Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Big Brother 2006

Page: 1 ... 103104105106107(108)109110111112113... 130

11:21 / 20.07.06

Hmm, it's looking like Dickie and Michael may be doing the gay male thing of finding female grotesques fascinating/amusing (see also Nikki), but taking it all to a risible degree (particularly in Michael's case). Jayne does have some good points - her relative lack of concern about her appearance was particularly refreshing in an environment where tit implants are almost the norm - but they're rather eclipsed by her many negatives.

The "falsies" thing isn't more than a hop and a skip from the original Plastics/non-Plastics division, and that originated in the Golden Age Team SmugHet grouping with its perceived exclusivity. Even then, I don't think Richard would've developed such a venomous dislike for that whole element of the House were it not for Imogen's homophobic 'othering' of his relationship with Sezer, her suggestion that Dickie's sexuality might be somehow contagious through physical contact (at least in the eyes of her watching parents), and he should therefore refrain from enjoying (what was, at that point) an easy physical (play-sparring) relationship with Sezer.

Although it was reported fairly lightly, I think that interaction cast a long shadow in terms of Dickie's relationship with Imogen and, by extension, the other 'Plastics'. It killed his relationship with Sezer, laid the ground for HoochGate, and has led to Dickie resenting anyone who spends a lot of time with Imogen (the drifting from Aisleyne).

I feel quite sorry for Dickie because I don't think he has a single person in there he can count as a friend in the sense of backing him up in a dispute or even recognising when he needs comforting. The first was brought home to him during HoochGate; the second was particularly evident on the night of Lea's eviction. Not a single person congratulated Dickie or seemed pleased he was staying. He had a little weep to himself in the toilets for a few minutes then went to hug Pete, ostensibly to comfort him in the wake of Lea's departure (when it was clear that Richard needed the physical contact more than Pete did).

I don't think all of this is reflective of Richard being unlikeable so much as Richard having become an authority figure within the House - with all the ambiguity that that entails. It's the lot of authority figures to be resented.

12:01 / 20.07.06

She really is a complete Brent, isn't she?

You mean a Br*nt?

Thinking more about the original Plastics/non-Plastics division and the original Team SmugHet, I think it did embody several of those aspects generally seen as survival traits within Big Brother: being young, attractive and in a heterosexual (if only because there's no precedent for anything else) pairing, and I think there was 'othering' of anything else. Richard possible felt this particularly keenly when Imogen soured his relationship with Sezer and the hetgroup seemed to consolidate itself in opposition to him (older, non-heterosexual, single), culminating in HoochGate - when Richard realised that he couldn't count on the support of anyone in a House dispute.

Since then, I think he's seized upon new Housemates as potential friends/allies, and has been drawn especially toward those nearer his age, who wouldn't have fitted the Golden Age Team SmugHet requirements - Susie and Jayne. He's rather grasping for straws, because Susie's too diffident to be a real ally, and Jayne too quixotic. Pete's his friend, but too passive to be of real emotional support. If Dickie could swallow his resentment of Imogen sufficient to rekindle his closeness with Aisleyne, I think he'd find her a reliable friend - but I fear he's already too marginalised for that.

12:15 / 20.07.06

The BB website tells me that he also told Jayne "You're my sidekick" - yeeeaaarrrgghhh...

Yeeeaaarrrgghhh indeed - but according to that link, it seems to be Jayne ("rule breaker") who's claiming that Richard's her sidekick )- and saying, "You don't take yourself too seriously. Everyone else takes themselves too seriously."

12:22 / 20.07.06

Do you think she does it on purpose?

I don't know. I can't work her out at all to be honest. There was a scene last night when she was in the diary room, I think appealing for food, on the basis that it wasn't fair to punish the other housemates for her behaviour, when just for a second she seemed almost reasonable. And then she pulled her legs up, spread them for the camera and farted twice, triumphantly.

Similarly, she seemed to be having a decent enough conversation with Susie for a while, before letting rip with the inevitable belch. Unless she really can't control this, in which case, why hasn't she seen a doctor about it by now - it can't have made business appointments, parent-teacher meetings etc any easier - her behaviour seems fairly inexplicable.

Perhaps she suffers from a form of biological Tourettes?

It's the flatulence thing that I think really kills the m*l* theory (sorry to bring it up again, but one way or another there's surely only a day to go.) No professional actor would make themselves that objectionable, would they, assuming they ever wanted to work again?

In the context of the house, her behaviour does seem bizarrely self-destructive - it's one thing to predict your own eviction out of insecurity, paranoia etc, quite another to do that when the earliest possible exit seems like the one thing you've been consistently working towards during your time there.

