Girls v Boys - The Lord of the Flies TV Experiments

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]I really needed that. Here we go. OH MY GOD.

[00:00:04]I DON'T WANT TO SOUND TOO COCKY TOO EARLY. WELL, I don't think we should. I don't think we should at all, but right now we're winning.

[00:00:13]>> [music] >> In 2026, the BBC produced the first-ever TV adaptation of William Golding's classic dystopian novel Lord of the Flies. Despite heightened sensitivities around gender representation in drama, screenwriter Jack Thorne pushed past BBC diversity targets, arguing that if girls were involved, it would change everything. My son is nine and it's fascinating how much more sophisticated and emotionally nuanced girls are at that age. Thorne was leading into recent attempts to reinterpret this classic 70-year-old novel as a fable about a uniquely male condition that some academics in their wisdom called toxic masculinity. Untroublingly, this reductive notion is also increasingly being injected into classroom discussions about an allegory intended as a warning about universal human traits. The purpose of this presentation, therefore, is to draw attention to lessons arising from real-life social experiments that such a myopic interpretation of Golding's novel would inevitably, and perhaps conveniently, overlook. Don't you think girls can be quite mean like that?

[00:01:27]I never knew, but now I do. In 1934, psychologists carried out a landmark observational study into conflict between children in playground settings, concluding that boys are are significantly more likely to participate in conflict when compared to girls.

[00:01:44]Further study after study seemed to confirm this until 60 years later when a different pattern emerged after it occurred to someone to ask the children about their own perspective on their day. This led to the revelation that the girls involved themselves in just as much conflict, which the adult observers had failed to notice because their style of attack was much more covert. These findings laid the groundwork for research into the impact of relational aggression and led to schools and psychologists redesigning anti-bullying interventions to address to address emotional and verbal violence.

[00:02:21]Longitudinal studies have subsequently shown that while physical wounds generally heal quickly, the scars of relational aggression can fuel anxiety, depression, and self-worth issues well into adult life. In other words, sticks and stones may very well break a few bones, but words really can hurt you. 15 years later, examples of relational aggression were captured during a television documentary that that its production team described as being a bit like Lord of the Flies without the murdering. The controversial TV series Boys and Girls Alone was met with intense public outrage and condemnation from developmental experts for creating scenarios resulting in children physically fighting and experiencing emotional distress. The experiment documented how children would manage living without adult supervision for a period of 2 weeks. And while scenes of the boys physically brawling made most of the headlines, the child specialists condemned abuse observed within both groups. The girls formed cliques, isolating individuals. They engaged in verbal manipulation and mind games, using voting and popularity contests to target specific group members. And ultimately, the environment was so toxic that two girls left the experiment early. And when the households were brought together for the final episode, Lorna, uh, prominent target of much of the bullying, immediately threw her lot in with the boys. A development that led to moments of reflection from some of the main culprits. Sometimes when I get really angry, I just don't know when to stop. So, I think I went a bit over the top last night.

[00:03:59]Instead of being like boys, and being feisty, and being physical, you use verbal.

[00:04:08]>> And you start saying things.

[00:04:10]And you think, "Well, this is better than hitting them and punching them."

[00:04:13]And sometimes you say stuff that you don't mean. I thought we were bad with that words. They've been very, very mean.

[00:04:21]Very, very mean. The first two episodes generated most of the controversy, and things appear to have significantly calmed down by the final episode, where, in the context of certain perspectives on sex-based sophistication and emotional nuance, I invite you to consider highlights from a budding romance between the two youngest participants, after an older girl helped them to seal the deal. She said that Maddie liked me.

[00:04:49]Tell me what you think the next step is.

[00:04:51]I have no idea. Do you feel in charge of this situation, do you think? No.

[00:04:57]Well, I just like Maddie. Pretty soon, William comes to discover that young love is very simple, and that he's definitely not the one in charge.

[00:05:10]>> [clears throat] >> But, everyone seems to be like saying, "Are you two in love? Are you two dating?" And I don't like they like it.

[00:05:20]It's like having the press saying, "Are you in love with some rich, famous boy?"

[00:05:25]So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to pretend I've dumped you.

[00:05:29]And then, we'll have a secret love life.

[00:05:31]So, we're still in love, but everyone else will think I've dumped you. Okay.

[00:05:36]Um I just wanted to say I love you.

[00:05:42]So, what have What have you decided, you two? I've dumped him.

[00:05:47]Yeah.

[00:05:49]>> [laughter] >> She's come out of it as the dumper rather than the one who's dumped her.

[00:05:58]>> [laughter] >> I think girls are more manipulative than boys. I don't think William would have the uh the gall about him to uh uh think of doing something like that.

[00:06:09]Maddy and William split up. Ain't it?

[00:06:11]They should go in the Guinness World Book of Records, man.

[00:06:15]For what?

[00:06:16]For the quickest relationship.

[00:06:18]>> shortest relationship. While Maddy explains the real reason she wants to keep things hush-hush. I have a boyfriend.

[00:06:28]And I kind of not forced him to leave him. Imagine it was If If the girl was sleeping in it right next to kissing her bit, kissing her bit.

