What was probably the heaviest (and last) episode of the week saw the crew from The Feed tackling pig hunting, sexual abuse, Olympic hanky panky and nudist churches. Just another evening on SBS2!
The lead headlines are always the least fascinating part of the show, yet Marc Fennell manages to get the show cooking with ease and charm. The first proper story looked at a nudist church in Virginia… sure, it’s easy to crack “only in America!” jokes, but it is a bizarre and fascinating place to embrace nudism. Essential Feed style opening gambit. Likewise was the story on the Sochi Olympians’ apparent love of social hookup app Tinder. This certainly fuels the idea that the Olympic villages are always one long party and sex fest… rough life.
Things took a serious turn for the dark from here though- with a depressing examination of sexual assault statistics in Australia, and why they’re more than twice the international double. Interestingly, the show suggested that it was perhaps that Australians are (relatively) less shame driven when admitting sexual assault than many other countries that accounts for the high percentile of assaults. Nonetheless, 16% of women being sexually assaulted is unforgivably high, no matter how you look at it.
Keeping dark, or at least confronting, the core piece of the night was the pig hunting industry in Australia, or rather the culture of it. Magazines like Bacon Busters celebrate the hunting of wild boars and even award a Miss Bacon Buster title- in 2013 this went to Jade Hammond and it was her we followed. Hammond justified her hunting as part of a culture she grew up with and the problems the pigs cause to crops and farmers.
The pleasure she took from gutting the beasts, and the perverse nature of the footage, certainly made it difficult to agree (at least whole heartedly). And this episode closed with the Douche of the Week – an award you’d surely rather avoid. But really.. if you posed as your brother’s fiancé in a phonecall to cancel his wedding due to hating the real fiancé… well you’re not exactly not a douche.
Review Score: FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Feed airs weeknights, 7:30 (repeated 10:30) on SBS2
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