I’m not watching any more on a regular basis as a bit of a protest against the Travis-hatin’ turning into assault, but I’m still religiously reading Eye on Big Brother’s exceptionally acute daily blog posts. I must confess, though, that I did catch a bit of the Big Mouth show on Monday night, and I was intrigued by the incident at the centre of the show’s narrative, which has prompted Eye’s reflections today.
It might be worth mentioning as well that when I’ve argued that Big Brother is interesting from a cultural and sociological point of view, I’m not suggesting that it should be compulsory viewing, or that everyone should watch it (and indeed, I’m not watching it much any more – a point I’ve tended to get to at about this time of the season in the last few years – and I suspect here I’m accurately reflecting the reasons why the ratings have been falling off markedly after a few weeks to a much greater degree than in the first few BBs). What I do think is interesting is not just the reasons why people might express such fervent distaste for the show (which are usually not all that closely related to its actual content or staging, as I’ve argued before) but also what we can glimpse from some hot spots of contemporary culture – and not just youth culture – that are refracted through the Big Brother lens in a way that they’re not often so rawly exposed in other discussions.
I think it was on the very first Big Brother Big Mouth this year that Rebecca Wilson asked whether it was normal for teenage and twenty-something women to talk so much about their breasts. She said that she couldn’t recall such discussions occurring when she was in her twenties. Of course, BB, and particularly whatever incarnation of the 9.30pm show is the current one, is in part all about the body parts and particularly the boobs (though – unlike a lot of other shows – there’s an equal level of focus visually if not discursively on the boys’ tackles – which is kinda interesting in itself, uninteresting as their bits are for what they’re worth). But it’s the sort of question that interests me – because if it is true that – outside the rather small demographic of BB housemates and wannabes – young women do have a different approach to talking about their bodies and thus a different relationship to their embodiment (heavily objectified, it would seem), then that’s interesting. For all sorts of reasons.
So we come to Monday night’s breast wars. Eye on Big Brother, as usual, is spot on with the analysis. You really need to read the entire post to get the context and the full argument:
What the girls pick up on, then, is that she does also seem to switch and embody their “value” as being large breasts! And she does, sometimes. But this is partly a great example of the struggle that is Bianca. Her struggle, some would say, is with herself. True, in so many ways – but one side of that “self” is very much the self determined by the social context – without the external, she would be less a girl of such immense inner-conflict. On the one hand, she is desperate to reconstruct herself out of being a sexual object because of her breasts, and so she rejects the concept of the physical, by embracing the intellectual. So symbolic is this, she happily plays into an absurd kind of caricature, donning the glasses and black skivvy – even carrying books for her profile shots (although, this could have been simply a producer’s idea). Many criticise her for not being as smart as she puts forward – that’s true, too – but let’s cut her some slack, here. Alongside the obvious – that she’s barely out of high school – is it not better to decide to embody an “image” of the intellectual, than to go the other way and embody the big-breasted vixen? She rejects the male gaze, because she finds it demeaning, and she strives for more – for more worth, for more meaning in her life. She may not have it, yet – far from it – but at 18, striving is pretty much all we can do. For that, she deserves more kudos than she is given.
But this all becomes complicated, because she does have another ideal – a worthy one, that also deserves some credit – that she wants to be comfortable with her body. She’s not, of course – this is what plagues her, psychologically. But this is something she has been dealt by her society. So, in rejecting the social gaze, she also must, in some way, reject herself. She rejects herself to the point where she considers a breast reduction. The problem with this is that it means that she does, ultimately, give into that social pressure, because she is changing herself to alter her integration in society, and the way it views and treats her. She’s smart enough to not want to have to be dealing with her breasts, but she cannot change the society – she is forced, then, to change herself. That’s incredibly frustrating, it’s a horrible catch-22, and it’s where so much of her anger comes from. She’s caught in a trap. But it’s a trap laid by the society she lives in, and she is cornered, and effectively can’t see any other way, other than walking into that trap.
