charter piss-up on land. Deckhand Adam is being hit on by stewardess Laura, who will not take no for an answer. It is pretty painful viewing. Not only is it extremely creepy because Adam has said no about five thousand times, but also because it’s cringe to see her keep throwing herself at him and refusing to give up. She seems to be offended on an almost molecular level that Adam is not interested in sleeping with her. Laura has clearly not dealt with rejection much. Awks.
Meanwhile, head stewardess Aesha is getting a little worried about Margot, who is the lowest ranked and least experienced member of the crew. Margot is sweet and beautiful and in her own words, struggles to take initiative and is nervous. Luke, who is the highest ranked deckhand (or bosun), has noticed that Margot is cute and drunk and maybe a smidge vulnerable. There is evidently no room for chivalry here. Luke seems to have his eye on the prize. The crew head back to the boat and Aesha escorts a hammered Margot personally to her bed. You can clearly hear Margot saying that she wants to go to bed, “no Luke”.
As Margot gets into bed, there’s a powercut. This means a lot of crew members are running around on the deck trying to figure out how to get the power back on. In all the confusion, Luke decides that it’s the perfect opportunity to sneak - naked - into Margot’s bunk and crawl in. Actually, it’s barely sneaking. It’s walking confidently past the producers and camera crew, with a creepy grin on his face. By the time this is happening, the lights are back on. The camera crew film him going in and shutting the door behind him. Straight away, a producer goes in after him and gently tries to coax Luke down. They’re trying to not make a scene, but Luke isn’t having any of it. He’s trying to purr into Margot’s ear and make it look like she’s cool with him being there (ya girl is not only half asleep but also blackout drunk). Luke gets pissed off with the producers and tells them to fuck off. He slams the door a few times as they try to come in. By now the producers are banging on the door and telling him that this behaviour isn’t cool. Eventually, a still stark bollock naked Luke exits Margot’s cabin with a face like thunder and shuffles down the narrow hallway with his arse out.
It’s weirdly all quite understated. The door slamming and telling Luke to get out aren’t overly dramatic. And it’s all over in a flash, and you’re sat there thinking, what did I just see? The usual dramatic music and sound effects that are an integral part of the Below Deck experience are absent from the whole thing. Seeing the producers, who are so invisible you forget how everyone is being filmed the whole time, is jarring. They’re so quick to step in and try to diffuse the situation calmly, but they don’t relent when Luke doesn’t respond. It makes you wonder what might have happened if they hadn’t been there - and what was going through Luke’s mind when he decided to climb into a sleeping colleague’s bunk in the nip, with a gaggle of producers watching.
As this is still reality tv, and the episode ends in a “TO BE CONTINUED” cliffhanger. Thankfully, the good people at Bravo broadcast the next episode immediately. I’m hoping it was to not give internet trolls a week to take to Twitter and debate whether Margot was asking for it or not.
After a thorough recap of Luke’s turfing out of Margot’s bunk by the producers, we see Aesha going to the captain’s room in tears, knowing she has to wake him up in the middle of the night with this awful news. I really felt for her, because she let Margot out of her sight for about thirty seconds because of a powercut, and in those thirty seconds she was almost sexually assaulted.
Now, let me tell you about Captain Jason Chambers.
Captain Jason is not only marvellously handsome and an excellent yachtsman, but an extremely calm and compassionate leader and the epitome of wholesome masculinity. The reason Aesha is crying when she goes to wake him up at the crack of christ about this isn’t because she’s scared of disturbing him or what he might say. It’s because she is distressed about what has happened and knows it will alarm and upset him. Aesha tells him in detail what happened and what she saw - namely, that she walked down the corridor towards Margot’s bunk to find the production crew banging on the door and yelling at Luke to get out - and that it was an escalation of predatory behaviour from the night out. Now, you may expect a 50 year on man who has worked on boats his whole life to tell the chief stewardess off for waking him up about something that’s already been solved (ie. Luke is back in his bunk and Margot is safe). Or that he may decide to deal with this in the morning.
But Captain Jason knows better. He goes straight to Luke’s bunk (which he’s locked himself into), lets himself in with the spare key, and tells Luke he needs to get off the boat right now. Luke is still hammered and doesn’t really understand what’s going on. He puts on a comically terrible outfit, is frogmarched to a taxi, and taken off to a hotel for the night. This is 100% the correct thing to do - get him off the boat immediately. Margot is informed that the boat is a Luke free zone and everyone goes to sleep off a heavier than usual night.
