Evangelicals Now
<< September 2005 >>

Monthly media and arts column

Oh, Brother, where art thou?

Channel 4 churns out yet another season of Big Brother for those bothering to watch.

I was relieved to discover that since the target audience for Big Brother is 18-34 year olds, I will be safely out of their clutches this time next year as a 35 year-old. So I decided to see what it was that I would be missing in 2006 and started watching.

With the average ratings at 6.2 million for eviction nights, Channel 4 is certainly getting the audience figures that it craves for the sixth Big Brother season. One critic on the Digital Spy Forums website commented that Channel 4 should be renamed ChBB because of its dependence on the one show. Just as Eastenders is the reliable draw for the BBC and Coronation Street for ITV, Big Brother is a cheap money-spinner that is not going to go away, simply because it gives Channel 4 the foundation that it needs to keep going all year round.

Ticks all the boxes

The three recently-formulated core values of Channel 4 are ‘Do it first’, ‘Make Trouble’ and ‘Inspire Change’. Big Brother is a flagship for the station in that it ticks all of these boxes. The station directors want to be controversial, to challenge conformity and to go against the grain. However, with the recent furore over the BBC’s Jerry Springer — The Opera, they are being forced to commission even more innovative programming in order to maintain a sufficiently challenging position. As with all commercial TV stations, they are also slaves to their advertisers who must be convinced that the Channel 4 audiences are big enough and affluent enough to make it worth the extra fees that the Channel 4 slots command.

Increased controversy

This need for popularity and ratings success leads to increased ‘controversy’ in the choices of housemates and their subsequent behaviour every season. There are homosexuals and bisexuals and transsexuals and virgins, witches and strippers and Tory speechwriters. The housemate currently tipped to win is Anthony, who, when asked what he thought of himself, said; ‘I love myself and I dance all the time and I talk lots’. He may look tame next to Kemal, award winning belly dancer, or Science, the ‘entrepreneur’ who believes that he is destined for great things and speaks in riddles.

Yet all of these headline-worthy eccentricities fade when a group of selfish adults are forced to live with each other for weeks on end. The sexual preferences of these individuals mean nothing when it transpires that loo-roll was left off the shopping list. The actions and reactions that we are presented with are everyday, normal feuds, which arise from pressurised situations. The show invites us to judge the contestants on their behaviour and to provide us with some water-cooler gossip for the summer months.

Do we find ourselves drawn into condemnation of the two-dimensional characters offered through hearsay and the news, before we have even watched them in action? After all, the Bible tells us that since all have sinned, there is no one who pleases God, not even one. This means that the wild natures of the participants are actually no more sinful than you or I in God’s sight.

The key?

So is it possible to justify switching on Big Brother? Can I survive the ridicule of my friends if I admit to watching Big Brother’s Little Brother, or signing up to the WAP site through my mobile, or viewing the ‘live from the house’ 24-hour programme on E4, not to mention taking the odd peek at the official website?

If you watch the programme, then the key is to watch the edited programme shown in the morning at 8.00 am, rather than the post-watershed programme at 10.00 pm. It is also useful to learn from the mistakes of others because when everyday behaviour is held up to the scrutiny of primetime television, you notice it. Maxwell made the mistake of always thinking he was right in everything and could do anything he wanted. Science was advised by Derek that he needed to listen to others if he wanted to make anything of himself in the world. Anthony was filled with remorse at his drunken antics in the jacuzzi and the next morning longed that people hadn’t seen what he’d done. ‘What girl will want to be with me now?’ he asked the other housemates. If you can see through the 15 certificate language, flamboyance and idiocy, you will find some interesting case studies to discuss with others, particularly young people.

Next year, when I am officially ‘too old’, I will of course be free. I will be free from the temptation to judge others, I will automatically spend my time more wisely and I will no longer be in danger of adopting the anti-Christian attitudes that are promoted by the show. Easy.

Eleanor Margesson