ganesh, what have you learned from viewing big brother?
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4 point of reference, i'll say the george galloway series and the series with that horrid girl who thought it was clever to throw water over other people.
That would be last year's CBB and BB respectively, assuming your "horrid girl" is Grace.
What, then, have I learned from watching Big Brother. I assume you don't mean hard facts ('men have nipples because X') or universally generalisable truths about the human condition ('politicians invariably enjoy pretending to be cats'). I'm also making the assumption that there isn't a 'moral' dimension to learning here: the fact that the behaviour to which we're privy is often unflattering, prejudiced, vitriolic or "horrid" doesn't mean it's without viewing value. Finally, I'm assuming that something doesn't have to be "news" in order to have been interesting, useful, even instructive - not to me, anyway.
So. I enjoy Big Brother, first and foremost, because it gives me an insight into people, individually and (particularly) in groups. Having studied a certain amount of Social Psychology, it's absolutely fascinating to me to see the principles I've read about writ large onscreen. Yes, the Big Brother House is an 'artificial' environment (as is much of modern life) but I feel it strips away a lot of extraneous background and showcases social dynamics in quite a unique way. Over the years, the more obvious examples have become something of a cliche in BBBB, with discussion of 'alpha males', etc. and Tuckman's 'forming, storming, norming, performing' stages, but every year there's more to see, additional twists on classical theory.
In the case of last year's BB, I was intrigued by the sheer speed with which the House established an orthodoxy of sorts in the form of a set of opposite-sex pair-bondings (which I christened Team SmugHet). It's tempting to consider BB a microcosm of UK society but there are very obvious pitfalls inherent in this approach. Nonetheless, I think I gained insights into some of the ways outsiders can be 'othered'/triangulated by a central, dominant power bloc - and some of the types and fluidity of outsiderdom.
I found the adoration/infantilisation of Perfect Pete particularly absorbing (and frustrating), both in the House and in the attitudes expressed by viewers. He evoked strong maternal/paternal feelings and (what I took to be) his spinelessness was indulged, to a certain extent, as niceguyness. The treatment of Pete was, for me, a useful way of dissecting some of our attitudes toward the physically or mentally disabled, and I've since used him as an analogy when warning relatives about the dangers of 'babying' someone too much.
Something that always (possibly predictably) holds my attention is the phenomenon of non-heterosexual people within the Big Brother House. 'Representation' was, for many years, a bugbear of the gay equality movement and, in some ways, it still is. Certainly, for me, a gay man who grew up in the '70s and '80s, it's still something of a novelty to see gay people on television. Big Brother offers a near-enough-unique opportunity to see more than one real gay person interacting socially in a mixed setting, over a period of time. This isn't something we see every day. In most reality shows, there's one or at most two gay people and, as a result, they behave a certain way; when they're not in such a tokenistic minority, the whole social equilibrium changes. I find that utterly fascinating.
What have I learned from it? Well, I've learned about the way other gay men behave when they're surrounded by straight people, and I compare and contrast how I negotiate that situation myself (as I do every day). I also see how different gay men react to one another (Shahbaz/Richard, Richard/Michael) and I can then use this as a tool to examine my own assumptions and behaviours. It's a truism that those Housemates to whom one reacts most strongly often represent elements of oneself, and I find this particularly with the gay male characters, in whom I (possibly over)invest aspects of my own identity.
The sexuality of BB Housemates is of interest to me generally. Every year, there's someone who's ripe for analysis. I find the contradictions immensely satisfying to document and attempt to unpick (eg. Jason - 100% straight Jungle Cat who didn't seem to like women much and craved attention from men; Richard - 'sexual terrorist' who immediately assumed a more parental, even mumsy role). There's always some insight to be gained from the ways in which Housemates' self-descriptions are at odds with their observable behaviour patterns over time - and, as I say, this can be applied to oneself.
BB differs from CBB in that it's longer and more gruelling, meaning Housemates have less chance of staying in their shells for the duration. Also, non-celebs are less schooled/practised in performance and presentation, and perhaps quicker to let their facade drop. Nonetheless, last year's rather wonderful CBB confirmed my image of Galloway as a vain attention-seeker, even as I learned enough about Barrymore to soften my previously rather harsh impression of him (largely based on his not-terribly-funny 'comedy'). I'd thought of Pete Burns as straightforwardly transsexual (albeit a little slow on the name change) and learned that, actually, his sex and gender are a good deal more complex than that.
That's a sort of off-the-top-of-my-head answer. Bottom line, I suppose, is that I'm interested in people and how they work. Big Brother exposes me to a greater range of people than I'd otherwise encounter and displays them in a setting which enables me observe them in a more-or-less unique way. I'd say this all amounts to more than merely learning of "the existence of two cool people in the whole of London". |
