Charley and Seany, Ego and Id

Last night saw what I thought was one of the most interesting if in some ways most discomfiting moments in the history of Big Brother. Nicky’s and Charley’s hitherto simmering competition for the attention of new (and suddenly wealthy) housemate Liam boiled over into a clothes-changing war in the land that feminism forgot. To be fair, Nicky was relatively low-key—openly competing with Charley, changing clothes and make-up, but with relative modesty in attitude and attire. Charley, being Charley, was much more aggressive in attitude and in exposure of cleavage and thigh when she re-dressed for battle. Equally or even more interesting and discomfiting was how Charley was egged on in various ways by other housemates. Nicky may have played a canny hand in subtly encouraging Charley to overplay hers. Liam told Charley about his liking for confident girls who can make an entrance, tempting Charley to play to her imagined strengths. The sense of a conspiracy to make Charley make a spectacle of herself grew as other housemates predicted (rightly) that she would get changed into an even more revealing outfit and then gathered to watch after she did just that. Laura helped Charley (un)dress and then led the chanting as Charley strode back into the garden and strutted right in front of everyone (especially Nicky, though BB can do funny things with camera angles) while pouting and glowering porn-fashion at the mirror. At this point Charley did not seem to realise that she had been stitched up like a kipper, mugged into playing herself as an object of ridicule. That moment of realisation may have come when Seany shoved her into the pool. Her initial inability to mount a coherent reaction (we don’t know and never will know how she carried on after the highlights show ended) indicate that she was beginning to realise she’d been set up before being slammed and dunked. Certainly the extended howls and high-fives of derision that followed should have suggested that to her.

The whole thing and everyone’s role in this psychological melodrama is worth analysing, but the players who interested me most were Charley and Seany, respectively Big Ego and Big Id. Charley’s role as Big Ego is pretty clear to anyone who has watched the show for more than any given five minutes. Having little if any self-awareness, she also has a bizarre perspective on the forces of superego, but she nevertheless sees herself and, as far as we, the viewers, can tell, only sees herself by reference to how others see her. Indeed many of her utterances indicate that she sees that as the only way one can see oneself. And that’s perhaps why she got set up so easily last night, when any one with any self-awareness or sense of the sensibilities of others would have smelled a gigantic rodent way before they got a soaking.

But what made Seany push Charley into the pool is perhaps less obvious but no less interesting. It was a dangerous thing to do. Apart from the inherent dangers in igniting the highly combustible rage of Big Ego, there’s a risk of accusation of bullying and even of racist bullying (I don’t believe there was anything racist in how Charley was treated, but in the current climate the danger of accusation is there). So what was he thinking? I think he was thinking nothing. He was acting on impulse, pure id. He has done this kind of thing before. On his first night in the house he pulled the duvet off Lesley’s bed. He also put a condom on the head of Gerry’s toy monkey. And he has also previously put water in Charley’s boots and shoes. These events have much in common. Each of the victims has what looks like a familial role in Seany’s mind. Lesley was motherly, albeit in a strictly matronly way. Gerry seems like a sensible older brother to Seany, a role model and mentor. Charley is his twin or younger sister, and some time partner-in-pranks. Moreover, each of the pranks touched each of the victims in a private and personal way. Lesley’s bed, anyone’s bed but especially Lesley’s, was her haven, her comfort zone. Gerry’s monkey is, as he explained to Seany, the only “friend” he brought in from the outside—he talks to it and holds it at night. (That may seem silly to some, but it is none the less a real comfort to Gerry.) Charley identifies herself with what she wears, she grounds herself metaphorically as well as literally in her (for her) reassuringly expensive Gucci boots. (Again, to some that may be ridiculous, but that is how it is all the same.) So, Seany’s practical jokes (or “jokes”) centre on the things that are most precious and personal to the people he feels the closest to. In other words, they cannot escape him: even in their most private space, he forces them to pay attention. It’s not conscious or deliberate, it’s pure id, in all its attention-seeking neediness.