Now, I think that the concept of “society” Eye is working with is a bit undertheorised (and it’s almost always too generic and broad a category to be a precise analytical tool – because it’s too loaded with assumptions about norms), but there’s some really interesting writing going on here which I think does point to real dilemmas young women live – particularly as they cross somewhat arbitrary lines allegedly marking transitions from adolescence to adulthood (but also earlier, and here I could make a Bill Henson comparison, but I’ll refrain). If Big Brother is capable – wholly unintentionally – of stimulating some nuanced and fine-grained discussion of what it is to be female and feminine in our times – poised between subjectivity and objectification in very specific and powerful forms – then there is something worth writing and talking about here.
OMG!!!
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Kim that’s a great concept. You need an agent, you need an assistant, you need a gown for the Oscars, you need to sit down with a third world dictator and discuss global economics and US hegemony.
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MONDAY NIGHT BREAST WARS!!!
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I can see it happening. It’ll be big. You’ll be the JK Rowling of TV! And then it’s time for me to move to about a thousand kms west of nowhere and build me a self-sufficient homestead surrounded by well-protected walls – the end is nigh. It’s the downward spiral in the latest Gibbonesque Cycle. No offense.
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We need a law against the phrase “Oh my God!” for at least a hundred years.
OMG! No!
Seriously, apart from all the analysis, big boobs are just a drag to carry around.
I hit an 10F cup whilst breast feeding, and on a girl who weighed 53 kg that was pretty disproportionate and damn uncomfortable. If they stayed like that i would have definitely gotten a reduction, male gaze or not.
Not something I’ve ever had to concern myself about, sc!
You probably didn’t have to worry about stretch marks either
btw – the papers are running stories re: a certain ‘high profile teen’ who has been arrested over two fights and appears in court tomorrow.
(i wont mention names as he is going to juvvie).
me too isnt it mainly Adipose Tissue ?
Its hard to get what BB is on about when you’d rather watch something else in the 7 pm time slot. I saw the catfight on BB Out Loud, and got the context and frlt sorry for Biance, but of course, being such an intermittent watcher I wasn’t sure I got the full context. I haven’t seen enough of her to know if she’s a budding intellectual or a poser.The one who has really impressed me is Dixie and I’m sorry she’s gone.
As for the guys – the usual selection of morons and wankers as usual (Merlin from several years ago exzcepted.)
Maybe what’s doing BB in is no BB Up Late? After all, that when I used to watch it, but I never got over the impression the presenter Mike whoever was a total klutz.
Aside to sublinecowgirl: Hey, you think that’s bad? That’s what I wore immediately pre-pregnancy.
14 weeks in…well, I’m getting scared, that’s all I’m saying.
I haven’t been watching the show but flicked it on tonight.
While i had my doubts before – i am now clear in my assessment that BB producers and psychologists are culpable in the ongoing bullying and exploitation of the high voiced Travis. That he was even assessed as being an appropriate candidate in such an environment beggars belief.
He is clearly a vulnerable and gentle young man who has his limited insight into the complexity of relationships, and to allow others to manipulatively patronise and taunt him in such an apparently (ongoing?) manner for entertainment value is appalling.
I hope everyone associated with this pile of rubbish is ashamed of it, and anyone with professional integrity withdraws from it.
One unnamed person in jail for the week.
Another naive young man thrown to the lions.
I’m going to make some phone calls.
(Aaron/Eye i would be interested in your perspective.)
THe Ultimate Irony. BB’s own post about bullying on the forums.
Clearly this doesn’t extent to the housemates themselves.
From the Official BB Site
Created in: Category: Big Brother
Posted: 30/04/2008 20:22
Rules for postings about Housemates
We?ve already outlined our Code of Conduct (http://www.bigbrother.com.au/forums/ann.jspa?annID=202) but we?d like to also cover the way you should treat and refer to our Housemates.
While we encourage and welcome debate, we ask that when it comes to the Housemates, you refrain from posting any sort of non-constructive personal abuse, including but not limited to:
Bullying :: Picking on someone who can?t defend him or herself is not appropriate. In relation to the forums, bullying includes: -
* Direct verbal bullying: e.g. name calling, insults, homophobic or racist remarks, verbal abuse.
