Forget Love Island - The 1970s 'Sex Raft' Social Experiment Was Where The Real Drama Was at - The Independent

6/5/2020 Forget Love Island – the 1970s 'Sex Raft' social experiment was where the real drama
ment was where the real drama was at | The Independent
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Culture > Film > Features
Forget Love Island – the 1970s 'Sex Raft' social

experiment was where the real drama was at
There might not have been evictions in this reality TV precursor – explored in a new documentary – but
there was sex, mutiny and very nearly a murder, says Christopher Hooton
@christophhooton | Sunday 2 June 2019 10:00 |
4
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/love-island-the-raft-film-documentary-sex-experiment-santiago-genoves-a8591746.html 1/12
6/5/2020 Forget Love Island – the 1970s 'Sex Raft' social experiment was where the real drama was at | The Independent
SUBSCRIBE six women set sail on a 'tin can' for 101 days ( Fasad )
Five men andNOW LOGIN
is article was ori nally published on 19 October 2018
When Big Brother was axed this year, it seemed it could simply no longer compete in
the salacious stakes with the copycat shows that came in its wake. What good was a
reality show where contestants sit around in a rainy English house discussing their
grocery budget, when its younger cousin, Love Island, has chiselled singles sending
each other into fits of lust-induced paranoia in a Mediterranean villa?
Indeed, reality TV of the “people forced to live in maddening proximity” ilk has
grown gradually more emotionally and sexually intense over the past 20 years. And
yet it still has some catching up to do with what in many ways was paradoxically its
precursor: a sociological experiment conducted at sea in 1973.
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Originally dubbed a “peace project” but soon rechristened a “sex raft” by the world’s
press, The Acali Experiment saw five men and six women of various religions,
nationalities and social backgrounds drift across the Atlantic on a raft for 101 days. It
wasn’t televised – there was barely enough room to swing a cat on the Acali, much
less have it stage a live broadcast – but eight hours of 16mm camera footage were
taken on board by its architect, Santiago Genovés, which have been used by director
Marcus Lindeen in a new documentary, e Raft.
THE RAFT trailer | BFI London Film Festival 2018
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“By chance, I read a German scientific book about the 100 strangest scientific
experiments of all time, and one of them was called ‘The sex raft’, about the Acali
experiment,” Lindeen told Nordisk Film & TV Fond of the project’s inception. “I
started digging into the subject and found out that the captain of the raft was a
female Swedish captain, which intrigued me even more. I quickly realised it was a
fabulous adventure story.”
Santiago Genovés, a Mexican anthropologist with a God complex, died in 2013 not
long after Lindeen had begun his research. “His son very generously invited me to
come to Mexico to go through his father’s archives,” said the filmmaker, who tells
much of the story through the detailed diary Genovés kept. “I was lucky enough to
be hijacked on a plane to Cuba,” writes Genovés, of the real-life experience that
began his fascination with what pushes people to violence. In retrospect, this
maniacal admission is a red flag. While reality TV shows-cum-social-experiments
tend to be disingenuous about their aims, the producers acting surprised (but
secretly delighted) when contestants pair off or square off, Genovés speaks plainly of
his hopes for sexual and aggressive behaviour.
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The raft was reconstructed for the documentary in a studio, where surviving crewmembers discussed their experiences
(Fasad)
“I have selected participants who are sexually attractive, and placed among them a
Catholic priest,” he explains. In order to further “create tension”, several of the
participants chosen are married, and women are given the more important roles on
the vessel. “Can we live without war?” is the lofty, overarching question Genovés
seeks to answer with his experiment – which takes place while the Vietnam War
rages on – but the impression e Raft conveys is more of a man who simply enjoys
pushing people’s buttons.
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Lindeen reunited the surviving members of the Acali for his film. “It was quite
difficult as I didn’t have their real names,” he recalled. “Santiago had used
pseudonyms in the research papers, so it took almost two years to find the seven
surviving members.” Spliced together with the footage, Lindeen has them recall their
experiences from a wooden replica of the raft. With no books, no space and no
escape, they can only sing songs and tell stories to entertain themselves. They do so
quite happily for the most part, until day 22, when boredom sets in. By week four,
several people were having sex. Asked how many people they slept with while at sea,
one participant replies with a laugh: “Many, many... Everybody.”
“It was complicated to have sex on the raft,” they explain, and it usually took place
between the two people who were on guard while the others slept. Coordination and
dexterity were key: “You had to use one of your hands for steering.”
In the press, the Acali was not making the kind of waves anthropologist Genovés had
hoped. “Secret of the ‘raft of love’” one tabloid headline at the time read, the news
story opening on the “secret radio ‘SOS’ code [that] has been prepared in case
trouble erupts on the ‘raft of passion’”. A second column was devoted to the fact that
the captain wore a bikini.
“The press at the time had written a lot of dirt about the expedition, calling it a ‘Sex
raft’ which wasn’t quite true,” Lindeen said. “Yes, a few people had sex, but it was
nowhere near the orgy described in the tabloid press. When the women returned
ashore, they were shocked by the media coverage.”
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A selection of the tabloid press coverage of the experiment (Fasad)
Genovés may have been hoping for a more serious treatment of his experiment, but
sex among his subjects was indeed what he wanted to see. Before long, his appetite
for blood has also been met. A small shark is hauled onto the raft and senselessly
hacked to death. One excitable crew member wields the axe like a hammer, before
excavating the shark’s still beating heart and holding it up.
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Watch more
Yet it soon becomes clear e Raft is not a
story of how sex and savagery will always
materialise when a group of humans are left
alone, but an account of one man’s egotism.
The participants’ sexual interactions prove
to be innocuous, their instances of
aggression isolated and small, and they
generally function quite well as a micro-
society. This displeases Genovés who, in a
The rise, fall and legacy of ‘Big Brother’
bid to stir things up, reads out the
responses his subjects thought they had
given him in confidence to some very personal questions. “Who would you most
want to have sex with?” and “Who would you want to kick off the raft?” are some
examples – prefiguring a tactic which, it should be noted, has become a core feature
of Love Island.
With Genovés throwing buckets of water on people and employing “Gestapo

