After all the recent news about Jade Goody's alleged racism on Big Brother UK, I feel that it is high time I released my views into the blogosphere. Now it must be noted before taking into account any of my views that I have not actually seen any of the events in question since I am currently living in Spain and have no access to British terrestrial television. However, I constantly read articles on the BBC News website, which in my opinion is a rather excellent news source and seems to demonstrate a balanced and intelligent viewpoint through its journalism. It has kept me up to date with developments back in Blighty over the last 6 months.
I shall first set the scene before airing my views. On the most recent series of Celebrity Big Brother UK, the British strain of the infamous pioneer of so-called "reality TV", celebrities are put into a house that is sealed from the outside world for a fixed period of time. An army of cameras and microphones details their every move for the viewing pleasure of the greater public. Throughout the duration of the show, the housemates nominate two of their peers to be put forward to the public for eviction from the house; the public opinion then being collected by a lucrative phone-in vote scheme until a final winner is chosen from the final few constants at the end of the show.
The celebrities chosen for the show are often not those classed by the tabloids as "A-list" and are usually those who currently have little media exposure or flagging careers and thus wish to make use of the instant and relatively easy publicity offered by reality TV shows. In some circumstances they actually use non-celebrities for tedious reasons, for example in CBBUK they once used a lookalike of Paris Hilton, an A-list celebrity. In the recent Celebrity Big Brother UK, the housemates ranged from Jo O'Meara from the now-defunct chart-topping pop band Steps, the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, to Jade Goody (who shot to fame as a previous contestant of the non-celebrity version of Big Brother UK) and some of her family [1]. There were other contestants on the show as well but these are those relevant to the events in question.
Over the course of the series, events transpired that caused an public outcry both in the UK and abroad. Shilpa became the focus of alleged (I haven't seen it, remember) bullying by Goody, O'Meara and some of the other housemates. It remains a point of considerable debate whether the supposed bullying towards Ms. Shetty was outright and intentional racism or just silly comments made by uneducated people unaware of how their behaviour could be perceived.
Some of the reported behaviour involves Ms. Goody referring to Ms. Shetty as "Shilpa Poppadom", telling her to "go home" and the list goes on and on [2]. The ensuing media frenzy over the series managed to overspill to Shilpa Shetty's home nation, India and happened to coincide with a diplomatic tour to the very same nation by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown [3]. Such a high profile tale of prejudice did not do any favours for Mr. Brown on a trip that was designed to boost political and economic relations between Britain and its rapidly developing ex-colony as well as highlight his statesmanship and therefore suitability as the probable replacement for Tony Blair in 10 Downing Street.
Now I cannot comment fully on the events of the television program myself, as I am not a first-hand witness of the series and only have second-hand articles to go by. One of the themes raised by the events was the difference between racism and ignorance and this is discussed in article 2 of my source list. My interest in the events described lies not in the details of the events; more how was it possible for the behaviour of a few people to create such a widespread media outcry and what is it about modern British culture that permitted such people to gain such publicity.
The first topic to address is the platform of the said events: Big Brother. Throughout the history of civilisation and perhaps even before, other people providing entertainment has had a place in mankind's culture. Kings and emperors from a vast range of eras had court jesters; the ancient Greeks had a particular taste for drama and comedy; and the Romans spread throughout Europe large coliseums to provide thousands of people with the opportunity to watch gladiators slaughter animals, slaves and criminals. The modern age, with all the advances in telecommunications has a massive range of entertainment, with the use of stadiums reserved now for the viewing of sports of the non-lethal variety.
Big Brother is a form of entertainment that is as basic as it gets: a group of people are put into a box for a fixed period of time and observed. This is voyeurism in its most pure form and we as the viewing public are condoning its existence by tuning in. Its simplicity and addictiveness led to massive ratings, which spawned an entire genre of reality TV shows. During the 10 weeks or so of Big Brother season, it seems that the entire nation is gripped by this simple show: the recent developments in the "Big Brother house" hit the front pages of all the major news papers and seem to occupy every spare minute of conversation by the majority of the population. And this is not just in Britain: in all the other countries where BB exists, the same occurs each and every year.
But is it really "reality"? In the quest to grab ratings, the show's producers Endemol began to using people very different from society's "norms". In the recent series of BB, two contestants seemed to have been selected purely for having health problems that the public would find it in interesting to watch: namely Pete the singer from Brighton with Tourette's Syndrome and Shahbaz who exhibited strong of signs of mental illness, at one point threatening suicide in front of his other housemates by claiming he was "a dead man walking" [5].
In addition to exploiting ill people for capital gains, Big Brother also flies in the face of convention because it catapults normal people to overnight fame. Historically, people earned fame through outstanding actions or achievements, but reality TV specifically aims to bring normal people to the public eye. This in itself is no bad thing: the problem begins when these people are in the position to represent our country and affect the views held by other nations of the average Britain, as the case with the recent story between Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty.
People are undoubtedly selected by reality TV producers as they are caricatures that would be highly amusing or provoke a strong reaction in viewers and thus boost viewer ratings. In the case of Jade Goody, the attraction is her strongly working-class upbringing in Bermondsey, her incredible stupidity and a notably low level of education. The recent events of Celebrity Big Brother combined with the magnifying glass effect of modern media scrutiny allowed this woman's ignorance to spread to all over the globe and as her fellow countrymen/women we are therefore associated with her. Is it right that such people should be able to tarnish our reputation and even so far as damage relations with the one of the next century's potentially biggest economic powers?
One of the main attractions in viewing and a key element in the show's success is what I call the "Snob factor". By featuring ignorant people such as Ms. Goody, and people who appear to be highly detatched from reality such as Shahbaz, people are taken aback by the nature of these people and instantly feel a sense of superiority. This allows people to instantly feel better about themselves and is hardly surprising when they have such extremes in personality with which to compare themselves such as Pete's Tourette's or Shahbaz's quasi manic-depressive behaviour.
On a more fundamental level, is the quality of the program suitable enough for viewing? On E4 (Channel 4's digital arm) and the internet, viewers have 24 hour feeds to the BB house, which often consists of them just sitting around, cooking or even just sleeping. I have often found it somewhat bizarre that millions of people around the world find this exceptable subject matter for television. Why not rig up mirrors in their own home so they can watch themselves sit around/cook/sleep!
To sum up my opinions, I personally think that Big Brother is a perverse form of entertainment that exploits pyschologically weak (and maybe even now unhealthy) people in the quest for ratings; I think it is insulting to the intelligence of the viewing public due to the mundane and trivial nature of its material; and I think it is not a topic suitable for newspapers or conversation. I urge everyone to do as I do: switch off Big Brother and refuse to pay this joke of a series any attention. Endemol: enough is enough.
Sources: 1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6281223.stm
2 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6275363.stm
3 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6270825.stm4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5266302.stm5 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5008062.stm
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