It happens once a year, sometimes twice depending on the climate, and when it comes it sweeps down through the mountains of the East, carrying all with it, a tide of idiocy and a plague of gluttony: hordes feasting on the decaying infrastructure of our crumbling humanity; it sweeps ahead faster and faster until millions are wrapped up within the swirling vortex of inanity; the water cooler moments come a-plenty, and the fatuous populace stare enraptured at the level of sheer banality that spews forth from this storm of stupidity. Soon it starts to stutter and struggle, as if the wind that once drove it forwards is slowly dying beneath its own lunacy; the rush that was once a flood becomes a trickle of hangers-on, the gales of the beginning become mere breathes of imbecility - and then, as soon as it came, all before it, all within it, and all riding at the front of it, disappear like a snatch of lightning pock-marking a once beautiful landscape. Infamy is unobtainable, three seconds of Gloriano are, however, easily wrought and easily found. I am, of course, talking about 'Big Brother'.
Every year my fight or flight instincts kick in and I'm caught between a grudging acceptance of the inevitable (mixed with a knowledge that it is inescapable) and an urge to flee to somewhere else, anywhere else.
There are several things I'd like to talk about when it comes to this show, however, I'll just riff at will and see what comes out of it.
First off: The unintended effect of the pre-publicise. For weeks before even the interviews take place, the TV is saturated with 'clever' idents that are meant to tweak your subconscious - half-second flashes of a colourless eye, a second of heavy drum and bass, or just a flash of eye-on-white. It's, I assume, meant to be whip the nation up into a frenzy of excitement; I guess that if it's your kind of thing, then the thought of imminent immersion into idiocy is perhaps quite a comforting thought - it's the show that can keep you entertained through all those balmy, long, pleasant Summer nights, who doesn't want that? For me, and I can imagine for a lot of others, however, it has the opposite effect. It makes us feel a bit nauseous, and adds to the invariable anti-climactic feeling that descends once the show actually starts. In the beginning, it was revolutionary, it was a social experiment on a huge scale, strewn across a mainstream medium - in short, it was fucking genius. It was cleverly publicised, it was eagerly anticipated, it was really exciting, and the people were great. Since then, it's been years of descent into such an intellectual jelly, it's surprising that they don't spend 10 weeks throwing cream over each other and gorging themselves silly. Or do they?
Once you remember how boring most people are, you can't help but feel that watching them doing nothing is perhaps not what you'd most like to do with your time; perhaps, then, its intention is to drive people out into the world? A grandiose experiment in enforced extroversion? Probably not, what itis, is: clever marketing, a willing public, and a doting broadcaster. And before it has even started, I'm always feeling empty.
The people themselves: here is made the classic mistake of presumptuous man. Weirdness is not interesting. Erratic disassociation, streams of verbal-bollocks, and sycophantic, love-sick, pre-pubescent-going-on-thirty-fives - they're just not interesting, they’re mundane. They're everyday. We've seen it all, fuck, we've done it all - we don't want to watch other people being less interesting than we are. There is an easy remedy: Don't pick the freaks, pick people who are engaging, who attract your attention; pick a few people you'd fuck, a few you'd hate, a few you'd want to sit with by the fire and discussTolstoy, and a few you'd wish were in your lives every single day.
There's always the first, often the second, never the third, and the fourth is laughably optimistic - but that's what is required to make this show snowball like it once did. To compare; I recently watched a show of 'Wife Swap' where a black couple traded with Ron Atkinson, of the "Desailly/nigger" fame - meant for entertainment, became an unwatchable, and fairly sickening 2-million-man masturbation over conflict and strife. It was, to be honest, fucking disgusting. It was two normal-ish couples, with two defining characteristics: Race, and an event of racism. Superb. That is what we get with this show nowadays: Chuck twenty disparate personalities in a room and hope they blow up. Invariably they don't; the outsiders lack the testicular fortitude to do anything but connive, the insiders are too busy smelling themselves to notice, the older generation are ostracised by prejudices from the outset, the younger are always so fucking dumb it's a surprise they're still functioning with even a nod to sentience. Chuck out the pseudo-weirdos; give me normality.
The final issue I'd like to touch on is that of 'fame' (or, as it is in my life: "Hot Button Issue Debunked By Jealousy"). There's always the sense of grandeur, the sense of financial triumph and the winning over of the steel hearts of the nation - when the reality settles, it's never as pretty, never as enjoyable, and always unpleasant to watch. To the docile muncher of television, 'Big Brother' perhaps appears as just a bit of a joke, something to pass the time - maybe it is. To me it is social depravity and it's deplorable and detestable when held up to any ethical guidelines, however fucking lax they are. It's a circus of wannabees who have their dreams crushed. What's funny about that? These are people. Yes, they're hollow, the conversation is vacuous, the insults acerbic and overused - but they're still people. It's ten people sitting in a box, whilst executives play a game of Soggy-Televisual-Profiteering: "It's great Jim, we can't lose!"
Games-for-swingers aside, it's a set-up for the cognition-deprived try-to-be-Illuminati-and-glitterati; plucked wilfully from the mass of plebeian screaming, the drive to be famous, the fear of a modest life. In short: It's everything you're not. Every year there is such a high level of manipulation I'm fucked if I know how the satellites are managing to keep their orbits in check; the people queue up, by the thousand, to subject themselves to non-stop scrutiny, courtesy of millions. The contestants pray for a jangling pocket and a splash on a trashy magazine; they suck the fame-teet so hard that when they finally fall back into reality, all you're left with is a brief but frankly unpleasant feeling somewhere in your stomach; a sense that something happened and you didn't like it, but it happened anyway. That's all you get. You're never going to be famous for fame's sake. Oh, yeah, maybe a pretence, a facade, but when it comes crashing down around your head: The abject humiliation after intrusion into every facet of your life, the loss of income, the realisation that you're unqualified, over-fed, over-sexed, and ultimately, unhappy.
Rather you than me; and I don't even watch it. Nasogastric intubationfor a hungry nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment