Thursday
(0)I gather from the front of The Sun on this morning's news-stands that there is some kind of scandal in relation to the umpteenth series of the voyeur's soap opera. One of the competitors, an exceedingly pretty young women called Makosi, turns out to be an actress. She may have been acting at some point, possibly in covert collaboration with the producers of the show.
You could have knocked me down with a feather. If they are selecting people for good-looks, exhibitionism, emotional incontinence, and absence of that untelevisual thing, interior life, then surely a crew of poets, pharmacists, dustmen and bankers is more likely than actors? And they are bound spontaneously to generate gossip for gay men and teenage girls without outside intervention. You only have to retell the uproarious stories of the last seven weeks at the office to realise that.
More interesting even than Big Brother - if you can imagine such a thing - is the seriousness with which The Sun takes such stories. Normally rendered instantly comatose with boredom at the mere mention of BB (to give the programme its full name) I only ventured onto the Sun's site because of this Samizdata post.
That'll learn me...
Anyway, such is the enormity of this revelation that The Sun even has an editorial - The Sun Says - about it. After "sensationally revealing" the story its editorial says,
Reality TV is supposed to be about ORDINARY people impressing the producers at auditions to win their chance of fame.Even the catty and crazy world of Big Brother has to be seen to be fair.
Which shows how little The Sun knows about the motivations of people watching daytime porn.
GM
Posted by Gary Monro at August 11, 2005 09:17 AM
German Big Brother had Miss Russia, but the TV audience voted her out when she gained 20+ pounds. :)
They also put in a couple of strippers, but they were voted out, too. There is no shortage of freelance exhibitionists anyway, they are haveing wet t-shirt constest for example, and some time ago a couple that met in the BB village (a village instead of just a house this time around) had sex for 90 minutes in the whirlpool; you only got to see that on Pay-TV, though.
BB Germany has become pretty hardcore all around. When one particpant failed his 'challenge' to climb a 20 storey building using a rope-ladder, they kicked him out of the house he was staying in and had him sleep in the open. The BB moderators refered to him as a clochard from then on. :)
Posted by Ralf Goergens at August 11, 2005 11:45 AM
Goodness knows what George Orwell would make of this. Ironic, we live in age of decreasing personal privacy, to the point where BB is no longer a useful word in the armoury of civil libertarians and becomes a show where various inadequates, fading stars and wannabee actresses cavort. Ugh.
Posted by Johnathan at August 11, 2005 01:15 PM
'The Sun' lecturing us all on the 'true' meaning of reality? And 'fairness'?
O temporae, o mores.
Participants in 'reality' TV shows are selected, as is everything else on TV, for one reason and one reason only - to improve ratings. 'Reality' and 'fairness' have nothing to do with it. One would think that 'The Sun', with its long history of pandering in pursuit of circulation, would have enough self-awareness not to be quite so ridiculous about this.
llater,
llamas
Posted by llamas at August 11, 2005 05:04 PM
Oh, it does have self-awareness, llamas. But it keeps its circulation by being very discreet about showing it. Ditto, most of the tabloids.
One of the most valuable skills in life is to appear consistently less intelligent than you actually are and manipulate people through their reactions to that persona.
Posted by guy herbert at August 11, 2005 07:53 PM
I think Ronald Reagan was a case in point regarding what Guy just said. I would argue that George W Bush is another. Presidents-wise, the antithesis, of course, is Jimmy Carter, who was dying to impress people with how intelligent and thoughtful he was.
Posted by Verity at August 11, 2005 09:45 PM
guy herbert - point well taken.
For all their regrettable style and lack of taste, I think that tabloids in the style of 'The Sun' actually have a very good track record in political reporting - or as much of it as they do. One may recall, for example, the large role played in the Monica Lewinsky scandal by the National Inquirer, a US tabloid which (as I understand it) has a significant proportion of expats from the Fleet Street tabloids on its staff.
Perhaps there's something to be said for having your reporters stand at least knee-deep in the more trivial cess-pools of society - it breeds a cynicism and skepticism which seems to serve them well. Connecting to what Verity mentioned, the reporters in the 'better' class of newspaper seem to be far too busy trying to impress each other with how intelligent and thoughtful they are - with the result that they seem to have lost the ability to bore down to the truth, and are easily hoodwinked.
llater,
llamas
Posted by llamas at August 12, 2005 11:50 AM
