Channel 4 must be absolutely over the moon at the huge explosion in media coverage of racist comments by some of the white inhabitants of the "Celebrity" Big Brother house at the expense of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. It's sent ratings stratospheric far more easily than the kind of shock tactics they have been using to try to maximise viewing figures on previous seasons (even though that's been working OK, as it's my understanding that ratings have increased each year since the series started in 2000).
I think that once Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron get asked to comment in depth about a TV show, we're in danger of losing perspective. The story is: three women who are publicity-obsessed and self-seeking enough to have signed up to Celebrity Big Brother have been revealed as closet racists. Big deal! They are of course idiotic fuckwits, but we kind of knew that before they even went on the show. I'm sure there are many more like them out there in the UK population. The large proportion of the population that abhors racism needs to know what it is up against. From that perspective, Celebrity Big Brother has been instructive - although only in a minor way, along the lines of The Jerry Springer Show. It shows, as Dan Ashcroft said in Nathan Barley, that there is a danger that "the idiots are winning".
I don't think pulling the show off the air would accomplish anything at this stage (unless the situation escalates towards violence, which seems possible, but unlikely) - far better to keep the cameras rolling and then for Davina to present the miscreants with a selection of highlights of their racist behaviour when each of them gets voted out. I'd love to see each of them try to defend their statements live on national TV. That really would be reality TV. As David Cameron pointed out today the best form of censorship is the 'off' button on the TV. Or even better, don't even bother switching on the freeview box: use your DVD to watch the season 2 DVD box set of Battlestar Galactica you kindly bought yourself in the New Year sales instead. I will post on Battlestar very soon as it's such a classic it deserves further discussion.
Meanwhile, I await the views of the president of the European Commission, the Governor of the Bank of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Galloway and David Icke on the unfolding Celebrity Big Brother situation with great interest. Where are we gonna end with this?
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3 comments:
For once you won't find me disagreeing with every word said here. I once was an advocate of a policy wherein every newsagentin the UK would have CCTV cameras fitted compulsorily and anybody purchasing more than 3 copies of 'The Sun' would've had the vote removed - permanently. Despite careful consideration of such a scheme's practicality leading to me abandoning it, it's tempting to consider doing the same with those watching this pernicious trash.
The one issue I'd take with this is that I think the racism issue is rather less important than the evidence of the ,shall we say, 'somewhat limited' educational standards of the UK's state sector. That's the clearest indicator that the 'idiots are winning', and deeply worrying for the UK's future prosperity.
Assuming of course that the 3 people implicated in the racism row came from state schools... I've found some pretty nasty views among alumni of the 'independent' sector.
H - it was good to see you the other night. Just to say that your 2nd paragraph here hits everything on the button - exactly how I would have phrased it, if I could have found the words!
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