Reality Show 'Big Brother'

Why give up your precious privacy?

The money is a lucky first guess. Probably the 250.000 guilders (approximately 120.000 euros) for the winner have a lot to do with the choice the participants of 'Big Brother' have made. Exhibitionism could be a motive as well. Yet the occupants of the 'Big Brother' house were sometimes reluctant to show their most private activities. They may have wanted to become celebrities, but if given the choice, they just might choose another way to join the rich and famous


By CELINE TE BRAAKE
from Groningen, The NETHERLANDS


In George Orwell's 1984 'Big Brother' embodies our greatest horror: the hijacking of the private life. No secrets one can keep to oneself. After reading '1948' no one would ever think of submitting oneself to a regime like that. Or would they? In 1999 the first series of the show ''Big Brother'' began. Several people (voluntarily!) moved into a house filled with cameras to watch their every move 24/7. Why? Why did these people choose to give up their private lives? And what character devised this whole operation anyway?

The latter is the easiest to answer, so let's start with that: the concept of 'Big Brother' was thought up by Dutch TV-producer John de Mol and some of his employees. The original idea was to provide the house with all luxuries one could think of. This idea was overruled (yet brought to practice last year, albeit not very successful) and a house with minimal facilities became 'home' for the contestants for as long as they were allowed. The rest of the concept is well known: every week the occupants of the house nominate the person they want to move out of the house, and the viewers at home get the final vote. The last person in the house wins the money. An additional condition to the show was the exclusion of the outside world. The participants were unaware of the news, their family, and, their own success on national television.

According to many psychologists participation was not without risk; the occupants of the house, deprived of their privacy and freedom, would suffer great psychological problems. Psychologists mostly based this assumption on the Stanford Prison Experiment, dated from 1971. In this experiment test subjects were placed in prison. Half of them had the role of warder, the other half consisted of 'prisoners'. The experiment lasted for only six days. That was all the time it took for the 'warders', otherwise perfectly normal people, to become cruel and ruthless in their roles. Psychologists concluded that totalitarian surroundings can change the people in it completely; something they feared would happen to 'Big Brother' participants.

Then why would any sane person willingly give up their right to privacy and risk psychological damage? The money is a lucky first guess. Probably the 250.000 guilders (approximately 120.000 euros) for the winner have a lot to do with the choice the participants of 'Big Brother' have made. The producers emphasized the candidates should not participate if they were only in it for the money and supposedly they were screened psychologically to check this. So this is probably not the only reason.

Exhibitionism could be a motive as well. Yet the occupants of the 'Big Brother' house were sometimes reluctant to show their most private activities. They may have wanted to become celebrities, but if given the choice, they just might choose another way to join the rich and famous.

According to Liesbet van Zoonen, a Dutch communication researcher, these reasons are secondary to the following: the participants show a desire to neutralize the barrier between private and public life. Van Zoonen claims that the division between these two has not always existed. In pre-Industrial times there was no difference between private and public life. For the regular people this means that there 'economic units' were so small, their public, i.e. producing lives are linked to their private, consuming lives. Members of the nobility intentionally displayed their private lives in public, to show their status. Private life as we now know it, with its own values and rules, did not exist.

With the industrialization the private sphere came to be. The emerging bourgeoisie 'created' the division; the public life, where people (men) worked and rationality ruled. The private domain was a 'haven in a heartless world' (Rousseau) and women were most suitable to provide this safe place. Because of the gender division that came with the separation of public and private life, feminist were about the first to fight this situation. Women felt subjected to a solitary life indoors, and therefore tried to break this barrier between them and 'public life', also in everyday life. Communes were part of the result.

In this sense 'Big Brother' becomes an expression of the desire to break the wall dividing private and public life. Both viewers and participants 'enjoy' this break. Participants get to make their private lives public, and the viewers get to watch these lives and form opinions about them. The number of viewers of the show clearly state that many of us just might have that desire Van Zoonen speaks about.

Of course this does not mean we should all want to live in a 'Big Brother' house. We have gotten so used to our modern way of living; it would be hard to give it up. It does however clarify part of the possible motives of the participants of 'Big Brother' have. Whether or not you would make the same choice, is up to you. Luckily we have already seen that the psychological disadvantages experts warned us for, did not become reality. That is at least one thing less to worry about... And what about me? I prefer to watch 'Big Brother', rather than have him watching me!


(Published: 10.10.2007.)

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