"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.

A Suggested Housemate for Celebrity Big Brother

For reasons that could best be classified as classic work avoidance, I caught the opening episode of Celebrity Big Brother on da interwebs yesterday. And, by God, what a bunch to total non-entities they picked! If your most famous people are one of the also-ran Baldwin brothers, a Hollywood madam, a talentless bit part player from a Guy Ritchie movie and Dane fucking Bowers, then your programme has absolutely no right whatsoever to use the word celebrity. It is an insult to any genuine celebrities out there. I mean, for fuck's sake, they've got a woman on there who is famous only for fucking a Rolling Stone. At this rate, Iain Dale will end up popping up as a special, last-minute addition. No, scratch that, he's too famous. Maybe Dizzy would be a better choice.

And the introduction episode was just that - Davina McCall (who, amazingly, still has a job despite having less charisma than the nail on the big toe of my left foot) introduced these celebrities. Since most people don't know and don't care who "Sov" is.

Still, I've got an idea to make this show more fun. I think, in order to shake things up a bit, they should get the Ood on there. In character and all. Seriously, as well as looking a bit freaky with the fronds and the egghead, the Ood are also eminently quotable. They could introduce themselves with the words:

Some may call him Abaddon. Some may call him Krop Tor. Some may call him Satan. Or Lucifer. Or the King of Despair. The Deathless Prince. The Bringer of Night. And these are the words that shall set him free.

Oh, and when there's an argument, this would be a handy phrase:

The Beast and his armies will rise from the pit to make war against God.

And, finally, when someone leaves the Big Brother house, they could say:

This song is ending, but the story never ends.

I reckon this is a brilliant idea, and that the Ood might even be able to win Celebrity Big Brother. And even if you reckon that having a fictional alien from a TV show is a bad idea, let me ask you this - would having the Ood on Celebrity Big Brother actually make it any worse?

The Big Brother Winner, 2009

From the BBC on this year's Big Brother least hated person winner:

She initially earned her status as a housemate when she agreed to Big Brother's request to legally change her name to Dogface by deed poll...

Nothing like having a little dignity and self respect now, is there?

...although the show agreed to let her change it back again several weeks later.

That was big of them.

Part of me wants to question whether this story is for real. But it is Big Brother, so I know it is depressingly real.

Bye Bye Big Brother

Big Brother is set to end. I have to say I am surprised. I didn't realise it was still on.

I can't imagine that there will be many who mourn the passing of a programme that became increasingly outrageous and increasingly desperate. And as a result, became utterly irrelevant Ultimately, what is the legacy of Big Brother? That would be elevating Jade Goody to stardom, then relegating her back to the status of hate figure after her appearance on the Celebrity edition of the show.

Ultimately, Big Brother destroyed itself. Instead of maintaining its initial format of seeing how normal people respond to being under surveillance 24 hours a day, it decided to become a tabloid pleasing "persecute the freak" show. Which was fine, until the rest of the TV world caught up with it. Now there is no shortage of "persecute the freak" style shows. Britain's Got Talent, The Apprentice, Wife Swap - nowadays, there's no shortage of ways for the voyeuristic British viewer to get their fix of human detritus on the small screen.

Bye bye Big Brother. The reason why you're going is because you won't be missed.

BB

Does anyone still watch this?

Ok, I'm biased - the only reason why I have a TV is to watch Doctor Who and its related spin-offs. But I can't believe that anyone can still get excited by Big Brother - Celebrity edition or otherwise.

To me, Big Brother is like the Woolworths of TV - something that is past its prime, and is waiting for the inevitable axe to fall. So I can't see why it doesn't just happen, and we can all be put out of our misery. After all, the sooner C4 gets rid of Big Brother, the sooner it can resurrect it amongst a storm of publicity in a few years from now. 

Watching Big Brother makes even less sense to me than watch the godawful soaps that clog up the airways. At least in a soap opera, stuff happens. Ok, deeply unrealistic and largely laughable stuff, but there are events. Whereas in Big Brother you just have tedious, unlikable people sitting around behaving like weapons grade dickheads. 

I suppose it is too much to hope that the events of Dead Set will overtake this year's Celebrity Big Brother, but zombies tearing through the assorted has-beens and general publicity whores heading into the house would actually be worth watching...

Jo O’Meara wants Celebrity Big Brother to be scrapped.

Don’t get me wrong, so do I. I hate that show with a passion. It is painful to watch a bunch of washed has-beens and never-weres parade themselves through the Big Brother house for weeks on end. The non-celebrity version was bad enough, the celebrity version is a pointless, humourless joke. Go for it, scrap it, replace it with endless re-runs of Father Ted or something. It would make me very happy. But not if you scrap it for the reasons outlined by the oddly masculine O’Meara.

"I feel if this is what a TV show does to people, then it shouldn't be a TV show” says O’Meara, missing the fact that she volunteered for the programme knowing exactly what would be involved.

"The whole thing has been so unfair and so cruel. I've not been portrayed as the person I really am." No, she has not been portrayed in the way she thinks she is. The endless footage shot by the Big Brother crew shows exactly what she is like.

