Animal Farm Revisited
The Age
Thursday May 12, 2005
If a modern TV trend is any guide, the human animal is regressing, says Gabriella Coslovich.
I'M FOUR years too late, but I finally get it. I sat through two hours of Big Brother on Sunday night. This is disastrous news for Channel Ten. I have a track record of playing catch-up with trends. I still don't know what the "OC" stands for, only caught up with the first season of Six Feet Under late last year (at the insistence of a friend), belatedly discovered the charms of Sex and the City, and never watched Melrose Place or Twin Peaks - although I do possess the Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack; picked it up dirt-cheap at a garage sale.So, the fact I managed to sit through two hours of Big Brother on Sunday night should have Network Ten executives quaking in their buffed-up Florsheims. If I get it, the show is doomed, it's over.I'm not quite sure how my lapse of reasoning occurred. It may have been the delirium of getting through Mother's Day without letting slip a foul word or deed, it might have been the mellowing effects of the pinot noir we guzzled at lunch. Whatever it was, it worked. I sat through the entire two-hour launch of BB05.This is a fairly miraculous event when you consider that I find even 30 seconds of Australian Idol, A Current Affair or the Channel Nine news more excruciating than a first-time Brazilian.While my overdue appreciation of reality-TV suggests Big Brother is a goner (only 1.56 million viewers tuned in on Sunday night, the lowest number for an opening), I'm doing OK, still willing to stretch my cultural boundaries, and this is a good thing. On the weekend at the Deakin Lecture Series, arts-world doyenne Robyn Archer waxed lyrical about the importance of being curious: "Anyone who bags something before they've seen it might as well be dead already," she said.Yes, I had been guilty of bagging Big Brother and all who watched it, deriding the show as nothing more than a vehicle for the mind-numblingly vacuous and vain. Yet there I was, one of 1.56 million Australians transfixed by Big Brother's inspired casting, rippling dialogue, complex plot twists, budding romances, profound insights into human nature and group dynamics, not to mention host Gretel Killeen, whose outfit seemed to have been assembled by a drag queen who just couldn't decided between Madonna, Madame Lash, Kylie Minogue, Donatella Versace and Barbie. (I love Gretel, foremostly because she ignores the advice of stuffy so-called style gurus who tell 40-something women to dress as though the only sexual conquest they dare aspire to is a long-retired boarding school principal. But I digress.)I sat mesmerised as former winners were trotted out, including some guy called Trevor, whose life has changed dramatically since his Big Brother experience: "Bought out a house, got married, bought a car."I sat gobsmacked as Gretel introduced this year's sexed-up contestants: Christie ("Girls often get jealous of me ... I have the looks, the personality, the body, the humour"), Michelle ("I like to look sexy to the opposite sex, but also look like a lady ... I want fame, fortune ... doesn't everyone?"), Gianna ("The Lara Croft character was based on me").Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, Big Brother's cruel sense of humor became apparent. Not content to build a bimbo-pen, he had thrown together polar opposites such as Nelson (hater of metrosexuals and lover of John Howard) and Tim (a leftie journalist who loves a good discussion and loathes John Howard and Lleyton Hewitt). This was the equivalent of locking up Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott together for three months. Brilliant.To top it off, young flesh-flashers Christie, Michelle and Gianna were to share the house with girls such as Angela, a 29-year-old company director, who seems the kind of woman whose calorific intake is capable of supporting brain activity as well as basal metabolic rate.Then there were the wildcards - the imposter twins, Logan (Greg) and Logan (David) - who would keep getting swapped in the house but would have to go undetected and pretend to be the one person. Their first swap on Monday night (replayed "live" on Tuesday) went by without a glitch. The Big Brother housemates were far too self-absorbed to notice Logan had shrunk and sprouted moles.This was riveting viewing; there was comedy, there was suspense, there was frisson, there was Gianna, the resident pole-dancer, sliding suggestively on a pole to a salivating audience of boys, yet qualifying her thrusts and gyrations with the disclaimer, "I'm not a stripper".One of the boys said that she had a lot of potential, to which Gianna responded, "Nah, it's for my boyfriend. When I get one (a boyfriend), I'm going to put one (a pole) in my bedroom."Woody Allen would kill for such dialogue.Within hours, the group was splintering into cliques, gossiping about who was nice, who was ghastly, and who would end up shagging whom.Really, it was more or less the same discussion that was taking place over on SBS, where academics, authors and others were discussing bonk buddies and the difficulties of looking for love in the new millennium, on the Insight program. One woman likened the twentysomething dating scene to the animal kingdom.Back on Network Ten, we were seeing the animal kingdom in action.Nelson: "Who do you think Logan's chasing?"Geneva: "Sometimes Christie, sometimes Gianna, sometimes Michelle."Nelson: "The easiest one to get on to would be Shelle."It's sad that this Attenborough-esque observation of twentysomething-year-olds on the make is in decline. In Germany, they've pronounced the original Big Brother format dead. In February, Germany's version of Big Brother entered a new era, with the launch of not just a mere house, but an entire village, where producers hope contestants will live for years, going to school and work, falling in love, even getting married and having babies. Fans will be able to visit the theme park and observe contestants, just as they might animals in a zoo.Psychologists have warned that people who stay in the fake community for any length of time would find it hard to adjust to the "real world" beyond. That shouldn't deter anyone. There's real money to be made.
© 2005 The Age