big brother 8
Big Brother is still being watched by you. Well, perhaps not by you - few Christian people are willing to admit to this particular vice - but by plenty of other voyeurs. Over eight million watched on the opening night, in fact.
If you haven’t tuned in to BB8, you’ll have missed an all-girl house assemble on day one to preen and pout and try on each other’s clothes (which sounds sexist, but the cameras rarely lie…).
You’ll have missed Ziggy, the former boy-band singer with a muscle-bound torso and a voice strangely reminiscent of Sir Cliff, arriving a few days later, to the very evident relief of the girls. You’ll have missed his unconcealed ecstasy at the thought of being the only guy in the house - and his growing realisation that you can have too much of a good thing, as rising oestrogen levels threatened to engulf him.And you’ll have missed Emily Parr, the well-spoken teenager from Bristol who boasted of bringing some much-needed intelligence into the house, before being removed for somewhat stupidly (though not maliciously) calling one of her black housemates a ‘nigger’. The incident provoked yet another row about Big Brother and racism, though it reminded us ineloquently of what even the sweetest and prettiest Middle Englanders can let slip.
In fact, for all its predictable superficiality and editorial manipulation, Big Brother remains intriguing (to some) because it commits to the long haul and allows space for its wannabe cast to forget about performing and start developing relationships - betraying themselves and others through what they say, dividing the group with arguments and acts of selfishness, and occasionally reuniting it with heart-warming flashes of grace.
Although it appears that the contestants are as shallow as the popular culture they are helping to dramatise, in the end they really can’t help being themselves. Which begs the question: If we can’t stand them for who they are, how can we, as the Church, ever hope to love the millions they represent in the ‘real’ world?
God, who could have switched off from us years ago, doesn’t miss our own simplicity, stupidity and occasional duplicity. But thankfully he’s willing to look beyond the impressions we create of ourselves, to the heart of who we are. And that’s surely what we all need, whether we seek it on the TV or not: a healthy dose of reality.
Brian Draper
additional resources
Immerse yourself in the world of Big Brother on the official website. And enjoy Grace Dent’s very amusing blog at radiotimes.com.
Read an intelligent reflection on the implications of the N-word in the Belfast Telegraph.
Read Emily’s self-assessment in the Manchester Evening News. Faux pas or not, Ladbroke’s had already identified her as the contestant least likely to win.
