“Housemates, This is Big Brother” A Cultural Analysis of the Big Brother Experience Aaron Van Pelt Columbia College Chicago, Class of 2013
Big Brother is a hit reality television series about a group of strangers forced to live with each other for almost one hundred days, cut off from the outside world. Each week, one of those strangers is evicted from the Big Brother house until one remains to take home the grand cash prize. Producers behind Big Brother serve as the bourgeoisie for a microcosm society by controlling and surveilling the housemates 24/7, a condition normally seen as totalitarian. However, for housemates this setup provides a platform to experience self-growth at an accelerated rate—and the chance to win a life-changing amount of money. Only under these heightened conditions of self-awareness from constantly being watched do housemates come to these realizations and start to look inward and reflect.
Originating in Europe, Big Brother’s format has been resold to various countries, usually with tweaks to appeal to a nation’s audience. While Big Brother’s production staff has control over Watercooler Journal
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certain elements of life within the house, it is ultimately the housemates and their interactions with one another that create the show. The amount of control that Big Brother has on “his” residents helps shape the quality and culture of the strangers’ compound. A comparison between U.S. and Australian versions of the show exemplifies just how important format is on the housemates’ experiences. When locked away from the outside world, they only have the opportunity to look toward one another and allow for the social experiment of Big Brother to play out and test them.
Scoping Popularity Reality television is a media phenomenon that has long been criticized since its first conception for its exploitive effects on show participants and for the messages it projects to viewers. Industry executives have latched onto the genre due to its affordability: “These programs are cheap to make—at least cheaper than sitcoms and lawyer shows—and have a number of revenue streams” (Breyer 22). The latter part of this statement rings pleasantly for executives: not only is reality relatively cheap to produce, but also in the case of Big Brother, it offers immediate revenue streams with paid voting systems and subscriptions available to watch the Watercooler Journal
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house’s live feeds on the Internet. Based in the Netherlands, Endemol wrote the bible for Big Brother and created the format intentionally to be sold to other countries seeking easy and quick pick-ups for production. Season one of the series started September 16, 1999 on the former Dutch channel Veronica. Today, it has been seen by 2 billion people worldwide and has franchises in over 30 countries (Mathjis and Jones 1). For a show that has received plenty of criticism (in some cases much deserved), it still has a large viewing audience tuning in each week, making Big Brother big. Bourgeois and Laborers The amount of content a viewer receives from inside the house provides them with different information. Only audience members that want to pay to view the house 24/7 have the opportunity to see how everything actually unfolds among housemates. Those that do not have access to live feeds often get a skewed version of the “reality” within the house.
“Big Brother Australia allows for the social experimentation portion of the show to shine through… instead of the strictly sinister one set up by the U.S.” Differences in international formats of Big Brother also greatly affect the show being delivered. Tweaks must be made in order for a culture to be able to identify with the housemates more closely. The bourgeois affects the format significantly as well: the more power the production team has, the more wholesome and intellectual the show product becomes. The bourgeois, or producers, control the laborers, or housemates, and set rules must be followed. Lack of conversation guidelines in Big Brother U.S. promotes poor gamesmanship and backstabbing, setting housemates against each other. In Big Brother Australia, house rules are strict. Alliances, nominations for eviction, and game play are strictly forbidden, and if brought up, will often result in a harsh punishment from Big Brother. Eliminating these options leaves housemates lost in their own thoughts, which is even more interesting to watch in the diary room. Big Brother Australia allows for the social experimentation portion of the show to shine through and highlight a different vibe of speculation within the house, whether it is good or bad, instead of the strictly sinister one set up by the U.S.
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Big Brother as a C haracter on Big Brother Australia Challenges, house layout, and Big Brother’s role over the housemates are all things that producers changed to help audiences relate to the housemates. The more power the superstructure has over the show’s production, the higher the quality of television produced compared to typical reality fodder. “The Australian Big Brother provides a good example of this in that there are a number of ways in which the format has been ‘indigenised’ and made ‘Aussie’” (Roscoe 183). An anonymous voice echoes through the compound: “This is Big Brother. Housemates, rise and shine.” The lull of sleep is broken as the “Hallelujah Chorus” plays immediately after.
