A couple of thoughts on Big Brother.Firstly the whole seemingly unstoppable downer people seem to have on Big Brother. Big Brother 10 has been a good Big Brother. Not sure there can be much doubt about that. For drama and comedy and all the other things we've come to expect from Big Brother it has been up there with the best of them. I don't pay much attention to the viewing figures, they're down, I read, but I've been reading that every year since the dawn of time (or so it feels like). As far as I'm concerned everyone's been predicting the demise of Big Brother since day one, and so it seems as if everyone in the media will keep having a go at it until it does end when they'll be able to crow that they were right all along. The actual content of the show, whether it is any good or not, doesn't matter to these people. The simple fact of the show's continued existence is the offence in itself.
On the other hand there have certainly been missteps this season. The cancelling of the live feed being the most obvious. If the show is suffering from a drop in casual viewers the last thing Channel 4 should have done is alienate the hardcore fans, making them likelier to stop watching, or making them less loyal in their responses to the show. There's always been controversy over the difference between what happens in the house and the edited highlights, so the lack of live feed can only further criticism of this aspect, meaning that fans can be as critical of the show as the haters. The aspect of this that is most stupid is the way they said they were cancelling the live freed to concentrate on the website and yet the website is just the same as it has always been. Saturday night Tom left. The website wasn't reporting this until well into Sunday morning. And the Twitter feed also seems a wasted opportunity. While it could/should have been a real time look at what's going on the house instead it very often becomes nothing but a link to the main website, advertising when new content appears there, and the content on the website is not real time by any stretch of the imagination. It is a waste, pure and simple.
And on an entirely different note, the second point I want to make is on the show itself. On the use of reason in the house. The biggest users of reason in the house are Bea and Halfwit. The point I would like to make is that reason is the most successful tactic that a Big Brother contestant can use. In the face of everything you go to the reasonable position which thus makes your opponent seem unreasonable, aggressive. The point is that reason should never be equated with honesty. In the same way that in politics reason is used as an ideological prop to capitalism - "You want a revolution? Be reasonable, look at what usually happens in revolutions, they never work. Capitalism may have its problems but it's the best system we have, yes there's inequality, but until you have a reasonable alternative let's just settle for this..." Reason becomes a way for the privileged to keep their position of privilege.
It is "cultural capital," something I remember from my Sociology lessons, the middle-class are better versed in the laws of middle-class culture so that in a society where "we're all middle-class now," they have a distinct advantage over those less well-versed in the unwritten rules. See how Halfwit by persisting in the reasonable position managed to become the favourite to win the show as everyone else turned to slagging him off, making themselves look bad - their anti-Halfwit sentiments became the opposite of reason.
And now Bea joins in the reasonable brigade. Note the way that with Kenny she started off by being sarcastic to him (the comment on his shoes) but as soon as she got the reaction she desired she returned to the position of reason, making Kenny hated.
And the whole thing demonstrates how hard this position is to criticise. Every time I criticise Bea or Halfwit I am berated for my views based on the fact that they are just so damn nice. Well, yes, maybe they are nice, but that niceness should be seen as the ideological construct it so blatantly is, and, in a show famed for disliking game-players, for the game it so obviously becomes in their hands.
To tie the two thoughts above into one, the people who criticise BB10 for falling ratings etc., may well be right empirically, reasonably, but that shouldn't cloud their agenda, that they have been wishing Big Brother to fail since day one.
On the other hand there have certainly been missteps this season. The cancelling of the live feed being the most obvious. If the show is suffering from a drop in casual viewers the last thing Channel 4 should have done is alienate the hardcore fans, making them likelier to stop watching, or making them less loyal in their responses to the show. There's always been controversy over the difference between what happens in the house and the edited highlights, so the lack of live feed can only further criticism of this aspect, meaning that fans can be as critical of the show as the haters. The aspect of this that is most stupid is the way they said they were cancelling the live freed to concentrate on the website and yet the website is just the same as it has always been. Saturday night Tom left. The website wasn't reporting this until well into Sunday morning. And the Twitter feed also seems a wasted opportunity. While it could/should have been a real time look at what's going on the house instead it very often becomes nothing but a link to the main website, advertising when new content appears there, and the content on the website is not real time by any stretch of the imagination. It is a waste, pure and simple.
And on an entirely different note, the second point I want to make is on the show itself. On the use of reason in the house. The biggest users of reason in the house are Bea and Halfwit. The point I would like to make is that reason is the most successful tactic that a Big Brother contestant can use. In the face of everything you go to the reasonable position which thus makes your opponent seem unreasonable, aggressive. The point is that reason should never be equated with honesty. In the same way that in politics reason is used as an ideological prop to capitalism - "You want a revolution? Be reasonable, look at what usually happens in revolutions, they never work. Capitalism may have its problems but it's the best system we have, yes there's inequality, but until you have a reasonable alternative let's just settle for this..." Reason becomes a way for the privileged to keep their position of privilege.It is "cultural capital," something I remember from my Sociology lessons, the middle-class are better versed in the laws of middle-class culture so that in a society where "we're all middle-class now," they have a distinct advantage over those less well-versed in the unwritten rules. See how Halfwit by persisting in the reasonable position managed to become the favourite to win the show as everyone else turned to slagging him off, making themselves look bad - their anti-Halfwit sentiments became the opposite of reason.
And now Bea joins in the reasonable brigade. Note the way that with Kenny she started off by being sarcastic to him (the comment on his shoes) but as soon as she got the reaction she desired she returned to the position of reason, making Kenny hated.
And the whole thing demonstrates how hard this position is to criticise. Every time I criticise Bea or Halfwit I am berated for my views based on the fact that they are just so damn nice. Well, yes, maybe they are nice, but that niceness should be seen as the ideological construct it so blatantly is, and, in a show famed for disliking game-players, for the game it so obviously becomes in their hands.To tie the two thoughts above into one, the people who criticise BB10 for falling ratings etc., may well be right empirically, reasonably, but that shouldn't cloud their agenda, that they have been wishing Big Brother to fail since day one.
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