She appears on some level to actually *want* to be thrown out of the house, thus proving some sort of obscure point to herself, but as to what that might be, I don't know. Perhaps it's all down to a deep-seated fear of rejection or something, but if so, why put yourself in that position in the first place, especially when you've got a daughter who's about to hit adolescence, and must be really looking forward to school next term. (Incidentally, she has a daughter according to her Big Brother profile, but has she actually mentioned her, even once?)

She seems a strange and complicated woman.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:24 / 20.07.06

Weird - maybe they both said the "everyone but you takes themselves too seriously" thing, 'cos Richard definitely said that, hence my misreading.

I fear also that Aisleyne, whilst possessing relatively more backbone and brains (not the general knowledge kind, admittedly) than the majority of people in the House, is still pretty susceptible herself - and Imogen has started going on to her about Richard's "falseness", and even saying that she'd rather see him evicted than Jayne. I dunno, Aisleyne stuck to her opinion that this would not be a desirable result, and we've never seen anyone say "don't insult someone I like" on this show this year, but it's still saddening.

12:30 / 20.07.06

Ganesh, I know you're not here but have you by any chance seen any of the footage regarding Richard's converstion about Michael? He went quite into depth with Jayne and Susie about him, in particular about him being a much younger gay man. He said that in most gay circles when a younger man meets an older man, he tends to look up to him and to ask questions; 'when did you know' and the like. But that Michael doesn't do that at all and has in fact gone completely the other way.

It was in the show yesterday and it was really interesting.

miss wonderstarr

13:09 / 20.07.06

It seemed a tad arrogant and/or patronising to me, the way Richard was apparently setting himself up as the natural mentor and guide to Michael (just because they're both gay and Richard is what, 12 years older?) and making the point that as Michael hadn't done that, it was further proof of his discomfort with his own homosexuality (within the House, at least). In the outside world, according to Richard, Michael would automatically have come to him for support, advice and experience.

I don't know first-hand of course, but while I can entirely believe there's some precedent for and convention of younger gay men having a social "mentor" (I've read my Batman comics, you know), it seems a bit much for Richard to assume this would happen just because the other gay man in the house is younger than him. Richard seems quite immature and childlike in some ways, rather than being an appealingly solid and trustworthy adult confidant.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:24 / 20.07.06

Yeah, but Michael's approach to his own sexuality, a lot like his spiritual beliefs and indeed everything else about him, seems to involve a lot of what Sir Alan Sugar might call "a load of bollocks and nonsense and rubbish". He's Mr "Ooh, it's a little bit more complicated than that!", isn't he?

miss wonderstarr

14:33 / 20.07.06

I've got no issue with the guy except that he should say what he fucking tinks and not come out with somethin he wasn't tinking at the toime, and makin a fewl out of someone on national television, makin them look like a fuckin prick, that's my only problem with the fella.

14:42 / 20.07.06

At the risk of lowering the analytical tone somewhat Richard&Judy, BB7 interview goodness.
(Purely because I've been much preferring their interview technique).

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:45 / 20.07.06

I believe that we're all energy. I am energy. Energy is love. I am love. God is love. I am God.

(Do we think that Michael might have been eating a different kind of porridge before he entered the house? The hallucinogenic kind?)

15:06 / 20.07.06

Well it would be quite easy to smuggle a substantial amount of LSD into the Big Brother house, certainly enough to be under the influence pretty much constantly, which might go some way towards explaining Michael's flying saucer eyes and 'passionate' ideas.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:40 / 20.07.06

If he's tripping, this assault course is REALLY gonna do his head in...

19:14 / 20.07.06

'Fuck, what's this ... Man, I can't cope... Why do we have to c ompete, y'know? Why can't we all just sit down on the grass and just, y'know, be?

'Omigod all the grass is dead...'

20:34 / 20.07.06

According to Michael being gay is just a tiny part of his life and he is so much more than his sexuality but that's all anyone ever talks to him about.

He does have a point. That pretty much is all that anyone talks to him about, but that might be because they're desperately trying to stop him from going on and on about NLP.

Is anyone else's Telewest going up the spout this evening? I am esatching tantalisng glimpses of Big Brother, interspersed with a lot of black.

20:45 / 20.07.06

I have to say that, when I look at Michael - and the way he talks about his sexuality, and indeed his 'spiritual' beliefs - I see a man who is, at best, one bad weekend away from seeing gentlemen of a certain religious bent in an effort to be 'cured'.

She has that 'would it be alright if we just left some literature' look about her, doesn't she?

