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Build a site hut, fill it with twenty to thirty surveillance cameras covering every corner of the interior, broadcasting to the outside world. Then lock ten or so volunteers inside, giving them just enough food to survive for three months and some assignments by which to earn a little extra each week. Every second week let them all nominate one of the others to leave the hut, and then have the audience give the final verdict by choosing a winner from the remaining inhabitants. And finally, give the winner an amount of money which is just a token compared to the profits you have made by daily broadcasting what, if anything, happened in the hut!
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On various occasions, co-inventor and producer of Big Brother, John de Mol, has been asked to explain its huge worldwide success. Why does it cause a media hype from the moment of its announcement in any country where it is to be broadcast? And how does it succeed in capturing the hearts and minds of massive audiences for so many months? In his answer, De Mol always refers to the spirit of the age: the time is just ripe for it, this is what people today want to watch on TV. But what are the elements in the format of Big Brother that contribute to its success? What are the criticisms of the format? And how does the format fit in so perfectly with this supposed ‘spirit of the age’?
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In at least one sense, Big Brother is not unique, but instead a concept that fits a general television trend: the mixing of genres. This results in various forms of ‘hybrid television’, shows which combine the characteristics of more traditional genres with ever-changing variations. The resultant shows are peculiar for, as the producers themselves suggest by calling the new format ‘reality soap’ or ‘real life soap’, here is a recently rising genre that in the most literal sense presents itself as reality. Therefore non-fiction is mixed with one of the most classical genres of fiction on television.
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So what exactly is Big Brother: fiction or non-fiction? There are arguments for both. One could of course argue that in the end it is non-fiction, for the simple reason that the participants enter the show as themselves and can do whatever they like. They don’t act a role, as in a drama series. The relationships are authentic, and not fundamentally different, or less ‘real,’ than if they happened outside of the Big Brother-house set.
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On the other hand there are some obvious fictional elements in Big Brother. Firstly, there is the pre-selection of the candidates: by bringing together specific types of persons in the house, one can almost automatically persuade them to fall into the roles they were ‘chosen’ to play. Secondly, the production team manipulates the show from beginning to end by the rules laid down, the weekly assignments, the nominations and the sudden surprises. Finally, the participants are very well aware that they are in this is situation: they are indeed characters in a reality soap, being watched non-stop by the cameras in the house and, therefore, by viewers throughout the nation.
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This question of participant authenticity is also connected to a second opposition bridged by Big Brother: that between the public and the private sphere. Again a question arises: to which spheres does the Big Brother-house belong? At first glance, it seems a perfect example of a private environment in which a group of people share their private lives over a certain period of time in a (more than) standard homely atmosphere that is (more than) closed off from the public space. At the same time, however, that private space is public property 24 hours a day, and its inhabitants enjoy constant and massive attention from both internet and television audiences. In such circumstances, can one ‘really’ be oneself?
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In a sense, this makes Big Brother a logical end in the rise of reality-TV, more specifically, of the sub-genre known in the Netherlands as ‘emotion television’. This consists of portraying emotional images of participants at important moments in their love or family life. These are often provoked or strengthened by the very format itself. In these shows the central focus is moments and events that normally take place in the intimacy of the private sphere. Viewers are thus offered the opportunity to watch how other people deal with their personal problems, fears and disappointments.
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This breaking down of the boundary between the private and public is the first main line of criticism against reality-TV. Privacy is threatened if moments which used to be hidden from the public’s eye are now shown in grandiose and stirring ways on the television screen.
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But in this respect, the difference between emotion television and Big Brother is even more stunning: while the former deals with the excessive, almost baroque representation of the heights and depths in the private lives of others, the ‘highlights’ in Big Brother, the nominations, are deeply embedded in the absolute dullness of the inhabitants in the house, deprived as they are of even the most common stimuli that characterize our daily lives. What is so intriguing about that?
