Big Brother – Postmodern Media

Hayley, Alice ,James and Melissa

Confusion over space and time- Takes a selection of edited footage from 24 hours a day to 1 hour .

- Housemates refer to the ‘Outside World’ and ‘Real World’ although they are in the real world but illusion.

- Editors can manipulate the confusion over space and time, e.g. If one housemate talks about another housemate and states something which they are doing, the editors will purposely capture the footage of this housemate. As an audience we view the program in a chronological order and see things as if they are happening straight after each other however time can be confused as footage is edited throughout each day.

Jade Goody

Style over Substance“In the future everybody will have their fifteen minutes of fame”- Andy Warhol (famous Postmodernist)

Jade Goody entered the Big Brother house in 2002. Previous to the programme Jade was a working class nurse who was in a great amount of debt.

Whilst in the house she didn’t prove to be popular with the public ,82% of the public voted to evict her rather than Shilpa Shetty.

After her time in Big Brother Jade made a living out newspaper and magazine deals and became a successful celebrity without actually being talented in anything.

This proves that in today's society it is possible for anyone to become famous.

Style over substance(celebrity without talent)

Audience Involvement - Big Brother has a totally different audience involvement compared to Other TV

Dramas i.e. Friends.- Us as an audience determine the actual characters who enter the house as it is

members of the general public who auditionhttp://tvshack.net/tv/Big_Brother__UK_/season_10/episode_1/ (3.46)

- We also decide who stays and who leaves the programme by voting for the characters

- Other programmes such as Big Brothers Big Mouth and Big Brothers Little brother are centred around the programme. Both rely on audience involvement who make up the studio audience to give the programme meaning. The public’s opinion is essential.

- Public opinion sways the way the tabloids represent characters. They represent characters in a way they think that the public view them in order to sell copies.

- Big Brother is a programme that thrives off making money from its audience!!

Decline of the Meta-Narrative

http://tvshack.net/tv/Big_Brother__UK_/season_10/episode_1/

Also, there is a wide range of cultures and beliefs within the house, that means there is no single meta-narrative which joins the housemates.

The argument between Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty shows how the different religions and cultures in the house can cause problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSvp5JJO4s&feature=related

The fact that it is real life people being filmed shows the decline because there has not been a set storyline. Nobody knows beforehand what will happen in the show, even the characters

themselves are unaware. This allows the audience to form their own view on the characters as their opinions have not been manipulated by the ‘author’ of a script.

Breakdown between culture and societySimulacrum

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl9jNhQtpB8 Big brother is a simulacrum of society. The example I have found is this video. What happens is that the housemates are watching the screen in the house about another housemate who is watching a screen which is a message from her family. This is a very big simulacrum as the diagram below shows.

Viewer at home

TV

Crowd outside house

Big screen

Housemates

Screen

housemate

screen

Stephen BaldwinDevote Christian

Shilpa ShettyHindu

Hira HabibshahMuslim

Vinnie JonesAtheist

Kathreya kasisopaBuddhist

Clash of cultures

• This is the negative side to what the different cultures can bring as the video shows, there is a clear clash between the two cultures as they are from two completely different backgrounds.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSvp5JJO4s

• This is the positive effect of having different cultures in the house together, this clip shows how one housemate, stephen, introduces another housemate, Alex to his religion.

• http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/big_brother/2808964/Big-Brothers-Stephen-and-Alex-Reid-the-Bible.html