SAS Australia, Season 2 Episode 1. Image: © Seven Network
At the climax of the last season of SAS Australia, contestants were directed to withstand literal torture in the form of stress positions, loud music blaring through unremovable headphones, forcible blindfolding, sleep deprivation. The scenario was a mock interrogation from a fake enemy that takes place after a fake kidnapping. It went on for 48 hours.
Now in its second season, SAS Australia sees British ex-Special Forces soldiers challenge Australian celebrities to undertake extreme physical and psychological tests including endurance, sleep deprivation and interrogation. Contestants can VW (‘voluntarily withdraw’) from the show at any time if they’re not up to it. There are no routine eliminations as is common in the reality genre. Instead, it’s basically like a game of chicken: how much can you withstand before it’s too much? Contestants may be asked to crawl through a narrow tunnel, submerge themselves in four-degree ice water before being quizzed, simulate hostage rescues, perform difficult tasks high above the ground (or water), undertake long team tasks carrying a 20kg backpack plus other equipment. They regularly undergo ‘beastings’—endless exercises like crawling on the ground and holding a plank position for long periods of time, performed on gravel until well into the night.
VWing is natural. Indeed, the show’s ‘Directing Staff’, imported from the original British series SAS: Who Dares Wins, openly admit that they expect almost everyone to VW. After all, not everyone belongs in this elite branch of the military. Regarded as ‘the thinking soldier’, those in the Special Forces, the show tells us, are uniquely disciplined yet capable of creative problem-solving; strong, but in a way that allows them to speak to their vulnerabilities (which makes for juicy footage of celebrity disclosures and confessions); with the physical capabilities of an athlete (‘if you think the Olympics was tough, wait until you see these Aussies try to make it through SAS training’, teased Seven during its Tokyo coverage), minus the ego. If you manage not to VW for the entire show, you still may not win—the staff judge at the end whether they’d be happy to call you a comrade. The prize is the knowledge that you won, and the full payment for appearing on every episode (which varies considerably between cast members).
In ostensibly offering us a peek behind the curtain, the show seeks to showcase the elite skills of the SAS while also inviting audiences to wonder whether we too could survive recruitment. It’s a compelling question—and while my answer is an unequivocal ‘no’, I did spend a lot of my viewing time wondering how I’d go on each of the tasks. This is a beguiling element of the show: you spend so much time wondering if you can do something, the more vital question of why never comes up.
When contestants Voluntarily Withdraw, it is seen as a natural consequence of the rigorous work required of them. Paradoxically, it’s also understood as a personal failure.
Why undergo ‘beastings’? Why allow staff to put their face up against yours and yell? The first episode features a sadistic challenge where contestants go into a structure filled with tear gas and are asked to make conversation without a protective mask. They’re yelled at for not being able to see, and for spitting out the poison. When contestants VW, it is seen as a natural consequence of the rigorous work required of them. Paradoxically, it’s also understood as a personal failure. In the third episode, celebrity chef Manu Feildel refuses to get into a vehicle that will be submerged underwater. For the task, the contestants are meant to wait in the driver’s seat with their seatbelt on before they can escape what could become a watery grave. This refusal is portrayed as a lack of emotional control on Feildel’s part. But it could just as easily be interpreted as a revocation of consent, a realisation that these tasks are pointless for his broader needs. He reflects, ‘I have nothing to prove…I have a nice life, I want to get it back.’ Which begs the question: Why is he there at all?
❗️ SNEAK PEEK ❗️ There's no room for the Recruits to panic in this underwater exercise. #SASAustralia Tonight 7.30 pic.twitter.com/HGxaCactUn
— SAS Australia on 7 (@sasaustralia) September 15, 2021
SAS Australia does ask its celebrity contestants—actors, sports stars and other personalities—to reflect on why they are there, but the answers are abstract, something about self-knowledge and personal growth. Tennis player Mark Philippoussis says to camera that he joined to ‘get to know myself’. According to Seven’s media kit, this is most contestants’ purported motivation for joining. The main staff member Ant Middleton tells contestants, ‘we’re going to strip away all of your facades and expose you for who you really are.’ In which case, why not go to therapy? Or go on a meditation retreat? Or take up hiking or marathon running, without a camera crew? If self-knowledge is the true purpose of SAS Australia, surely there are more direct and more pleasant—and less public—routes.
But the notion that we are made through suffering, not pleasure, is pervasive. Sociologist Max Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, posits that Western culture is governed by systematic rules which we are duty-bound to enact. What’s missing from these processes and procedures is a sense of ritual, meaning, or connection. Instead, work itself is expected to meet our needs and bring about spiritual attainment. Perennial labour without question or complaint developed into an ethic. Suffering is an ethic, a way of achieving self-growth and self-fulfilment. We see this ethic today in the form of workaholism, questionable sacrifice at the altar of a career that offers little in return, and in the ethos of SAS Australia.
But the notion that we are made through suffering, not pleasure, is pervasive…perennial labour without question or complaint developed into an ethic.
When contestants underperform, staff remind them of what’s at stake—if not for the celebrities themselves, then what would be at stake were they SAS soldiers. They constantly refer to ‘the enemy’. If the enemy is nearby, and you make a mistake, it’s disastrous. A mistake can be taking pride in your work. In the first episode, tennis player, Alicia Molik gestures with joy towards her teammates after completing a monkey bar-type challenge at the base of a helicopter in mid-air. And Middleton punishes Molik by throwing her out of the helicopter into cold water below. ‘One little mistake or distraction will cost a life. I’ve seen it,’ says one staff member. The enemy could get you, everyone could die. The enemy is purportedly real, yet described at a sufficient remove for us to not have to grapple with their humanity. It is disquieting to wonder how many SAS members would consider, for instance, Afghan people—civilian or not—as an ‘enemy’, a dark mist of threat; or how many alleged war crimes and civilian casualties have been rationalised by this kind of thinking.