This would be a typical wake up call for the housemates of Big Brother Australia. Housemates live in Big Brother’s house and must live by his rules. In this format, Big Brother is another character of the show. He assigns chores, secret tasks, etc. that housemates must obey or risk being put up for eviction. When visiting the diary room, housemates have long discussions with Watercooler Journal
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Big Brother in which viewers are allowed to hear both the housemate revealing how they are feeling at the moment and Big Brother’s comforting voice of reason. Housemates become really close with him and find the diary room therapeutic for a host of reasons. Not only can they blow off steam, but they can also discuss strategy with Big Brother. This allows them to sort out their thoughts while Big Brother throws his two cents in on the matter. In the United State’s format, a day starts with live feeds being shut down for a brief two minutes. Some current popular music wakes up housemates; they will often get in trouble for singing this music throughout the day because of copyright issues on live feeds. When U.S. housemates are told to stop singing, they won’t get the personal Big Brother voice. They’ll hear a prerecorded message with their name and a common house “no-no” reminder. Diary room visits are interviews with producers whom you can’t hear. On live feeds, housemates often talk of lines scripted for them in the diary room before being told, “You are not allowed to talk about production.” What the housemates discuss is typically up to them, as long as it’s not production related. There are no rules that say they can’t strategize and form alliances, and this often becomes the defining storyline that producers follow in U.S. cycles. The U.S. format severely underplays the potential of Big Brother and simply uses it as a show title. The lack of control in the Big Brother house promotes chaos and poor behavior towards housemates. Winning, C ompetition, and “Mateship” Another important show element is how the winner of the cash prize is decided. Regardless of format, one housemate each week is evicted from the Big Brother house, ending their chance to win it all. But the method in which this takes place is another show element that greatly affects the culture of the house. In the Australian Big Brother, housemates’ only right in the house is to nominate two people for eviction. The three people with the most nomination points at the end of the ceremony are put up for eviction. It is then up to the Australian public to vote to save the housemate that they want to see stay in the house. Once the final three housemates remain, the public then votes for the winner of the show and thus, the money.
“Those that do not have access to live feeds often get a skewed version of the ‘reality’ within the house.” The U.S. format is entirely different. It puts a lot of weight on who wins challenges. The winner of the weekly Head of Household challenge gets to pick two people to put up for nomination. Watercooler Journal
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The housemates all vote privately at the end of the week to decide who gets evicted. Nominations may only be changed by the winner of the Power of Veto competition. If the winner decides to save a nominee, the Head of Household must select another housemate to fill the saved evictee’s seat. This approach to the show places a lot of emphasis on the results of the challenges as to who continues further. Competitions are often filled with alliances rooting for each other and bash-talking of other housemates. This method adds an element of drama to the show, but creates division among the housemates. Not everyone has a say in who gets to go home, not even the public, and this makes the stakes much more cutthroat. The U.S. version will often watch a snake rise to power in the house by successfully teaming up with the right alliances, backstabbing them at the appropriate times, and rising to the top. What is interesting though, is that in the U.S. format, a jury of the final nine housemates that remained in the house decides the winner. The Australian version at least allows the public to weed out the less appealing housemates. Because the public is also an all-seeing entity, they can vote to save the “good guy” and watch the “villain” walk.
Challenges are a huge element in the Big Brother house. When sixteen people are cut off from society, they look forward to any form of stimulation to help pass the time. Australia’s show Watercooler Journal
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format handles challenges differently and is set up to promote a less vitriolic house and does not affect the outcome of who wins the show: In the public discussion of the show, mateship often featured as a key indicator of what the show was about and its Australianness. The house activities often focused on activities that might bond the participants together (for example, painting the living room) as well as being a site in which individual housemates were able to exhibit the qualities of mateship (for example, supporting someone through an emotional crisis). (Roscoe 184) Weekly food tasks are the main highlight and decide the shopping budget for the whole house. Housemates have had to do everything from operating a “Big Brother carwash” to forming a musical group and recording a song. Tasks like these promote companionship and focus housemates’ attention on something constructive. However, not all of the tasks are fun; a lot of them test housemates’ mental strength and relationships. While there may be some bickering among housemates about the results of the challenges, during the competition, everyone motivates each other. At the end of the week, Big Brother notifies housemates if they passed or failed their task as a group. If they pass, they get a luxury food budget of $50 a housemate. If they fail, they get a budget of $5 a housemate. Either way, success or failure is as a house. In the U.S., a “Haves and Have-Nots” competition dictates who will eat a balanced diet and who will eat “slop”, a typically mushy substance of “just the essentials.” By creating two separate groups of eating privilege, producers increase the divide among housemates. C onstructing “Reality” Big Brother Australia creates shows and sequences that are very voyeuristic in nature. Lots of interesting camera angles and well thought-out directing allows for lifelike and intimate scenes. On the other hand, Big Brother U.S. has scenes that are highly constructed. A very intense soundtrack fills every conversation between housemates. Someone makes a comment about a certain housemate not in the room, and an uncorrelated shot of them reacting—as if they heard it—cuts in with a cymbal flare. The housemates appear to be in a constant state of arguing, which live feed viewers know is not the case. In the past season of Big Brother U.S., edits showed housemate Aaryn Gries delivering racist and homophobic remarks around the house, but she was not the only one guilty of the act. Almost all of the housemates in cycle fifteen of Big Brother U.S. spewed out hateful remarks over the live feeds at some time during their stay, including the winner, Andy Herren. If editors had followed the Australian format of editing, audiences would have seen a more realistic depiction of what was taking place in the house.