[00:06:39]Speaking of which, poor little struck William remains blissfully unaware. All thoughts then turn to the prom scheduled to celebrate the children's last night in the cottage. They quickly pair off and secure their dates. And William busies himself preparing a big romantic gesture, going bow tie shopping and sharpening his dance moves. Oblivious to the reality that he hasn't definitely got a date. I don't like having people saying, "You should go with this. You should go with that." They should let me have my own time to think about it.

[00:07:16]But before we know it, the big night is upon us and all William's efforts seem to have paid off.

[00:07:21]The big romance appears to be back on.

[00:07:25]>> [music] [music] >> He's enthusiastic if nothing else.

[00:07:39]>> [music] >> He's well in there.

[00:07:46]And when the tempo slows, he decides to make his move.

[00:07:54]>> [music] [singing] [music] [music] [singing] [music] [music] [music] [singing] [music] [music and singing] >> William is left to lick his wounds, and two long weeks the wiser, Lorna is left to have the final word. No matter what happens, we're all sort of [music] the same.

[00:08:49]Whether you're a girl, boy, man, woman, baby, adult, >> [music] >> you're all the same.

[00:08:57]Cuz everyone cries at one point.

[00:08:59]Everyone gets angry at one point.

[00:09:01][music] Everyone's happy at one point, so we're all sort of the same.

[00:09:08]>> [music] >> At the end of the day, we're all basically the same. We all have the same basic needs, and we all have the capacity to hurt and be hurt. We're all basically the same, but we are also different, and clearly sex is not a social construct.

[00:09:25]>> We caught a fish.

[00:09:27]>> [screaming] >> Oh my god, it's massive.

[00:09:30]Now, I think that is a barracuda. You have fish?

[00:09:37]You got a fish? One fish? HE'S GOING TO THROW IT. OH, YOU'RE VERY, VERY KIND.

[00:09:43]Which brings us to a deserted island off the coast of Panama in 2015, where a group of women were left to survive alone for a period of 6 weeks. The experiment was filmed for season 2 of Bear Grylls: The Island and conducted in direct response to accusations of sexism after the first season of the survival show only featured men. Billed as a battle of the sexes, season 2 also followed a group of men on a separate island and their contrasting fortunes has achieved somewhat legendary status with memes and selected highlights traveling around the world. The women's camp ran into repeated crisis. Half the group got lost in the jungle for days.

[00:10:23]They failed to maintain a fire, discarded a critical water container instead of cleaning it, and suffered episodes of severe dehydration and starvation. At one point, a pair of suspiciously sociable piglets wandered into their camp. And incredibly, despite surviving on 50 calories a day and on the brink of organ failure, they gave them names and adopted them into their group in an effort to keep up morale.

[00:10:47]The production and safety teams had to make multiple interventions and had the islanders hit the hard ceiling of a real-life Lord of the Flies scenario.

[00:10:55]Most, if not all of them, would have died. All of the decisions we've made thus far have been made collaboratively.

[00:11:02]We've not needed to conform to a system where there's a leader.

[00:11:06]>> Call the medic!

[00:11:08]We have nothing to drink. We don't know where we are. I never thought I would be so desperate for food and water. No dry clothes and no fire cuz we have to make sticks. A huge [ __ ] snake came towards me!

[00:11:23]I don't want to drink the water.

[00:11:26]It tastes of fish.

[00:11:27]She goes on about those potatoes anymore, I'm going to stop.

[00:11:31]>> Your bodies are just starting to fail at this point.

[00:11:34]Now, there's there's no easy way to say this. Um I'm teetering right on the brink of pulling you all off the island for medical reasons. Over. The solution is use the other jerrycan. I can't say it any other way. And noticeably, their survival strategy stood in marked contrast to those adopted by a notorious group of imaginary schoolboys and indeed their real-life so-called rivals. We have discovered prehistoric animals.

[00:12:06]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> All I wanted was just a fish, one fish.

[00:12:43]How many fishes have we got?

[00:12:46]Swim!

[00:12:49]In fairness, the men did obviously face their challenges and indeed two of them left the island very quickly due to infighting during the storming stage of what evolved into a high-performance group. And to their eternal credit, just as many women made it to the finish line. But even so, the memes that spread across social media at the very peak of feminism's fourth wave were not especially inaccurate. And in response to suggestions that the girls-versus-boys format had helped to promote harmful gender stereotypes, the production team pivoted once again. From season 3 onward, the format switched to strictly mixed-gender groups. And while some stereotypical behaviors continued to be observed, ultimately outcomes over a further four seasons showed that when it comes to survival, common sense, character, mental resilience, and cohesion are the things that matter the most when stripped of modern luxuries and faced with the extreme reality of nature, the most successful groups were seen to assign tasks based on individual capability and energy [clears throat] levels much more so than sex. Some women hunted and helped to build structures.

[00:14:01]Some men foraged and maintained the camp. And as we'll discover in the last part of the series, when women lead groups on deserted islands, things aren't always sugar and spice and all things nice. But to conclude, I guess the lessons I'm seeking to draw from these two examples is that no man or woman is an island onto themselves. It's virtually impossible to survive as an independent individual. And if you did without companionship, frankly, what would be the point? We all have the capacity to hurt and be hurt. And while women and men are not interchangeable, they are clearly interdependent. They are and always will be strongest together, which is perhaps why nothing in this world hurts quite so much as a broken heart.

[00:14:48]>> [music] [music] [singing] >> Can't you see it, too?

[00:14:59]There's [music] an elephant