Big Brother: Will what we love ruin us?

By Jo McKenzie

Reproduced from UCCF's 'Monitor', used with permission.

I'm just an ordinary guy who took part in an unusual experiment amid scrutiny... I was just taking part in a game show. (Nick Bateman)

It was only a game show, but one that pervaded the popular consciousness to an unprecedented degree. It was described as

ghastly, cynical, distasteful, tedious, voyeuristic, seedy, a sham, sad and pathetic, gross, tacky [1]

yet The Times declared:

It is the most important and incredible series ever shown on TV [2]

The impact of Big Brother was to be seen on the front pages of the tabloids and overheard in the office and on the tube, producing a 'collective shared experience' [3] for the nation. At the start of its run The Telegraph asked:

When the winner is announced in nine weeks, will anybody care? [4]

The final phone vote of 7.5 million, one in seven of the adult British population, proved we did. It was only a game show - but a quite extraordinary one.

Simple rules

The rules of the game were simple. Ten strangers were flung together in a specially constructed house in Bow, their every move recorded by 26 cameras and 30 microphones and broadcast live 24 hours a day on the Internet, with a daily one hour program of edits on Channel 4. The contestants were to be set against each other in the quest for the 70,000 prize. Two would be nominated for eviction by the household each week, with the viewers deciding who must leave. For 64 days the contestants' every word and move would be laid bare before the world - but the irony is that the Big Brother phenomenon revealed more about our collective cultural identity than that of the subjects, more about the watchers than the watched.

Real human beings

Central to the show's appeal was the opportunity to watch ten 'real' human beings - Big Brother marked the latest development in what has become known as 'Reality TV'. In this drama there were no actors. Appealing to the voyeuristic impulse, what used to be private was made public. As Desmond Morris observed

Big Brother appealed to the nosy-parker in us, peering over the garden fence and then gossiping about what we see.

Sheer banality

What worked with Big Brother was that

we all spy on the same neighbors and share the same knowledge about them. [5]

Big Brother gave us neighbors we could all spy on. Much of what was on display was

the sheer banality of ordinary lives [6]

as we whiled many an hour away watching sunbathing or the tending of the household chickens. According to The Guardian, there was

something of the prison-drama about Big Brother

- we watch the contestants cooped up and

wonder which one will crack first [7]

Melanie from the Big Brother house said:

It's a big political game in here and some of them are playing it really well

The strength of any drama rests on the strength of the characters. Thankfully for the producers, they could not have scripted a more Machiavellian villain than Nick Bateman. His scheming, and the confrontation which ensued, resulted in a record number of 'hits' to the Internet and a declaration by The Sun that Nick was

the most hated man in Britain

Ten people. One winner. You decide

To add to Big Brother's appeal, the viewer was given a position of power over the contestants. We were privileged in our knowledge, we could see what the contestants could not. We knew Nick was 'nasty' long before they did. In addition to this, as the commissioning editor for the series expressed it

the audience can be truly involved and influence the destiny of the participants by voting for who stays and who goes. [8]

Invited to make our own judgments on the contestants, each week the final decision as to who must leave would rest with us, the viewers. This interactivity meant that we were significantly engaged with the show and enjoyed a sense of control over the household, as our actions could affect the lives of the people we were watching. We did not passively watch the real life drama, but were invited to participate actively in its unfolding.

Nasty Nick:

I didn't murder anyone, I didn't commit a crime. I just broke the rules of a game show

Yet while we watched, they invited our gaze.

We pry into their lives and they are only too willing to show us. [9]

The contestants voluntarily gave up their privacy. We might be tempted to wonder who on earth would subject themselves to this surveillance, yet the show received 20,000 applications. Such a response perhaps reveals a growing exhibitionism in our culture, a diminishing sense of shame and an increased willingness to make public what is private. According to the Guardian

exposure is not the price of taking part, but the reason [10]

If this is the case, Big Brother shows how strong is the desire for fame and celebrity, and the lengths people will go to in seeking them.

Since the show has ended, that desire was fulfilled, with contestants presenting at awards, shows, obtaining modeling contracts, recording pop songs, hosting other game shows or attending film premieres with Madonna. As Bateman describes it, his new-found celebrity status is

a dream come true overnight [11]

The nature of celebrity may be changing, as ordinary people with no notable talent, are now stars. As Anna emerged from the house, presenter Davinia McCall told her: 'You're such a big star!' And the strange thing is - she's right.

The term 'Reality TV' is totally misleading - it's not real - it is TV.'

