14 Movies and TV Shows That Were Ethical Nightmares
It’s “unethical” to make my kid join the pageant circuit, it’s “unethical” to make my kid do Lord of the Flies in real life… How am I supposed to make money off of this thing?!
Kid Nation
They turned Lord of the Flies into a 13-episode reality show on CBS. Forty kids between eight and 15 had to form a government while sharing one latrine. Ambulances were called to the set when one kid drank bleach and another burned themself with grease.
Cheaters
This was a sting operation to catch cheaters, like when an undercover FBI agent brainwashes a teen on a message board into making threats against America so they can throw him in prison. Host Joey Greco once got stabbed by a cheater, and what’s somehow worse, it was almost definitely staged.
Dan Schneider’s Obsession With Amanda Bynes
Schneider was reportedly fixated on another young All That star, and was on the verge of giving her her own show when Bynes came along and took his attention. As he gave her more screen time and created The Amanda Show, his interactions behind the scenes became creepier and more possessive — from too much hugging to a promotional interview in a hot tub. He was on the verge of getting her emancipated from her parents when their personal and professional relationships seemed to sour, just in the nick of time.
Best Funeral Ever
Grieving families would agree to let TLC turn their loved ones’ funerals into a circus, themed after outright tacky things like Candy Land and WWE. The body of Olympic gold medalist Ronnie Ray Smith was put on a motorized cart to race one last 100-meter sprint against his family (and lost, badly).
Shattered
Contestants competed to stay awake the longest, for the chance to win a relatively paltry £100,000. They were kept awake for 36 hours before they kicked off the first episode, which was aired live. No one reported any lasting cognitive damage, although some experienced hallucinations and one guy was convinced he was the Prime Minister of Australia. The winner stayed awake for 178 hours (which is still about 3.5 days shorter than the world record).
Stan Lee’s Last Few Cameos
In the final years of his life, Lee’s inner circle turned him into a one-man signature sweatshop, profiting off of his autograph, weaseling their way into his dwindling bank accounts and pushing him to do anything and everything that would refill them.
Bridalplasty
Twelve women made a plastic surgery wishlist, and each episode’s winner got to get one of their dream procedures done. It’s obviously secondary to the commodified body dysmorphia nightmare of the entire premise, but the winner’s husband didn’t see his wife for the entire production, and her new body and face were revealed on their wedding day.
The Swan
This show pit women who were unhappy with their appearances against each other, loading them up with expensive and drastic plastic surgeries and having them compete in a beauty pageant at the end. Former contestants have been vocal about the damage it’s done to their self-image, and especially dirty production and editing tricks employed to raise the stakes of their dysmorphia.
‘Sex and the City’ Pay Disputes
Sarah Jessica Parker became the breakaway star of the show early on, receiving an executive producer credit in the second season and goosing her own salary far above those of her co-stars. When Kim Cattrall negotiated for a higher salary, instead of garnering support from her coworkers, she became an outcast, with cast and crew literally refusing to sit with her at lunch. It’s tough to navigate the muddy ethical waters of TV star salaries, but the cast could have followed the precedent set four years earlier by the cast of Friends, who came together in solidarity to demand the same paycheck.
The Wizard of Oz
Judy Garland was treated like a lab rat while working for MGM, being fed a steady diet of sleeping pills and “pep pills” to counteract the sleeping pills. She washed it all down with vanishingly little food, as the head of the studio wanted her ever slimmer, calling her a “fat little pig with pigtails.”
Toddlers in Tiaras
The only thing worse than the child beauty pageant circuit existing at all is televising it for millions of creeps. Some of the pageant moms went above and beyond the general grossness of the concept, with one padding her daughter’s costume to look like Dolly Parton and another making her daughter smoke fake cigarettes on stage.
Nickelodeon Couldn’t Stop Hiring Sexual Predators
The documentary Quiet on the Set spends a lot of time on beloved dialogue coach Brian Peck, who made a ton of thinly veiled penis jokes as Pickle Boy on All That (and then went on to groom, stalk and abuse one of the child stars for years). But there were at least two other convicted predators that worked on these shows.
The OCD Project
This show set up elaborate simulations to expose people suffering from acute OCD to their biggest fears. Some of the nightmares they brought to life were: running over a baby with a car, becoming a psycho killer and becoming a completely different person. The guy who was afraid of putting a hex on people with his mind left the show in the sixth episode.
I Wanna Marry Harry
They tried to convince a group of eligible bachelorettes that they were all dating Prince Harry, when they were very obviously dating a body double named Matthew Hicks. As the contestants started asserting that this wasn’t actually Harry, they had them sit down with a paid liar posing as a therapist whose job was to mindfreak them into not asking questions.