20:59 / 20.07.06

I have to say, I think Richard was out-of-line on the feminine pronoun thing.
Richard does seem to be losing it a little.

21:00 / 20.07.06

Ack. TBPH the cumulative effect of unwanted "she" references would probably have put me over the edge too.
I also take into account Richard's utter flabbergastedness that anyone could have a problem with what he'd consider a very gentle ribbing.

21:06 / 20.07.06

I had a lot of sympathy with Michael throughout that. I don't think the larger point he was making about being defined by his sexuality was unreasonable, and he was making an effort to go along with Richard's banter until it crossed some boundaries that he'd been very clear about defining on several occasions.

21:20 / 20.07.06

The aftermath, however, did see Richard using "she" and "queen" with quite vicious intonation and intent as oppossed to the previous jovialness, which does make me wonder. His original intent was to rile Michael, of course, but why he chose that exact subject given there previous conversations I really couldn't guess.

miss wonderstarr

22:29 / 20.07.06

I was astonished to find myself rooting for, and grateful for, Mikey in that swimming-pool scene. Richard was lying about not having been party to a conversation where Michael asked not to be called "she", and it was, in my view, somewhere between thoughtless and offensive for him to keep doing it. I also felt Mikey had a point countering Richard's assertion that he (Richard) and Michael should be able to talk, as gay men "on the same team" ~ I'm not sure if a shared sexual preference (or age, or ethnicity, or nationality) has ever guaranteed that people develop a bond in Big Brother.

Richard's efforts to talk "reasonably" to Michael in the bedroom later were also pretty ludicrously weak ~ he picked up on one comment about Michael having asked others for advice, and then walled up, unwilling to hear any more, telling him to put dynamite up his arse and then calling him a queen (in his absence, admittedly). For all his claims that he's constantly offered to sit down calmly and chat, if this was evidence of his attitude then I do sympathise with Michael.

And finally, I found it a little odd that Richard seems to present his spats with Michael as, I don't know, Bette Davis vs Joan Crawford bitching in Tinkerbell's boudoir. "Watch the glitter fly". Pete and Mikey seem far more glam and actually more feminine than Richard and Michael.

Postscript: Michael does, as has been suggested, come across as someone plugged into telepathic orders from Pluto ~ like Kevin Spacey as K-Pax perhaps ~ and my patience would also have snapped with him long ago.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:41 / 21.07.06

Spiral. Please please please stop rapping.

I'll pay you, you know...

07:06 / 21.07.06

I just caught the tail end of that fight between Richard and Michael. I *am* blinded by my love for Dickie but I thought Richard was perfectly reasonable until he started saying "I'm done with him.." and talking about Michael in the 3rd person while Michael was still there.

I do think it's pretty obvous that Michael and Richard would not hang in the same circles on the outside and that *could* be part of the problem, but Michael certainly seems uncomfortable with his sexuality - at least he's a lot less comfortable with being gay than Richard is.

I think Richard was telling the truth the other day when he was talking to Spiral about all the conversations that he would have "on the outside" that he can't have in the house because people are not interested/don't wanna know etc.

It seems to me that Richard was probably so happy to have another gayer in there that he WANTED to talk about some of these things, but unfortunately it makes Michael feel uncomfortable.

OK I only saw the last 15 minutes of the highlights last night but it certainly wasn't too kind to Richard. TEXT JAYNE to 84444!!!!

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:07 / 21.07.06

I have to say, of all the would-be rappers who I've ever seen on a reality TV show, Spiral's by far the worst, much worse than, say, that Welsh chap from Shipwrecked: Battle Of The Bands. Although Michael is pretty bad as well, the difference being that Michael actually dislikes rap music and was deliberately sounding jaw-droppingly shit.

07:30 / 21.07.06

Looks like Richard and Michael have already made up, though, which is nice.

08:36 / 21.07.06

Has anybody, though, called Michael on what would seem to be a rather obvious point - that if his sexuality is 'such a small part of him' and something he's 'not that bothered about' - why does he always go off on one whenever anyone brings it up?

I'm beginning to develop a theory that Michael self-identifies as gay for the same reason he holds all his crazy spiridguuuuual beliefs - he thinks it makes him more interesting. He's actually said, in conversation, 'I'm a very interesting person.' That suggests to me that he has a lot invested in appearing to be more unusual than the average bear.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:56 / 21.07.06

I have to say, of all the would-be rappers who I've ever seen on a reality TV show, Spiral's by far the worst

I was quite drunk when I was subjected to his rapping, but I seem to remember it was the "yeeeeaaaahhh"s that I found most grating.

