Bread, Racists & Circuses

I can’t get Channel 4 so haven’t seen for myself what this racism on Celebrity Big Brother row is about. So I had a little dig at YouTube and found this video of Jade Goody asking Jermaine Jackson (yes, that Jermaine Jackson) whether or not he is black and if so, how is it his brother is white. See for yourself and cringe:

I think that settles the question of whether Jade Goody is a racist or not, don’t you?

But leaving the jawdroppingly banal yet strangely fascinating onscreen behaviour aside, all the hooha in the world press over this, encouraged by Channel 4 and Endemol, is all just so much bread and circuses to pacify the proles. Look! Over there! Slebs! Behaving badly! I would not be at all surprised if the remaining three inmates, all of whom are hungry for fame, had come to some mutially beneficial arrangement with Endemol : how very odd that this happened just as rating slipped…

Lenin calls Bg Brother and other ‘choose your evictee’ type shows ‘placebo democracy’ and says they originate from the same political place as control orders and ASBOs, a way of allowing people an illusion of control so that they don’t notice the lack of real democracy.

That glass box, again. posted by lenin

The whole point of Endemol’s shit-fest on Channel 4 is to force together personalities so incompatible that normal human comity would be impossible, never mind solidarity under the stress of sensory deprivation and constant surveillance. Getting ‘celebrities’ on the show (three of whom are only ‘celebrities’ by dint of a previous connection with the show) therefore guarantees a daily hit of scandal, and therefore mega mega advertising revenues. Further, since C4 controls every condition obtaining in the show, and since their interventions are designed to be humiliating and bizarre, they can always confect a bit of controversy when phone-in rates slump and the tabloids find something else to gyrate over. And what is more, when the bad guy of the hour is evicted, a new balance is created and the recipient of much sympathy the day before can become the latest villain. The infinite malleability and masochism of the characters is one of the dramatic points on a desperately boring programme. So, rancour, humiliation, indignity and daily bullying are part of the mix, and it is entirely hypocritical for people who watch and like this show to complain about it.

[…]

can’t help but think of this whole ‘Neighbours from Hell’ drivel we get in the British press, in which readers are titillated and outraged with daily tales of torment from hideous people next-door or down the road. If it isn’t kids spitting and swearing, it’s old men flipping the bird, or trimming the hedges from over the fence. If it isn’t rowdy couples, it’s gyppos settling on the commons, and asylum seekers eloping from the back of a lorry. These are the people New Labour promises to “boot out” and leave to fend for themselves “in a crackdown on yobs”. These are the people who are expected to face ASBOs and “welfare disincentives” as part of the government’s Respect Action Plan. These are the families the government pledges to put in “Sin Bins”, a conceit that could quite easily have been supplied by Endemol. These are the people New Labour pledges to evict from the very country. New Labour’s campaign message – vote to evict the arsehole! Let them fend for themselves in the ghetto. The tabloids will feature pictures and descriptions of new arseholes every day and encourage readers to participate in a phone-in poll to demand eviction. A daily diorama of candidates for the Sin Bin will be the topic of quasi-anthropological inspection and curiosity, their fate to be decided by our placebo democracy..

There’s only one arsehole I want evicted and he’s sitting in No. 11 day-dreaming about his ‘legacy’ and ignoring the fuckups he’s created. Well, Tone, here’s your legacy in all her glorious ignorance and ill-educated spite. I give you Jade Goody, the ultimate product of Blair’s Britain:

Doesn’t she make you proud?

Read more: UK culture, UK politics, Racism, TV, Big Brother, Jade Goody, Jermaine Jackson