"Big Brother" and Big Brother

A new series of Big Brother starts today. I don’t think many of my regular readers will be surprised to hear that I won’t be tuning in. Frankly, when it (apparently) ended I saw that as a cause for celebration. The fact that it is back after such a short space of time is thoroughly depressing.

But the more I think about it, the more depressing I find the whole Big Brother experience. Like its dreadful counterparts (The X Factor and so on), Big Brother brings an ersatz political experience to its many viewers. You get to do, with Big Brother, much of what constitutes politics. You get to observe how people are performing, make decisions about them and their behaviour, and then vote on who should (and who shouldn’t be successful). Of course, it is more than possible to simultaneously be politically engaged and watch trite reality TV, but I can’t help but feel that as politicians become blander than bland and reality TV becomes more and more a freakshow - ghastly yet compelling (for many) to watch - people will opt for the latter even though the former is so much more important.

And this, for those of us with an open enough mind to consider such philosophers, is the sort of thing that the likes of Theodor Adorno warned us about decades ago. People become content to accept the status quo and to cease questioning it because they get their daily fix of televisual nonsense. Why worry about what the government is up to when it’s a bit boring and there are dickheads to laugh at on the TV? Why bother to walk all the way to the polling station when you can vote on which social misfit should be denied the limelight on the idiot box in your living room?

As people watch Big Brother, Big Brother is increasingly watching them without them realising it. A fact that is simultaneously striking and utterly depressing.