The early 2000s weren’t all sparkles and rainbows (the clothes were awful, for one thing); but there was a sense that — to adapt the New Labour anthem — things could get better.
The Channel 4 series "You are what you eat" demonstrated exactly how few boundaries people had about what they'd share on TV (as well as the magical power of the title "Doctor")
Years ago, for an article I embedded at the drug-rehab production site of the US reality show "Celebrity Rehab"—a direct descendant of "Big Brother" with more than little overlap with "Tiny Tearaways." It too had working clinicians doing actual therapy with subjects who'd been shoved into "the judgement panopticon." (Their celebrity at this point was more the TMZ variety, which didn't render them children but did complicate issues of consent.) I appreciate your ambivalence about this kind of project and your honesty about its appeal. I also wonder whether certain reality-TV star's venture into politics hasn't turned "look at that little shit" entertainment into an agent of national ruin.
Thanks for this, Rowan. Resident across the pond, I remember reading, agog, about Big Brother, and feeling both revolted and enormously saddened. I would have felt that way if it had started over here, only less surprised.
For this demeaning crap to have launched in the UK, for it to be so popular, was depressing. Only visits home reassured me that community and common decency hadn't vanished overnight. But the feeling of post-war aspiration to a better world for all was being torn down, I could see that during my long visits home across the decades (during which I have traveled widely in the UK, not just stayed in the London bubble,), and these shows were a small part of the destruction-- or maybe just a reflection of it.
People became the product with reality TV. Big Brother was a show about an entirely artificial "community", built and then cruelly destroyed to fatten its producers' wallets and entertain an audience anxious about its own status, as real communities fell apart. I remain saddened for all who have been damaged by reality TV, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Channel 4 series "You are what you eat" demonstrated exactly how few boundaries people had about what they'd share on TV (as well as the magical power of the title "Doctor")
I meant to put in a joke about that and then I forgot!
Years ago, for an article I embedded at the drug-rehab production site of the US reality show "Celebrity Rehab"—a direct descendant of "Big Brother" with more than little overlap with "Tiny Tearaways." It too had working clinicians doing actual therapy with subjects who'd been shoved into "the judgement panopticon." (Their celebrity at this point was more the TMZ variety, which didn't render them children but did complicate issues of consent.) I appreciate your ambivalence about this kind of project and your honesty about its appeal. I also wonder whether certain reality-TV star's venture into politics hasn't turned "look at that little shit" entertainment into an agent of national ruin.
Oh god - I hadn’t thought of that, but I think you might be on to something.
Thanks for this, Rowan. Resident across the pond, I remember reading, agog, about Big Brother, and feeling both revolted and enormously saddened. I would have felt that way if it had started over here, only less surprised.
For this demeaning crap to have launched in the UK, for it to be so popular, was depressing. Only visits home reassured me that community and common decency hadn't vanished overnight. But the feeling of post-war aspiration to a better world for all was being torn down, I could see that during my long visits home across the decades (during which I have traveled widely in the UK, not just stayed in the London bubble,), and these shows were a small part of the destruction-- or maybe just a reflection of it.
People became the product with reality TV. Big Brother was a show about an entirely artificial "community", built and then cruelly destroyed to fatten its producers' wallets and entertain an audience anxious about its own status, as real communities fell apart. I remain saddened for all who have been damaged by reality TV, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Tbf it was launched the previous year, in the Netherlands - and was a massive phenomenon there, too.