09:02 / 21.07.06

I think when BB calls Spoiral a rapper they're using it in the loosest sense of the word. IE, you could call me a rapper cuz I like to rap along to the tunes sometimes. Doesn't mean I'm any GOOD at it. I feel it is the same for Spoiral..

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:09 / 21.07.06

Okay, I'm going away for three days. He'd better have finished by the time I get back, is all I'm saying. (Oh, and remember to text me the eviction result if you'd be so kind, Granny!)

11:25 / 21.07.06

I wonder if Richard (somewhat unfortunately, considering who he's up against,) hasn't just decided he's leaving this week whatever, and may as well throw caution to the wind? No one in the house was expecting Nikki to go, but post that, it must seem as if, after a certain number of nominations, the writing's on the wall.

Did like, in the above link, Michael's reluctance to spoil Richard's 'last few days' - I do hope he's in for an unpleasant surprise, but if Richard does go tonight, he'll have done it to himself, I fear.

11:45 / 21.07.06

I do think it's pretty obvous that Michael and Richard would not hang in the same circles on the outside and that *could* be part of the problem, but Michael certainly seems uncomfortable with his sexuality - at least he's a lot less comfortable with being gay than Richard is.

*****************************

Has anybody, though, called Michael on what would seem to be a rather obvious point - that if his sexuality is 'such a small part of him' and something he's 'not that bothered about' - why does he always go off on one whenever anyone brings it up?

I don't think Michael is necessarily uncomfortable with the meat and bones mechaniques of being gay but does take great issue with how people choose to approach him because of his sexual orientation. There is a kind of tiresome mode of referral people have when approaching you as a gay man (sometimes) when they engage with you as a homosexual first and foremost rather than a person with varying dimensions, leaving you feeling slightly pigeon-holed. And he doesn't always go off on one when people bring it up, he did patiently answer Jayne's questions without incident in the first week, didn't he?

I think there's a myriad of sexual innuendo and questioning that I would feel uncomfortable with despite being perfectly comfortable with my own life choices. To suggest otherwise is actually really fucking insulting. After politely explaining my discomfiture with this mode of engagement to Richard and his continuance of same I'd more than likely tell Richard to go fuck himself rather than get upset about it, but each to their own.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:01 / 21.07.06

I know I keep saying "Oh dear", but... Richard has decided that Aisleyne is a full-blown "plastic", and was singing "I'm a Barbie girl!" in a mockingly high-piched voice, about her and Imogen, to Jayne. Does anyone know if Aisleyne has actually actively done anything to prompt this other than get on well with Imogen?

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:10 / 21.07.06

Aisleyne and Jayne is the diary room: "We're the same!", says Aisleyne. Oh. DEAR. They've all lost it. I blame the lack of food and then sudden feast.

19:11 / 21.07.06

Ganesh, I know you're not here but have you by any chance seen any of the footage regarding Richard's converstion about Michael? He went quite into depth with Jayne and Susie about him, in particular about him being a much younger gay man. He said that in most gay circles when a younger man meets an older man, he tends to look up to him and to ask questions; 'when did you know' and the like. But that Michael doesn't do that at all and has in fact gone completely the other way.

Nope, I won't see any of the footage until we get back to Blighty next week. It sounds an interesting conversation, though, and I certainly remember having that sort of interaction with several more 'out' gay men than myself, back in the dayyy. Comparing one's own narrative (in terms of the commonalities - realising one is 'different', one's reaction to that, 'coming out', etc.) does seem to be a near-ubiquitous way of getting to grips with one's own sexuality, putting it in perspective.

Obviously I haven't seen the footage, but I thiiink I can imagine what Richard's getting at. Michael does seem to have certain unresolved issues around his sexuality (and let's face it, he'd hardly be the first person to enter BB as such): in his audition interview, he hedged his bets a bit (something about wanting to be married with kids but not fancying women sexually, wasn't it?) and, thinking about it, his discomfort with Spoiral's opening night question could've been because it touched this particular nerve). I seem to recall a DS rumour that he's previously appeared on Blind Date as purportedly straight, but this may be bollocks.

Although Richard may be overplaying the 'scene' element (I think comparison of experiences is common currency among gay men period), he's not out of line in mentioning the fact that Michael hasn't done this. Taken in concert with some of Michael's other quirks, it's perhaps suggestive of someone not yet happy in his sexuality.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:13 / 21.07.06

Spiral has now said Jayne is the woman in the house he rates highest in terms of looks plus personality. It's not entirely clear whether he and Glynn were talking about who they would "do", but that's still very very WRONG. What has she done to their BRAINS?

Page: 1 ... 103104105106107(108)109110111112113... 130