Big Brother Reality Tv

In 416BC -- 2,406 years before the first eviction-based reality game show -- Hyperbolus was voted out of Athens by his peers. It was an example of the institution of ostracism, an old version of direct democracy, introduced in Athenian society at the end of the sixth century BC. Each year a vote was taken as to whether an eviction would take place. If the vote was passed each voter put into an urn a potsherd (oscrakon) marked with the name of someone he wished ostracised. The man most often named on the ostraka was exiled, unless fewer than 6,000 votes were cast. It was a way for the community to get rid of whichever Nasty Nick was irritating them that year.

Such crude expressions of the public will are part of the heritage of democracy, and it is clear from the millions of text and phone votes cast in each series of Big Brorher that the impulse it satisfies is alive and well.

Since Big Brother whet the nation's appetite for ostracism, the voting systems in reality TV have become increasingly labyrinthine. Canton TV's now-defunct Survivor--a game of chess to Big Brother's snakes and ladders -- employed a range of little parodies of democracy, with two almost party-political factions initially conspiring against each other, and then with peers voting to evict each other at "tribal council", where they literally put names into an urn. As contestants were evicted by their peers, so they formed a jury, another democratic gift from Athens, which would sit on the final night to pass decisive judgement on their erstwhile rivals. The system made Belgian proportional representation seem straightforward, and viewers generally preferred the harmless sadism of Big Brother's straight eviction vote. (Appropriately, however, in the US -- cradle of voter apathy -- the public vote was abandoned after the first series for lack of interest, in favour of a Survivor-esque all-against-all.)

Lesser shows such as Eden and Cruel Winter, desperate to compensate for their dreary formats by ladling out interactive opportunity to the audience, have asked viewers to vote for various nasty forfeits, meals and other treats.

By now you have probably heard or read somewhere the claim that reality TV is more popular than party politics. Certainly, public delight in it is louder, and the media can cover its carnival of mock-democracy with a sense of commercial relish rather than duty. But while such assertions are catchy, and suit the "end of culture" fatalism in which we Brits love to luxuriate, the alarmism is not matched by accuracy. Democratic participation has some kick left in it yet, as this year's anti-war protests showed. We still know the difference between real and fake, and between a vote and a popularity contest.

The problem is that some sections of the media do not seem to be able to see the difference, and hope that the allure of reality-TV-style gimmicks will bring the viewing public back to serious political programming. There are good reasons to be alarmed by the state of our democracy -- the turnout figures do not lie, and the flickering resurgence of the newly "neighbourhood-oriented" British National Party suggests that public memory of political history is, to put it politely, flimsy. But the solution to this problem is not to try to make participation in politics and community more like reality television.

The BBC seems incapable of scoring a bona fide reality-TV hit. The ill-fated Castaway appeared before Big Brorher first gushed across the landscape, and yet was lost in a miasma of flu, arguments about dogs and terrible scheduling. But the Beeb now seems intent on using the sophisticated interactive elements of the genre to reinvigorate the public relationship with politics, community, and itself. Remember its Your NHS day (20 February 2002)? This was meant to engage the public in a debate about one of the most important topical issues. It was to be informative, enjoyable and interactive: Lord Reith meets SMS messaging. As part of this event you could vote (much as you do in Big Brother) for the NHS issue that you think matters most. "Free healthcare for the elderly" came tops, but what does this prove (apart from indicating that oldies are getting to grips with new media technology)?

Well, it tells us about as much as the BBC's Great Britons popularity contest did-nothing for certain, and nothing beyond a conversation point. The BBC, like newspapers and political parties, commissions opinion polls. This was not one of them; a web and phone vote is nothing more than an unscientific snapshot of unrepresentative chatter, and its skewed results cannot be taken for a representative sampling of opinion. However, it was staged as though it were; the BBC web pages about Your NHS day still refer to the survey as a "vote" and carry no disclaimer about the way the data was gathered. The "results" were put to Tony Blair man interview with Nicky Campbell. Reality TV's ethos of interactivity had intruded into political life, at the hands of the state-owned channel, at the expense of analysis and accurate -- as well as more democratic -- polling methods.

These techniques are proliferating: we have recently had the BBC's national IQ contest Test the Nation; Radio 5 Live experimented with having listeners call in to vote for which of three reports they would like to hear; and even the Eurovision Song Contest is interpreted as a political event.

Is it a lot of fuss about nothing? Perhaps, but precedent elsewhere suggests we are embarking on a highly questionable path. In Argentina last year, a reality show called The People's Candidate pit 16 political hopefuls against each other; the winner, selected by viewers, contested the March2003 congressional elections. In the US, Rupert Murdoch's FX cable network planned to run a similar programme, American Candidate, but setting its sights on the White House. The series producer called the show a democratic project "making available to every American who is qualified, by virtue of the constitution, the opportunity to run for president". Last month, FX decided not to run the show on the grounds of cost (which had apparently grown prohibitively high because of FX's commitment to do the democratic process justice). However, the producer still hopes to find a home for it, and intends to audition from September. Naturally, the rubric of the show mirrors that of US democracy, so candidates have to be US-born citi zens, who will be aged 35 by 20 January 2005.

American Candidate does not require the winner to contest the election, but one senses that the point rather is that they decide to. If it goes ahead, and the winner does run, it is not inconceivable that the votes garnered could swing a close state or two. It is 40odd years since television first decided a presidential election, in the legendary Nixon-Kennedy debates; if next year, we should see a game show elevated to the level of a decisive electoral institution, the term "reality TV", always rather contradictory, will have simply made itself redundant -- "reality" and "television" made interchangeable in an ultimate parody of democracy.

TV is good at satirising the real world, but let us resist the temptation to turn real life into a parody of TV. And oh, I'm not saying which Big Brother housemate's name is scrawled on my ostrakon; the secret ballot is, after all, central to the democratic process.

Shooting People: adventures in reality TV by Sam Bren ton and Reuben Cohen is published by Verso ([pounds sterling]12)

COPYRIGHT 2003 New Statesman, Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

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