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The First Season Uprising: Why the U.S. Version C hanged So Much “It is easy to think that formats are unchanging… But the new television formats such as Big Brother are clearly ‘alive’ in the sense that they are constantly being reworked, with national versions responding to the successes and failures of each national version” (Roscoe 185). The U.S. version of Big Brother shaped into the monster that it is today because of ratings. The first cycle of Big Brother aired in the U.S. on CBS in 2000, a year after its premiere in the Netherlands (Wilson 196). At first, the show followed a format similar to the other international versions being aired. Ratings started to plummet for Big Brother early on.
The psyche among first season housemates quickly altered when plane messages from the outside world started to infiltrate their shut-off society on day fifty. “The airborne prankster returned and passed the house at low altitude, proudly and clearly displaying the streaming message, ‘BIG BROTHER IS WORSE THAN YOU THINK—GET OUT NOW’” (Wilson 198). This message (not being the first to permeate the house about the show being a disaster) planted a seed that quickly got the housemates thinking. “The houseguests were bonding with each other and feeling a growing distrust against Big Brother (the producers), perceived as the captors and programmers. A strong collective ethos had developed among the houseguests” (Wilson 199). That’s when housemate George, deemed a ‘man of the people’, came to a Watercooler Journal
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conclusion that the housemates should stage an uprising and all walk out of the show. U.S. production immediately flew in producers from the Netherlands to help assuage the uprising. “What they were trying to do was break us all apart. They were trying to pit us all against us… But last night, it all kind of fell into place: they need us… What happens if we leave? There ain’t no show. We holded [sic] the cards in our hand all the time” (Boswell, Big Brother). The thought of the labor class uprising over the superstructure in the Big Brother setting had yet to be observed. George was correct in that the producers did need them in order to have a program, but housemates needed Big Brother to offer the cash prize in return—the same thing validating their time in the house. Threats from production telling them that if they walked they would simply be replaced eventually mediated the situation, however housemates did agree that they were going to be civil with one another instead of bicker for the remaining days. Ratings jumped during the uprising but eventually fell once housemates calmed down.
“‘What happens if we leave? There ain’t no show.’” When ratings are poor for a show, format must be tweaked. What producers did was use the logic of safety and structure their show format to more closely resemble the challenges in Survivor, another Euro import that was already popular among U.S. audiences. Thus, in the following seasons of Big Brother U.S., a different show than in other nations aired. Producers put an altered nominations and challenges system into place, and the show did better, though it painted a much different picture of the housemates. Now housemates were no longer in a contained social experiment, but instead in a competition arena, constantly looking behind their backs and trusting no one. “We are part of a culture that tells us that, while family and community are important, we are on our own in the end” (Breyer 26). Big Brother’s various formats adapted for different countries to offer a reflection of respective audiences’ ideologies of what classifies as suitable TV viewing. Regionally, Big Brother may have its differences that help shape the culture of the household and change housemates’ experiences on the show, but globally, the show only has one winner each season. How you get there is at the mercy of the production staff.
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works cited Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Print. Breyer, Richard. Realty TV Has a Negative Influence on Society. Washington Times Corporation, 4 Jan. 2004. Print. Mathijs, Ernest, and Janet Jones. Big Brother International: Formats, Critics and Publics. London: Wallflower, 2004. Print. Peyser, Marc. “Why Brother Stays Big.” Newsweek 144.2 (2004): 61. Business Source Complete. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. Roscoe, Jane. “Watching Big Brother At Work: A Production Study of Big Brother Australia.” Big Brother International: Formats, Critics and Publics. Eds. E. Mathjis and J. Jones. London: Wallflower, 2004. Print. Wilson, Pamela. “Jamming Big Brother USA.” Big Brother International: Formats, Critics and Publics. Eds. E. Mathjis and J. Jones. London: Wallflower, 2004. Print
image credits, in order: ©Merican Media @CBS Studios @CBS Studios via http://nearlyablogger.blogspot.com @CBS Studios @CBS Studios via http://tellymix.co.uk Watercooler Journal
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