The next morning, no-one else really knows what’s happened. The deckhands cleaning the boat are wondering out loud where Luke is. Aesha updates chef Tzarina of what happened, and Margot says she feels embarrassed that she got so drunk and put herself into a dangerous situation. Tzarina, certified top friend, says these extremely true words:
'Women should be able to be able to be red-hot drunk if they want to be. We should be able to stand naked in a room and not have anyone do anything to us. You know, you were allowed to be drunk, you were allowed to be. It’s the other person’s problem.'
Laura is the only woman on board who doesn’t know what’s happened. Put a pin in this, it’ll come in useful in about two paragraph’s time. The other deckhands, Adam (who is the victim of Laura’s rejected advances) and Harry (total babe, but not a huge part of this episode) also don’t know.
Jason calls Luke back onto the boat and fires him on the spot. Luke needs to be reminded what happened last night because he was too drunk to remember. He puts up no defence, saying he understands why he has to leave. As packs his bag and leaves, Jason calls the crew for a meeting. He tells them that Luke has been fired for inappropriate behaviour, and does not mention that Margot was the victim. He gives them all a talk about how the boat - and bunks especially - are safe spaces and that boundaries are sharp and must not be crossed. It’s pretty basic - the kind of speech you’d hear in any sort of safeguarding situation - but it feels impactful here because it’s in response to something that actually happened, that we’ve seen play out in real time. It’s a situation that had a clear beginning, middle, and end… right?
Well, apparently not, because there was more drama to be had. It’s reality tv, guys!
Remember Laura? The ridiculously overconfident stewardess who doesn’t know what “no” means and cannot fathom that a man doesn’t want to sleep with her? She seems genuinely upset and shocked at what Jason is saying. But not for the same reason as everyone else. She is sad that Luke is gone, and asks Jason (in front of everyone) if they can say goodbye to him. Yikes.
The next few scenes of the show are predictably crew members discussing this new information in disbelief. Laura is filled in about the details of Luke’s departure by Margot herself. How does Laura react to hearing Margot telling her that she was the victim of an attempted sexual assault while she was unconscious, and that she only knew what happened because she was told later on that Luke had climbed into her bunk, naked, and had to be dragged out of there by the producers? Does Laura listen, understanding the serious implications of what Luke has done, and understanding why he has been fired? Does Laura empathise with Margot and see how terrifying being told that you were almost assaulted in your sleep is?
No, she does not. Laura instead says what a shame it was that she didn’t kiss Luke that night, because it would have saved Margot. And how she would have happily welcomed a naked Luke into her bunk if he’d come a-knocking. About as insensitive as it gets. She didn’t even have the sense to say nothing at all, even if she did feel like that. Later on in the episode, we see Laura actively approach Margot to say that she thinks it’s really unfair that Luke was fired and not just given a warning, because what he did isn’t really that bad. It beggars belief and watching it made my skin crawl.
Margot naturally goes straight to chief stewardess and all round top friend Aesha and tells her what Laura has said. We also see Aesha speaking to Adam, the poor innocent deckhand who has been turning down Laura’s advances for days. He is rather sheepish about the whole thing, as men are taught to be. He said that he didn’t want to be rude to her, and said no repeatedly but politely and delicately, so as not to hurt her feelings or create tension. He is clearly trying to brush it off as one of those things, and doesn’t see it for what it is - sexual harassment. But it’s not just creepy comments Adam has had to deal with. In the aftermath, we see footage from the night of Laura sitting on Adam in the hot tub, and being told straight up that he doesn’t want to sleep with her. She then follows him back to his bunk and tries to give him a massage, squiring moisturiser onto his back and crawling into his bunk. Poor wee Adam is just lying motionless on his front, because once you’ve said no enough times you fully run out of options and disengage. The production crew step in again, telling her to get down and go to her own bed. She does so, very slowly and reluctantly, with a grin on her face like it’s all a big joke. The reaction from the production crew is very fast, probably in disbelief as they see another crew member getting into someone’s bed uninvited for the second time in one night.
