Big Brother

It could hardly be more appropriate that the day that I chose to start posting to my new blog happens to coincide nicely with the start of Celebrity Big Brother.  For once I actually know who some of the people are on it, though this does not make me any less incredulous over the whole concept.

It may shock many that I actually used to quite like Big Brother.  Those of you old enough to recall the dawn of the first series will remember that it was seen as a social experiment - how would people cope cut off from society for several months?  Indeed this was interesting because it moved away from the growing cult of celebrity, it was ordinary people with nothing particularly shocking or even notable about them, trying to get along with complete strangers.  This was set against other TV programming at the time that was formulaic nonsense, with different celebrities appearing each week to sell copies of their latest book/video/CD/tape (remember them?).  Nobody expected the participants of Big Brother to become famous - they were members of the public on a gameshow after all!  Indeed the winner of the first series surpassed all expectations and landed a plum job doing DIY on daytime TV.

The fact that subsequently people went on Big Brother with the intention of becoming 'famous' is where everything (and I do mean everything in a wider context) went wrong.  My apologies for sounding a little as an English teacher, but I can remember when 'famous' was an adjective rather than a noun.  "I am a famous singer/comedian/writer/sportsman/raconteur" rather than "I am famous".  Suddenly people were famous for being famous - indeed one of the prerequisites for achieving Big Brother fame was 'to be yourself' and 'to go on a journey' (tricky when stuck in a house).  To be famous it was necessary to be ordinary.  This concept can be traced back to the viewing of famous people through the lens of the 1980's tabloid press rather than the lens of LIFE magazine and the like in the 1970's.  We de-constructed famous people to make them like us by finding out sordid details about their lives.  Now the reverse was happening - because 'ordinary people' on the telly were just as flawed as the 'celebs' - so the tabloids had plenty to feed on (lucky for them as otherwise they were about to be wiped out by other media).

Looking through the Facebook last evening, it was notable how people were saying things like "Who are these people on Celebrity Big Brother?", "Never heard of half of them", and most telling "Is this Celebrity Big Brother or Normal Big Brother?".  This is the point, the people on Celebrity Big Brother are not famous for anything, they are just 'famous'.  This concept was first introduced by Big Brother, and is about to kill it for good.