Tonight, Seany will in all likelihood be evicted (it may have already happened by the time you read this). As I write, he is the favourite to go at 1-7, with odious Alan Sugar-wannabe Jonathan relatively safe at 6-1 and increasingly crazy Carole even safer at 9-1. Equally likely, Charley will be out next week (although everyone says that every week, so we’ll see). Either and both departures would and will be a shame. Big Brother, as is said so often, is like a morality play. Bad people get nominated by their housemates and booted and booed by the public. As is said equally often, this is a shame—the most interesting people go first. So, if you’re going to do any voting, bear that in mind. Let’s not have a morality play this time. Let’s have a psycho-drama. It’s discomfiting in many ways, but it’s gripping TV, as gripping as anything done by David Attenborough.

Finally, some diary room words from Big Id. He may be growing up in front of our eyes. Another reason to keep him in—let him learn, let him grow.

"I'm very spontaneous with my words sometimes and I'm very impulsive when I speak. I'm just in fear of saying the wrong thing. For once in this household, I'm going to think before I speak. I'll go and think about what I want to say to you later. I think there's something in my personality which I need to change, you know? I think this experience has helped me, in that I do act impulsively, even if it's for a laugh or a joke, and I always think my impulsive behaviour is very funny, but some people may not. So I'm going to think before I speak."

Thisisjimrockford

Thisisjimrockford writes

I thought Big Theory’s post was interesting and right in many ways. The highlights programme showed how negatively affected Charley and Nicky were by Emily’s language in a way the transcript didn’t; even so, Emily probably didn’t mean to offend; she thought she was being cool by appropriating hip hop language/culture, and her background helps explain both why she did it so apparently effortlessly and yet so appallingly badly. Yes, Charley and Nicky were initially confused as to how to take Emily’s use of the “n-word”, though they became clearer and increasingly unhappy about it as they thought and talked it over. And finally, yes, Emily was removed because there is a “symbolic order of the socially acceptable” and Big Brother (with its accompanying entertainment complex) felt it necessary to intervene on our behalf. Incidentally, it’s interesting that BB are not using the word “evicted” but are using instead the word “removed”, which distinguishes Emily’s exit from a normal nomination-public vote ejection, emphasises BB’s own agency in the leaving, and thus symbolically distances Emily from the show, Endemol, C4, and the sponsors. I think it’s appropriate, though, as one of the features of the Celebrity Big Brother race row was a failure on the part of some commentators to distinguish the voice of housemates form the voice of Big Brother, Channel 4 etc. Anyway, my main point her is this: isn’t the symbolic order (if I’m understanding things correctly) more fragmented and contested than Big Theory (BT) implies here? If so, there are some interesting implications for how we think about what happened, why it matters, and what it means for the debate over multiculturalism that Big Theory mentioned at the end of the post?

As BT says, Emily was engaging in “cultural appropriation”, presumably sourcing it from rap music (her explanation that this is how she banters with black people she’s “friendly with” is less than convincing). And Emily obviously thought she’d found some sort of post-racist space or context in which she could use any language she liked to try to connect with the people she was with. Here, as BT said in a previous post, is where Emily’s very specific social background comes in—an upper middle class one that imbued her with the kind of confidence and presumption that is inappropriate to people from more modest and polite backgrounds. Yes, BT, it will indeed be interesting to see how those commentators who ascribed the behaviour of Jade et al to their class background deal with this. Also, of course, Emily must have forgotten that this space was far from hermetic, connecting as it did and does to “our” space through the medium of the Big Brother cameras. (This may seem like a bizarre thing to forget, since being watched is the point of their being in the BB House, but past housemates have often said how easily you forget the cameras after a while). But still, however misguidedly, she thought she’d found a safe post-racist space or context in which she could use otherwise racist language.