* Indirect bullying: designed to harm someone?s social reputation and/or cause humiliation. Indirect bullying includes: lying and spreading rumours; playing nasty jokes to embarrass and humiliate; mimicking; encouraging others to socially exclude someone; damaging someone?s social reputation and social acceptance; cyber-bullying, which involves the use of email or chat rooms to humiliate and distress.
Racial Vilification :: conduct that incites hatred against, serious contempt for or revulsion or severe ridicule of another person or group of persons on the grounds of their race or religion.
Legal Matters :: you must also not post any comments about court proceedings or any other legal matters involving or relating to a Housemate.
We reserve the right to remove postings that breach these rules or our Code of Conduct and your account may also be suspended.
Reporting
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Please treat others as you would like to be treated.
I must confess I am a BB tragic. Not only do I salivate over the behaviour of certain
housemates, I also salivate over the behaviour of BB himself.
Last night I watched The Daily Show and witnessed the crucifixion, as Eye calls it, of Nobbi. To cut a long story short, Nobbi was finally exposed for lying to Travis that Alice hated him. It was great television. Travis was crying. Alice was crying. Terri and Terence were agreeing that Nobbi had no heart.
The crucifixion continued on FNL. Fitzy called Nobbi a “rat”. Then the peculiar happened … Nobbi won the games … and the studio audience booed! Wow! Bree, who had already joined in the crucifixion of Nobbi, said that this was the first time in the history of BB that a winner of FNL Games had actually been booed.
I got excited again about BB this year, so this morning I went to several sites to check on reaction to the Nobbi situation. Imagine my surprise when I found out that several audience members had reported that BB had actually told them to boo Nobbi when he won! So who is the more manipulative? Nobbi in his treatment of Travis and Alice, or BB in his treatment of everyone who watches BB? I am now salivating at the prospect of the blowup that is going to occur as news of this leaks out. If you think Travis got angry and disillusioned when he finally grokked to the sheer cynicism with which Nobbi had been treating him, think of how the public will react when it realizes how cynically BB has treated them.
SC,
I haven’t followed the OS forums as closely, this year, as other years (I just drop in, from time to time to gage the BB hardcore public vibe – there were moments, though, in the Dixie threads that I really had to leave it, because it was just too depressing!), but I followed it very closely, the first year I did the site. They always have that legal disclaimer – which is what and all it is – and what they would do (and I guess still do) is to, every now and then, make a point of deleting someone’s post on the basis of “bullying”, so it looked, on their part, that they were against it and did something about it! Which is so ironic, and absurd, and everything else you could say there, because a) around it are the most vile posts and threads, and b)this is a show that is all about hatred and bullying. Big Brother is not a show about love, and empathy and understanding! So it’s such hypocrisy, and they usually leave posts up that clearly break those supposed boundaries. But this mirror what we see in the house, where BB does his strict talk about how bad behaviour to each other will not be tolerated, etc, and then they create tasks that are designed to make just that happen!
But here’s the thing – when you go on BB, you actually sign a contract whereby you give away all your rights to defamation, etc, by signing on to do the show. You completely absolve them of any responsibility – and that includes your treatment within the house, because you basically say something long the lines of, “Big Brother will not be held responsible for any psychological duress I experience while in, or as a result of, the Big Brother house.” Legally speaking, the only thing that sidesteps that is anything that is, technically, a crime. This is why the Turkeyslap incident all came down to whether police found it to be an actual “sexual assault” – as long as no crime has been committed, they actually have no responsibility. And, while bullying is a terrible thing, it’s not a law, as such. So they’ve no real responsibility there, beyond how it intertwines with PR. That’s the only thing that motivates them – PR – and that’s the real reason there is now a shift towards the crucifixion of Nobbi. They’re cover up was about to get them in hot water.