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Both series one and two of SAS Australia have been backgrounded by Australia’s problematic military involvement in, and now withdrawal from Afghanistan. The valorisation the show unquestioningly propagates jars against the backdrop of revelations of war crimes committed by Australia’s SAS forces.
By the show’s own metrics, Australia’s own most decorated Special Forces soldier (and Seven Queensland General Manager, currently on leave) Ben Roberts-Smith would represent the pinnacle of human accomplishment. Though, even by his own account in his COVID-adjourned defamation trial, he leaves a disturbing legacy. Even setting aside some of the most shocking allegations, Roberts-Smith has admitted to cheering on other soldiers as they drank alcohol from the prosthetic leg of a man he killed; and being included in a squadron of soldiers who each received a glass replica of this prosthetic leg as a kind of grim souvenir (he says he doesn’t know who made these replicas). He has admitted to hiring a private investigator to spy on his girlfriend as she had an abortion; and to spy on colleagues he thought might be discrediting him. He has admitted to setting his laptop on fire using petrol, and to wiping another laptop despite legal advice not to. He has admitted to keeping ‘secret and classified material’ on USB drives he kept at home. (Neither Roberts-Smith, nor the current crisis in Afghanistan are ever mentioned on SAS Australia. )
The valorisation the show unquestioningly propagates jars against the backdrop of revelations of war crimes committed by Australia’s SAS forces.
Ant Middleton, the lead Directing Staff member on SAS Australia, would also be up there in valour, decoration, service to country. He admits in the first episode of this new season that he went to prison shortly after leaving the military (convicted of unlawful wounding, though the show doesn’t mention this). More recently, Middleton was axed from the UK series after comments he made about the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, and after allegations of ‘lewd comments’ towards women crew members. He dismissed these comments as ‘military banter’. Then he blamed the ‘PC woke patrol’/‘snowflakes’ for his departure. Pretty rich for someone who is meant to personify emotional control, and constantly yells at contestants to take responsibility for their mistakes.
Plenty of contestants make mistakes, both inside and outside the show. Contestants regularly fail tasks, and they’re yelled at, often right in the face, for it. Sometimes others get punished with additional beastings for one contestant’s failures. But after the roar of punishment, contestants encouraged to forget all about it, focus on what’s in front of you. As long as the failures aren’t compounding upon another, it’s like it never happened. The same seems true for life mistakes. NRL star Sam Burgess (incidentally by far the highest paid celebrity involved in the show) has been found guilty of intimidation, and an AVO was made against him for the protection of his father-in-law. He confessed to issues with his personal conduct and addiction on the show, although denied allegations of domestic violence against his wife. ‘The best thing for you to do,’ says staff member, Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox in response to Burgess’s confessions, ‘is to forget about all that outside noise at the moment.’ Reflecting on his own ‘addictive personality’, Middleton adds, ‘you’re not too dissimilar from the people around you.’ To continue going, to continue working, is penance. Acting incompetently or unethically from time to time is no reason to be deprived of victory.
The intensity of SAS Australia’s pro-military outlook seems to emblematise a cognitive dissonance about Australian and British military history and ongoing war involvement. Both countries have been involved in war atrocities, and yet SAS Australia (and its original UK incarnation) emphasises building extraordinary individual skills for military work, without questioning the purpose of that work.
To continue going, to continue working, is penance. Acting incompetently or unethically from time to time is no reason to be deprived of victory.
The principle of not questioning, even as you suffer and as your victims suffer, can be psychologically damaging. In the third episode, Fox reflects on developing PTSD in the military and his consequent discharge. In a previous interview with LADbible, he spoke about the potential danger of not seeking help—saying that he would have either been killed in action through his own reckless behaviour, or he would have killed himself. He left after 20 years of service, and things got worse: he lost his sense of identity. ‘I had a purpose from the age of 16 to 36—I was a soldier and that’s what I trained to do… I was slightly damaged by it, but I was still good at it. Then all of a sudden I was finished and I didn’t know what to do—it’s like being trained up in something and never being allowed to do it again. It’s like, what do I do next?’ To be clear, Fox is a resilient person; SAS soldiers are trained to be resilient. And yet, they are not protected from terror, trauma, or crises of meaning.
What meaning, after all, is to be gained from combat? Although wars may be fought for justifiable reasons, some are less so, some are bungled, some have a high cost to life with little gain. World War I resulted in 20 million deaths and the victors managed to temporarily nudge a few national borders. More recent wars, like the Iraq War, were aimed at resources acquisition but argued for on the basis of lies about ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Over 100,000 Iraqis died. Some of the staff in SAS Australia fought in the Falklands War, aimed purely at maintaining British rule of a tiny archipelago near Argentina, and in which 907 people, three of them civilians, were killed.
There’s an implicit endorsement of military activity in SAS Australia that tells us that the staff’s suffering was not, cannot have been for nothing. Or worse than nothing: to merely act as part of a force that has had a calamitous impact on the lives of individuals, and has achieved nothing more than forwarded an imperialist impulse that ultimately serves only to enrich the already rich; and hurt those unlucky enough to fall in the crosshairs of geopolitics. It is good that the staff have suffered, according to the show’s ethos, and contestants would do well to stay quiet as they suffer in a similar vein.
SAS Australia airs Monday—Wednesdays on the Seven Network.