methods”, the participants became furious that their guide had become their
dictator. A turning point comes when the anthropologist stages a coup against the
raft’s captain, the very same female leader he installed in order to observe how the
men on board would react. This is the documentary’s most impressive moment, as
the participants recall very matter-of-factly how they one night conspired to kill the
man who had brought them together. One idea was to have him take a convenient
tumble overboard, another involved a syringe, with every crew member holding the
needle to assure their collective culpability, and therefore silence. Unsurprisingly,
this night-time conspiracy on the roof of the raft wasn’t captured on camera, but the
filmmakers
SUBSCRIBE NOWmanage to get the would-be murderers to recount it frankly from theLOGIN
reconstructed roof. “I’m happy that no one was killed,” calmly concludes Eisuke
Yamaki, who was pegged to push the offender overboard.
The Acali crew bonded in their opposition to ‘dictator’ Genovés (Fasad)
Remarkably, the Acali makes it to the shores of Mexico after 101 days with only
piscine blood having been spilled. The group solve their Genovés problem with
diplomacy instead of violence, and are all the stronger and closer for it.
It’s precisely this bond that the documentary captures, offering a persuasive
corrective to the “sex raft” narrative beloved of the tabloids, which had been based
on their limited radio contact with the vessel. The participants, who elected to be
part of the experiment on a whim, weathered the ordeal extraordinarily well. Though
their scientist outrageously abandoned his duty of care, they don’t see themselves as
victims. NOW
SUBSCRIBE In thisforerunner to the phenomenon of reality TV, no one was voted off LOGIN
and no-one left of their own accord. In fact, counter to what Genovés so clearly
hoped for – everyone on board seems to have had a, for the most part, formative,
peaceable time. Echoing what he said moments after stepping off the raft after three
months, Servane Zanotti, recalls: “I could have gone for another three”.
Maybe another three months – a second season of sorts – would find an audience
today. “It’s impossible not to think of reality TV,” Lindeen freely admitted when once
asked whether he saw Genovés as a forerunner of the genre, noting that Mexican TV
had in fact part-financed the project.
“The idea was to do a kind of scientific documentary series about the experiment.
When Genovés was interviewed later in his life, he was asked if he saw himself as a
pioneer of reality TV. He didn’t like it as he saw himself as a serious scientist.
“I mean, he was genuinely interested in researching human behaviour and to bring

peace by understanding the origin of violence. But he was also a poet. He wanted
science to be more like art. More experimental and daring.”
This is evident in the documentary, which gives a qualitative account of the

adventure, and doesn’t find much worth reporting from Genovés data, meticulous
though it was, with the Mexican charting subjects’ moods against wave patterns,
moon cycles and countless other variables. As Lindeen concluded: “Perhaps the
Acali experiment would have been more successful as an artistic rather than a
scientific venture.”
The Raft premiered at London Film Festival and will open in UK cinemas on
18 January 2019
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MORE ABOUT: THE RAFT | LONDON FILM FESTIVAL | BIG BROTHER | LOVE ISLAND | SEX | BOAT
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6/5/2020 Forget Love Island – the 1970s 'Sex Raft' social experiment was where the real drama

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Culture > Film > Features