The interesting thing we must remember about reality TV is that it was never really looked at by legislation of any kid. When it was, it was only in regards to very black and white aspects (because it was a conservative reaction), and not psychology and more subtle issues of duty of care, etc. This is why the psychologists hate it – they have laws against what they can and can’t do, in the name of science. But doing it in the name of TV is okay, legally! That’s partly why I chose to look at it – because there’s plenty of anti-BB stuff out there, but it’s all quite right wing! The left have never really looked at it and talked about these things, so the debate (quite uselessly) has always been around tits and ass! There’s never been a big enough push, in regards to bullying, etc, and the social problems of having something like that show legitimise it and exploit it in such a way.
Oh, and Kim, I do completely acknowledge that, in an arena like this one, my concept of “society” is a simplistic notion. But remember that in dealing with BB and its audience, they live in a singular concept of society as a broad reference, so it refers to something that is naturally loaded with implications of “norms” because that’s what it’s about – and what Big Brother is about – for them. I’m addressing a crowd who ‘live” in a very singular concept of society, and hence, this is how I discuss it. There’s only so much you can throw them, before you start to alienate them. They would not relate to a more complex scheme of “society”. because there’s isn’t. But I get what you’re saying, definitely
Eye, i’m glad you and Hoyden et al are blogging it.
I was really touched last night by Travis’ circumstances, and been reflecting on just how much it triggered the Parent-Child dynamic in me.
I do understand the waivers housemates sign, though wonder if guys like Travis could actually foresee the implications for him of going on a show like that, and if they have capitalised on his innocence in this?
I guess he will be portrayed highly ‘possimistically’ from now on, as the producers probably feel some guilt at their construct, (and are more than happy to leverage $ off public sympathy), but thats not the point.
Its that these producers and their psysch advisers are so willing to play around with people’s lives and actually perpetuate problematic social stereotypes and behaviours without a hint of responsibility.
Tell me what is to be gained by heavily promoting an older woman as a “Hanson” supporter, and then allowing her to be viciously attacked by a mysogynist asian immigrant without intervening ?
I said: “Imagine my surprise when I found out that several audience members had reported that BB had actually told them to boo Nobbi when he won!”
Having read more comments at Behind BB on this, it seems that this is not true. The booing from the audience was spontaneous, but deserved. It’s just a coincidence that the crucifixion of Nobbi and Nobbi winning FNL converged.
Many of us have wondered why BB has not shown the bit where Nobbi shouts at Terri for minutes on end about her “masturbating in the toilet” (a sick lie). My take on this is that BB could not have shown it in the 7pm timeslot as the content was sexual and only ever suitable for Big Mouth. However, that is not to say that BB was not also protecting Nobbi. He was. This is proven by the fact that Nobbi discussed with Ben his plan to sabotage the training of Ollie, by repeatedly pulling Ollie’s tail, causing BB to withdraw Ollie from the house permanently. (Does SEDA know about this?) That was an outrage, and what was equally outrageous was BB totally suppressing news of this incident. But now that the crucifixion of Nobbi has officially begun – spurred on by claims that BB was covering up for Nobbi – we can now expect BB to release footage of the confrontation with Terri for Monday night’s Big Mouth, right? And also the footage of Nobbi torturing Ollie.
Yes, they were never going to show it on primetime – the sow has always been hindered by its timelsot, in that way. It was once it wasn’t shown on Big Mouth that it was clear it was deliberate on their part. And not only that, but what many people missed was that – sensing the debate growing – what they DID show on Big Mouth was a clip of Terri and Nobbi, where Nobbi was joking round with hr sexually, and Terri was laughing at it. This was to set up, in advance, the idea that Terri doesn’t mind “having a laugh”, etc, and that it’s “all good” between them (even though this conversation was actually an older one than the fight!). After the clip was shown, Squires gushed, “Awwww, I think Terri and Nobbi are secretly in love with each other.” So there was no doubt that they were deliberately with-holding that footage and, furthermore putting forward a deliberately opposite view. But the fans wouldn’t shut up about it, blogger (ahem) kept blogging the cover up, and then the mainstream press got involved. That’s when the wind changed! That’s all they care about, realistically, is things exploding in the press.
Eye, yes, I take that point – I’d forgotten you host forums which attract BB fans and that part of your blogging remit is to dialogue with them – so apologies there from me!