The bovine O’Meara goes on to wail that she has considered suicide but was “too wimpish” to go through with it. Makes sense I suppose. Racists tend to wimps and cowards. But of course O’Meara denies she is a racist:

"I'm not a racist person, I never ever have been. None of it makes sense. I don't know how this has all happened."

Well, she was racist on Celebrity Big Brother. And the reason why “this has happened” is because she behaved in a racist way. But clearly this blindingly obvious logic is beyond the no doubt limited mental capacity of this also-ran manufactured pop star.

My message is simple – behave in a racist way in front of people, and those people will think you are a racist. Behave in a racist way in front of the nation, and the nation will think you are a racist.

O’Meara’s knee-jerk reaction of “scrap Big Brother” totally misses the point. The programme did not make O’Meara appear racist. She did. Instead of belly-aching about suicide like a recently dumped unstable teenager she should accept responsibility for what she did and live with it. I will never have respect for the likes of O’Meara with their bigoted and ignorant views, but I would find her less odious if she accepted she was at fault rather than lashing out at the programme she chose to go on and she hoped would re-launch her now utterly defunct career.

The Wisdom of Others

The Moai is on form this morning, which is probably for the best because I am really not.

First up he has a look at rape statistics - link. "I am unaware of what rape convictions are like in other countries with similar demographies to Britain. That would be good to know. In fact, I would like to see policy makers making far greater use of data and examples from other countries, as it is the nearest thig you'll ever get to a trial run of a new idea. Can you think of any examples of British policies that are explicitly informed by the example of other nations? As a scientist, my first reaction when I read of a new policy proposal is 'What's the evidence? Where's the data? Has anyone ever tried this, or even simulated it?'"

Then, via Stumbling And Mumbling, he has had a look at class, race and Celebrity Big Brother: "this is not about race, it's about class. Jade is mixed race lumpenproletariat, Shilpa a high caste millionaire Bollywood actress with immaculate vowels. I am increasingly coming round to the view that much of the conflict we see is in fact class-based, with race, gender and religion as a cipher. A crude example - ask a section of the population if they'd like a Muslim family next door. Then, ask them if they'd like Mr & Mrs Khan, the surgeon and the accountant, next door. Watch the percentages change. People object to Muslims partly because Muslims in this country are overwhelmingly working class, and came from poor places like Sylhet with little qualifications to work in manufacturing an catering. By contrast, many Hindus and Sikhs were and are of a high caste/professional status, and went into medical practice and runnign their own businesses. Ergo, race is not the issue, class is."

My thoughts? Well, I think I found a pub yesterday evening in Central London where you can buy 2 pints for under £4. And I think I celebrated this find with more than one of the aforementioned pints. And I think the reason why the pints are so cheap is because they do not have a wonderful effect on you the next day. So anymore useful and coherent thoughts will have to wait for another day, when it does not feel like a badger shat in my head.

"Do I Deserve To Get My Windows Smashed?"

Asks Jade Goody.

Well, frankly, yes.

Look at the talkbox, with renewed frustration

I have been trying to avoid Celebrity Big Brother in a way that resembles someone trying to avoid a virulent stomach plague. My flatmates watch it, so I evacuate the living room in plenty of time before it comes on. People talk about it at work, so I use my selective hearing and tune out from the Big Brother chat. And I blank all tabloid front pages at the moment (which is no bad thing, generally speaking), as I have no burning desire to see the latest exclusives from the house.

However, despite my best attempts to bury my head in the sand and hope this winter bout of Big Brother goes by without affecting me, one story has attracted my attention. Yep, it is the Shilpa vs Jade saga.

Jade Goody's behaviour has shown her to be the sort of reprehensible idiot I always thought she was. From what I have seen and read, she comes across as ignorant, uneducated, boorish and utterly odious. The sort of person you would cross the street to avoid. However, taking all that into account, I am not sure she is a racist.

Sure, comments like "Shilpa Poppadom" would suggest otherwise, and I wonder whether Goody would have the same antipathy to Shetty if she was white. But I rather suspect she would. Because the problem Jade has with Shetty is best illustrated by having a look at the pictures over at Mr Eugenides - put simply, Shetty is a strikingly attractive and successful actor. Goody is a rotund cross between trailer trash and a warthog - famous for being famous and nothing else. Goody is just plain jealous of Shetty, and because she is so stupid and so poorly educated Goody cannot express her feelings in anything other than violent arguments and ignorant comments. If you want a racist, look no further than wannabe footballer's wife Danielle Lloyd, who has come out with such gems as "She should f*** off home. She can’t even speak English.” (A charge that could be levelled at both Ms Lloyd and Ms Goody...) Goody is jealous, pure and simple. But not racist.

I don't know how much damage this debacle will do to Big Brother, or to Endemol, or even to Channel Four but I think the debate will rumble on for a while yet. So all I will add is this - Big Brother and then Celebrity Big Brother have given a weak, stupid and ignorant person a national platform to speak and be heard. So they really shouldn't be fucking surprised when said weak, stupid and ignorant person says stupid, ignorant and unpleasant things.