Criticism
Fear Factor has received criticism from the general public mainly because of the show's second stunt, which intends to disgust its viewers. More seriously, the American Humane Association expressed concerns for allowing various animals to get injured, and even killing insects by eating them alive during the videotaping of the show. The association also revealed that professional animal trainers have refused to work on the show because the producers of Fear Factor have demanded stunts which violate the association's guidelines.
American Humane believes that shows like Fear Factor are on a slippery slope of animal mistreatment and provide poor examples of animal treatment and humane ethics. As we work diligently to expand voluntary compliance with animal safety guidelines, organisations like Endemol who blatantly demonstrate complete disregard for animal welfare, or even that of their human contestants — are producing unacceptable programming. Karen Rosa (Communications Manager of AHA Film and TV Unit)
In January 2005, an episode featuring a stunt involving blended rats aired in its normal prime time slot. Austin Aitken, a part-time paralegal from Cleveland, Ohio, sued NBC for $2.5 million USD for airing the show, claiming that he felt so disgusted from watching the stunt, his blood pressure rose until he felt dizzy and lightheaded and subsequently vomited. He claimed that his disorientation was so severe that he ran into a doorway and seriously injured himself. In March 2005, U.S. District Judge Lesley Wells threw out the lawsuit on the grounds of First Amendment protection.
Fear Factor was also criticized by major U.S. electrical utilities for an episode that required contestants to climb through a simulated electrical substation with "electrified wires" replete with simulated sparks and electrical sounds added in post-processing. The Edison Electric Institute issued a warning regarding the episode, fearing that viewers might attempt to climb through a real substation with more fatal results.
An episode originally scheduled for January 30, 2012, featuring contestants drinking donkey semen and urine, was rejected by NBC, which instead aired a rerun. On January 31, 2012, two of the contestants, twin sisters Claire and Brynne Odioso, appeared on The Cowhead Show on Tampa Bay radio station WHPT to talk about their experiences in that episode; however, according to TMZ.com, producers of Fear Factor warned the Odioso sisters not to continue any discussion of the program, as doing so would put them in breach of their confidentiality agreements.. As of July 13, 2012, Fear Factor is officially cancelled and is not coming back.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)