Oliver’s World: Is ‘Hot Ones’ fun, or just inhumane?

Oh boy! A new episode of “Hot Ones!” Lets watch a celebrity cry!

This is the show where actors have to eat spicy chicken wings and answer questions.

Yes! So much discomfort! It’s so entertaining to watch famous people in pain.

Is that really who we are?

It's like we've collectively become a bunch of sadistic spectators, reveling in the discomfort of others while wondering what on earth possesses them to subject themselves to such torture.

I think we know, though. It's the price of fame.

We'll get back to the “Hot Ones” show. First, lets talk about peppers, the spicy plants themselves. There's a science to these peppers. Capsaicin, the compound responsible for a pepper’s fiery heat, has evolved as a clever defense mechanism. While humans and other mammals experience the burning sensation, birds couldn’t care less about the spice. They lack the receptors to register capsaicin's effects, making them the unwitting ally of pepper seed distribution.

As birds feast on spicy peppers, they happily gobble up the seeds and fly off to spread them far and wide – or on someone's car. It's an evolutionary win-win situation for both birds and pepper plants. Birds get a tasty meal – one that other, non-seed-scattering animals tend to avoid – and pepper plants get to spread their genes across the land.

Somewhere along the line humans thought, ‘Hey! Those could be our meals!’ And we went to war with the birds.

Oh wait. The emu war was for a different reason.

Anyway, I guess we started eating spicy food fairly easily. Over time we thought, ‘What if we breed peppers to be even hotter?’ Today, we're cross-breeding peppers to create insanely spicy variants. Some peppers are in fact named after terms for insanity, death and other perilous words.

“Hot Ones” is a showcase of these cross-breeding talents. It’s all about putting these peppers into sauces and making celebrities eat them. This is the show that is responsible for a recent Jennifer Lawrence clip that has gone viral. In the infamous “Hot Ones” interview, as host Sean Evans shook a bottle, Lawrence repeatedly asked “What do you mean?!” in a broken voice.

We all could relate. Right?

Or, is it a form of projecting. She's doing this to entertain us. She has every comfort she could possibly want in life, but on purpose she records herself suffering for our pleasure.

Is she sick for doing it? Are we for watching?

People do “tap out” on the show, choosing to stop eating the progressively spicier wings – but that's no fun. That said, I think I’d respect someone more for understanding and holding to their own limit.

Entertainment should have limits, and I think we've hit one.

What’s next – for the final wing they have to cut their tongue on a chicken bone to feel the heat more intensity? Will they soon be made to squirt the hot sauce into their eyes?

Currently, the line seems to be holding at simply eating the stuff, but it reminds me so much of Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass gang inflicting harm on themselves for people’s pleasure. Lawrence talked later about how she threw up after the “Hot Ones” interview, which in someways is a relief to hear, that her suffering didn't need to continue.

But it's disturbing that we as a people push for this level of entertainment.

At least there is a hero in this story. The plants, the farmers, the ones who do amazing things with agriculture. It's not always peppers. Sometimes it’s other fruits and vegetables, and the experimentation has brought us a lot of delicious food.

Maybe, just maybe, we can find entertainment in the beauty and complexity of the natural world, without resorting to making others suffer for our amusement. After all, there's a whole universe of flavors out there waiting to be explored, beyond just the burn of capsaicin.

Interview a bird instead of eating one. It may not flinch at all from the spice.

Oliver Graves is a stand-up comic and award-winning columnist. “Oliver’s World” runs every other week in the Argus-Courier.