Children of Big Brother
Posted by liberalstranger on October 29, 2009
One thing that really changed – for the worse – about the UK in the time I was away was the rise of reality TV. Now don’t get me wrong – I can enjoy a bit of low culture as much as the next man. When Big Brother first came out I was intrigued at first, and gradually hooked (I was gutted that Anna didn’t win). It seemed at worst harmless, and at best an interesting, if scientifically valueless, experiment. Then I left the country and pretty much forgot about it. When I returned two years ago, Big Brother become an unashamed freak show with whole swathes of the population revelling in putting mentally unstable, fame-obsessed nutjobs in a confined space for weeks on end in order to be able to feel superior to them.
Of course, BB is soon to be no more, but it’s too late. The Spawn of Big Brother has already taken over. And you just can’t get away from it – an endless diet of pap that people just seem to lap up. I don’t know how we got here and I’m vaguely ashamed that when a few people predicted the way things were going back in 2001, I pooh-poohed them. They were right and I was wrong. And what I don’t understand is why we get so obsessed in the UK. Here, reality shows are capable of filling multiple pages in the biggest selling newspapers. When I lived in Holland, the place that invented Big Brother, I was scarcely aware that the shows were airing at all (and yes, I watched Dutch TV and read Dutch newspapers).
Which is why I am slightly embarrassed to now be hooked on The World’s Strictest Parents. Admittedly this is reality TV with a heart, and yes it has some important messages about respect and self-respect that almost make up for the hyperbolic title. But ultimately it’s still parasite-TV: let’s have some loathsome teens move in for a week with some terrifying Georgia Christians and watch the sparks fly, and we can all feel smug that we’re normal and Not Like Them.
But my main problem with it is that it’s just too neat. Each show has the same format: days 1-2 are the conflict days, days 3-5 are the days when we see some valuable lessons being learned, and the final days we see that actually the teens weren’t as loathsome as we thought and they just needed a bit of tough love to bring out their true lovely selves. But hang on, this is reality TV, right? Since when did reality always work out so nicely, and so easily packagable into an hour’s TV?
It doesn’t, of course, because this is about as real as Star Trek. When Big Brother came out, today’s 17 year olds were still in primary school. They have grown up in the age of reality TV and they understand better than anyone of my age how the media works. These are savvy kids and they know what Mr BBC wants, so they give it to him: the fireworks, the tears, the hard lessons, the repentance and the reform. And in return they get not just a piffling 15 minutes of fame, but a whole hour. Not a bad deal.
It says a lot about me, and how I’m adjusting back to UK life, that I am fully prepared to watch the show knowing full well that it’s little more than a cross-continental soap opera with better than average scriptwriting, and that the kids are neither as awful as they appear at first nor as reformed as they claim at the end. They are just people, seeing a chance and grabbing it. And who can blame them?