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The answer, in my view, lies precisely in the fact that it raises the second main line of criticism of reality-TV: its supposed lack of authenticity as a result of the corrupting camera, its second underlying theme.
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Simply by making people’s private lives visible, their authenticity is necessarily corrupted by the presence of the camera. Indeed, if the private sphere becomes publicly visible, it isn’t really private anymore and therefore the people can’t stay real. Or can they? The inevitable doubt about the realness of the characters is not so much a problem because it is a source of pleasure for the viewers. As with Big Brother ‘realness’, authenticity is given a strong normative dimension within a format that pushes its participants to behave better both towards their fellow competitors as well as to the television viewers. They then have a better chance of winning the game. The stay in the house is therefore less a psychological test than an ultimate moral test, in which norms and values in the private sphere are publicly debated, valued and sometimes condemned.
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But all this still cannot explain why the viewers were so massively preoccupied with the behavior of a group of people in such an absolutely absurd situation as the one in the Big Brother-house. However, maybe their situation wasn’t that bizarre and unimaginable at all. Maybe it offered some concrete points of contact with our daily lives, and especially the role of the media in them. These small points of potential recognition were, of course, stretched to the limit in the Big Brother-house. That was one of the exiting elements of the game. And surely the media is not yet so emphatically present in our daily lives as in the Big Brother-house. But that doesn’t make the underlying questions less imaginable, abhorring or intriguing: how would I have made it in the house? Would I have endured? Would I have won? Or, to put these questions more generally: what does it mean to live in today’s media culture, and what does the media culture of the near future look like? In a society full of audiovisual and digital media how can one be, or stay, authentic, real, honest, oneself, and what do those words really mean?
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On the one hand there is fear: fear of the increasing presence of surveillance cameras, not only in banks, supermarkets and other business spaces, but in increasing numbers in public places like large squares and leisure spaces, where they are aimed at people in their time off; their ‘private’ lives. Yet even more there is a fear of digital information, the ever growing government databases as well as those of commercial companies. As a result we don’t even know anymore exactly who knows what about us and what the potential results of that may be.
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On the other hand, in this media society there seems to be a feeling of urgency, seeing increasing possibilities to become visible, to even get our own ‘fifteen minutes of fame’. The enormous number of applications to participate in emotion television shows and, of course, Big Brother, speak volumes in this regard. Even surfing on the web one quickly learns that in the digital world also, exhibitionism rules, not just in the form of fancy webcams where people can be followed live thoughout their own homes, but even more so in the numerous homepages on which their makers don’t seem to want to hold a single secret back from any visitor surfing by.
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From that point of view, Big Brother is the logical program at the right time (the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the digital era) not just because it is a program broadcast on television and internet, but even more so because it is a program about the function and meaning of audiovisual and digital media in contemporary society. In the end it may be nothing more than just another game show, but by enlarging and manipulating some of the main themes and developments in our current media culture, the format of this game makes them very concretely visible and directly available for discussion.
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These themes are indeed serious and relevant, and a reality soap like Big Brother is therefore important, if only because it has proven itself able (much better than films with similar themes like The Truman Show or Ed TV ) to force these themes high on the public and political agenda. The conclusion must be that Big Brother is at first playful, important, intriguing, by fits and starts boring, and maybe even a frightening collective exploration of the media culture of the 21st century.
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Big Brother is a Eurpoean format, used in Great Britain, The United States, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Poland, Spain, Portugal and Belgium.
The latest installment is the Australian version, currently being broadcast on Network 10, 7pm weeknights.
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18 | | Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Maarten Reesink. "Big Brother: Sign of the Times" M/C Reviews 04 May 2001. [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/features/realitytv/bigbrother.html>.
Chicago style:
Maarten Reesink, "Big Brother: Sign of the Times," M/C Reviews 04 May 2001, <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/features/realitytv/bigbrother.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Maarten Reesink. (2000) Big Brother: Sign of the Times. M/C Reviews 04 May 2001. <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/features/realitytv/bigbrother.html> ([your date of access]). | |
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