This new information naturally makes it to Captain Jason pretty quickly, who is told that Laura has been hassling Adam relentlessly for sex despite being told no numerous times, and that she had taken it upon herself to minimise the seriousness of Luke’s attempted assault to Margot’s face. Jason promptly calls Laura to speak with him and fires her on the spot. Specifically, he said:
“Adam feels uncomfortable with some moments out [with you] and he’s tried to say no. You have not listened to him and his boundaries to be set. After my multiple speeches with the crew about boundaries and respect, did you not go to Margot and say, ‘Poor Luke. I wish he had come in and seen me?’ You’ve disrespected exactly what I actually set out to do.”
She doesn’t handle it as well as Luke, who has the decency to accept his punishment and leaves with his tail between his legs. Laura tries to convince Jason that a warning is enough of a punishment, even after being sat down and explained to very clearly why her behaviour and boundary crossing - mere minutes after the lecture about why we don’t cross boundaries - was not appropriate and not tolerated on the boat. She goes off to pack in a huff and buggers off in a taxi. The rest of the crew are told, and Adam blames himself for getting Laura fired and depriving her of work. My brother in christ, if she were a man the police would have been called weeks ago.
Even without the Laura incident, this episode would have been groundbreaking in its sobering depiction of attempted sexual assault, how the producers as bystanders stepped in to prevent it, and Captain Jason’s swift response and zero-tolerance approach to Luke’s behaviour. But Laura’s reaction and near immediate firing provides another useful angle to the sexual assault conversation. Sure, women don’t commit crimes against men nearly as much as men do against women. Statistically, violent woman-on-man crimes are statistically negligible. But violent crimes don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s an end point that is preceded by other types of non-violent but predatory behaviour, both verbal and physical. It doesn’t matter what gender either party is. We don’t see it much in women, and I like to think it’s because women have more dignity than men and understand that no means no, because no meaning no can be a matter of life and death for us. It’s probably more complicated than that, but we’ve all seen more men than women being persistent when going after the opposite sex (I’m just talking about the straights here).
But women like Laura do exist. We’ve all met one. I used to live with one, and it was at best cringe and at worst hugely inappropriate to see how she locked eyes on a man and decided “I’ll have that one”. She was pretty successful with these tactics, maybe because men don’t see themselves as in danger in those sorts of situations. They’re usually physically bigger and stronger, and think they can escape a sticky situation pretty easily. Besides, how sticky can a situation realistically get, they might think? They haven’t had years of being told how to protect themselves from attacks and that they are vulnerable. And they’re not necessarily vulnerable or in danger, but they are being pressured into doing something by someone else. Just because there’s no danger, it doesn’t mean it’s ok.
You probably all know this, because only the finest people subscribe to this newsletter. Showing Luke’s inappropriate behaviour followed by his comeuppance right next to Laura’s inappropriate behaviour followed by her comeuppance was important. It doesn’t matter that one might appear more serious than the other. It’s not a contest. They share in common a lack of respect for others and disregard for boundaries and autonomy. It doesn’t matter how the line is crossed.
What the producers have done in telling Luke and Laura to get out of Margot and Adam’s respective bunks is disregard what is commonly known as the “bystander effect”. That is the social phenomenon which theorises that people are less likely to help out someone who is in danger if there are other people around, usually because they assume that someone else will surely help so I don’t have to, or because they interpret the situation as ambiguous and don’t want to make a fuss. We all like to think that we would step in if we saw someone in trouble. But would we?
Last year at IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), I managed a series of immersive VR experiences in the new media pavilion. One of them, Missing 10 Hours created by XR director Fanni Fazakas at RumeXR, is a VR experience with multiple endings which are influenced by the behaviour of the player. You play the bystander, the friend of a guy on a night out who has spiked a woman’s drink with GHB and is trying to get her back to his place. You see her gradually lose her inhibitions and become less in control of the situation. There are various moments in the narrative where you can step in. You might do nothing and let your friend take her into the back of a cab and go back to his. Or you might step in, alert some nearby police officers, and make sure she’s put in a cab and taken home. It’s a fascinating concept and the crew worked together with psychologists to make sure ‘that the experience is ethically correct and will have a measurable impact.’ The aim of the project is to educate people about the roles they can play in these seemingly ambiguous situations, and encourage them to be active defenders rather than passive bystanders. As the team at RumeXR explain,
‘If people can understand potentially dangerous social situations, they will become more active agents. The present situation is very specific about how to become an active agent in an emerging rape situation at a party and act appropriately to defend the victim, instead of being a passive bystander.