The dramatic peak of Big Brother's 64 days came when what had seemed to be a reality for the contestants proved to be an illusion. Nice Nick, so popular in the house that he had never been nominated for eviction, was in fact lying, cheating, nasty Nick.

It is more than a little absurd that the master of deceit, who had constructed his own identity to the extent of fabricating a dead teenage wife in order to gain sympathy from the household, would raise the question of how far the producers of the show also constructed the identities of the contestants.

Flick of a switch

For Bateman

The editors made the show - they had the capacity to make anyone look very good - or very bad - at the flick of the switch [12]

As Melanie Hill, another of the contestants put it, the editors

manipulated footage into stereotypes that aren't real - they're just caricatures [13]

The appeal of Big Brother rests heavily on the idea of watching real life, but the question rises - how real is it? How genuine is the interaction of the viewers if our response and judgments are dependent upon what the editors choose to show us? We may like to think we're spying on real life, but are we? Aside from the issue of editorial control, life in the Big Brother house is totally divorced from reality, cut off from the outside world, devoid of any natural or long-term relationships, free from the pressures of work, cocooned from any deep suffering - a very unreal world.

Viewer power

Of course, while the producers clearly manipulate, real power does remain with the viewer. If we didn't watch, they wouldn't broadcast. As Peter Bazalgette, Big Brother's producer, points out, changes in broadcasting mean that no longer do a small elite decide what they think the public should watch.

Now the viewers are in charge. They can flick the zapper in an instant. They vote with their fingertips [14]

'Real or not - it is the TV viewers want'. Mariella Frostrup

For novelist Will Self, Big Brother provided us with

a perfect biopsy of the cancer which runs throughout our culture [15]

The contestants 'are kidults', those

adolescent children of juvenescence... who are intent on stretching the elastic of their promiscuous, intoxicated adolescence, until senility snaps it back in their faces [16]

Self lamented that the contestants were

equally unquestioning, equally sheeplike, equally directionless, equally lacking in anything that passes for a social conscience or a spiritual value [17]

Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian also noted:

It's striking that not a single minute of Big Brother has shown a discussion of what we used to call public affairs: there is not a word about politics...[18] If Big Brother is a one-way mirror on the nation, it is not making us look good [19]

The TV we want

Our preoccupation with Big Brother reflects these traits in us. Our watching reveals that we certainly are obsessed with the banal and the trivial. This is the TV we want and this lays us bare as much as it does the contestants. Like them, we are reluctant to engage with the questions and issues of life which seriously matter, but rather we are content merely to be entertained. What is perhaps most disturbing about Big Brother is that, while we were focussing on what seemed real, we were in fact distracted from what actually matters.

In 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' American sociologist Neil Postman points out that George Orwell's vision of a future where we are oppressed by Big Brother watching us has not come to pass. As Postman understands it, the vision of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has been shown to be closer.

Devastation

What Huxley teaches is that, in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours [20]

Huxley's fear for the future was that

the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance [21]

. Our watching of Big Brother shows that Huxley is painfully close to the mark.

Ironically, it was an event in the closing minutes of Big Brother that illustrated this. As the show's winner, Craig, emerged from the house to meet family and friends, he grabbed hold of his friend Joanne Harris; she has Down's Syndrome and is in need of a heart lung transplant. Speaking to the camera, Craig said that the 70,000 prize money would be donated to help Joanne, and appealed to the public to make further donations.

Jarring scene

The scene jarred with the whole tenor of Big Brother - here in the midst of a media circus was something that genuinely mattered, one touch of true humanity amid the light of a thousand photo-flashes. We rightly felt guilt at having been taken up with the trivial and distracted from the important. Big Brother is the TV we want, but maybe Huxley's fear -

that what we love will ruin us [22]

- is well founded.

[1] Peter Bazalgette quoted in 'The Valerie Grove Interview', The Times, 26 August 2000.

[2] Caitlin Moran, The Times, 25 August 2000

[3] Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 9 August 2000

[4] Quoted in The Editor, p. 16

[5] Desmond Morris, The Guardian, 15 September 2000

[6] Michael Collins, The Observer, 5 July 2000

[7] Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 9 August 2000

[8] Michael Collins, The Observer, 9 July 2000

[9] Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 9 August 2000

[10] ibid.

[11] Nick Bateman in Panorama, Life on TV, BBC1, 12 November 2000

[12] ibid.

[13] ibid.

[14] Peter Bazalgette quoted in 'The Valerie Grove Interview' The Times, 26 August 2000

[15] Will Self, The Independent, 15 September 2000

[16] ibid.

[17] ibid.

[18] Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 9 September 2000

[19] ibid.

[20] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Methuen 1985

[21] ibid.

[22] ibid