VR experiences like Missing 10 Hours are important because they put the player in a simulated situation where they can practice how best to respond with no real life consequences. You can, like one visitor to the VR booths did, book a two hour slot and play every single outcome. Most of us will hopefully never be in a situation where we feel torn about whether to intervene. It’s not exactly something you can practise for. But not all of us have access to marvellous film festivals like IDFA where we can play immersive VR experiences that simulate how our behaviour influences outcomes. Most of us just tell ourselves that of course we’d step in, but faced with a real life situation, might shy away. This is why showing a real life situation on mainstream TV matters. It’s positive reinforcement of good allyship, it’s showing people refusing to interpret a situation as ambiguous, and that there is no such thing as an overreaction to a dangerous situation. Both the producers and Jason take the situation seriously from start to finish. It’s simply a good example being set.
This episode of Below Deck has set the internet a-flutter and thankfully the online community is pretty unanimous for once. Everyone from Grazia to Rolling Stone to the LA Times is praising Jason for his sensitive handling of the situation and highlighting the good and bad allyship shown by the rest of the crew. It seems that Laura hasn’t learned her lesson, however. She’s made her socials private, then public, and then private again again and posted a set of painfully tone-deaf stories about how she’s loyal to her buddy Luke and that he shouldn’t be portrayed as a predator when Margot willingly kissed him half an hour before. Thankfully, Yahoo, that famously woke feminazi publication, does a pretty good job of dragging her and her bullshit excuses and points out that
‘Laura still doesn’t recognize that naked men should not be getting into bed with women who are blacked out drunk, incapable of giving consent, and sleeping. She still believes that kissing someone gives them permission to do whatever they want to you, and rub their nude body up against you.’
So why am I banging on about reality TV and mansplaining to my wonderful readers that sexual assault is bad?
Below Deck is Bravo’s most popular franchise, according to Yahoo. Millions of people watch this. It’s trashy reality entertainment. It’s not meant to teach us anything or impart ethical lessons. In this case, various actors and their choices were shown to us very plainly. Captain Jason choose to respond in the correct way, and the production crew chose to break the fourth wall and intervene when they’re supposed to stay invisible. They chose to persist with getting Luke out of Margot’s bed, disregarding their official role and putting Margot’s wellbeing first. Last but not least, Bravo chose to show the whole incident unedited and dedicate an entire episode to resolving the situation. None of these actors - Jason, the producers, or the network - needed to do this. In the recent past, one or all of them might have chosen to turn a blind eye. I know bugger all about yachts but I can guess that people working on them (whether there’s a camera crew there or not) have got drunk and crossed the line with their colleagues before. There have probably been plenty of Laura-style apologists. Incidents might have been downplayed and people might have gotten off with warnings rather than being fired. TV networks, if this had happened on their watch, could have edited it all out and swept it under the rug. They could have moved on to the next episode and the next group of rich charter guests and their fancy holiday 0 that’s what we’ve tuned in for, right? That those involved made these choices and chose to show us, the audience, was unbelievably powerful.
This incident hasn’t really started a conversation about sexual assault. The unanimous reaction - condemnation of predatory behaviour and praise for how it was handled - almost confirms that the conversation we have been having is working. Even a few years ago, this sort of thing would have been brushed off and people would have dismissed Luke and Laura’s behaviour as horseplay and just one of those things. It’s given me hope that we don’t believe that boys will be boys any more. To see mainstream publications not resort to victim blaming or commenting that firing two crew members was an overreaction has restored my faith in humanity a little bit.
So my one request for all of you lovely little sausages - especially men who date women - go and watch this episode and tell your straight boy friends to as well. Men especially are more likely to be bystanders than victims in these situations. Yes, I’ve just banged on about the dangers of the Lauras of the world. It’s just that 1. men are more likely to be persistent and not understand that no means no and 2. women are already hyper vigilant about this sort of thing, because we have to be. Men are generally in denial about the actions of their friends. Every woman knows someone who has been sexually assaulted, but men don’t seem to know anyone who has sexually assaulted someone. Violence against women is a problem that men need to solve. So be like the Below Deck Down Under producers, and like Captain Jason, and do the right thing if you see something that is even remotely suspicious. It’s worth doing even if you’re wrong and it’s a huge misunderstanding. Better safe than sorry.
Not Celeste saying she doesn’t like reality tv when she’s where I get all my new recs