Emily’s notion of a post-racist space is the first but the least significant sign of the extent of complexity and contestability in the moral and behavioural order. More significant by far is Charley’s and Nicky’s early confusion about how to react. As you say, initially they seemed willing not to be offended or at least too offended, implying their acceptance of the idea of such a space and even that a posh white girl could enter it. Their question, “where did that come from?” (which is where I’m getting all these space/place metaphors), clearly hints at suspicion that Emily’s comment came from a racist place, and was spoken during Charley’s and Nicky’s conversational journey towards being more offended that they were at first, but it sill implied the possibility that Emily and her word came from a non-racist place. And it’s possible they still think her word might have come from a non-racist place, even though they finally concluded that she had, in fact, used it unacceptably.

Finally, the symbolic order on the outside is of course made by people, by us, and reactions to the comment and the consequent removal have naturally varied. There are debates over whether Emily was just trying (though obviously failing) to be cool, or was actually being racist. And there are debates over, whatever she might have meant, whether or not she deserved to be evicted (and whether or not should have been evicted—which is a different thing). Once again, then, we see a complex and negotiable symbolic order, in particular among the people who decide what that order is.

None of this is deep or profound, as you may have noticed. I think most would agree that context is important, though given how many contexts Emily’s word mattered in—not only what Emily meant, but how it affected Charley and Nicky, and how it affected viewers—it’s hard to sustain the view in this instance that context is everything. Indeed, the many people who take time to say that Emily wasn’t meaning to be racist or offensive even while saying that she should have been evicted clearly think that context matters but isn’t everything. Also, I’m sure most would agree that symbolic orders are complex, contested, and negotiable. But I think that remembering these things helps account for the interesting delayed reaction exhibited by Charley and Nicky in the minutes and then hours after Emily’s outburst. Also, more significantly, remembering these things can help us with the multiculturalism issue that BT brought up.

I think BT is right to say that “the facts of difference persist beyond our desire for them”. And I think this fact is worth two cheers—it’s a good thing and gives hope that we can build a better multicultural society. A third cheer may be warranted when people like Emily have better appreciation of others’ sensibilities. The question is: how exactly do we do achieve a better multicultural society? BT says, in reference again to the facts of difference despite our desire to transcend them, that “we have to start from there, acknowledging and exploring the reality, if we are going to get anywhere”. I think that’s dead right, but the question again is how exactly do we do that acknowledging and exploring? And one possible answer may be that Big Brother (and Endemol, Channel 4, the sponsors, advertisers, and us, the supporters of the symbolic order, whoever is ultimately responsible for the decision) should have let Emily stay, albeit, for sure, with a serious bollocking and a final warning. That may sound weird, but bear with me.

In an earlier post, BT said Emily’s removal was “excellent news. And this despite hoping that in Week 5 Emily would get strangled by Alice bands in act of class war”. I too had hoped fervently for some such thing. But maybe Emily’s removal at this stage was not such excellent news. Had Emily stayed, the housemates and the rest of us might have been able to do more to acknowledge where we are as a multicultural society and to explore how we might yet be a better multicultural society.

Whatever its detractors think, multiculturalism is not going to go away. The only serious debate is whether we want to live in one society that is both integrated but also diverse and multicultural in which we all have multiple and overlapping identities and allegiances. That sounds difficult and indeed it is, but it’s not impossible: people in the British Isles have been it doing for thousands of years. Or else whether we want to live in one of many isolated and segregated societies that rarely or never speak to each other and which is only multicultural in the mutually unenlightening and potentially dangerous sense that we live together in a state of no communication on the same island. I rather favour the former, but if we are to succeed and thrive as that kind of multicultural society we need to do exactly what BT says, even perhaps (admittedly more arguably) to the point of acknowledging and exploring Emily’s moment as far as we can take it.

There are many reasons why exploring relations between Emily and Charley and Nicky might be enlightening. First, had Emily stayed, she could have learned—and learned a lot—from the very people she hurt. She surely would have learned more from them than from the sometimes concocted outrage of others on the outside. An added benefit of this is that Charley and Nicky would have retained more control over the debate about race and language (which they are surely entitled to in this instance) had Emily stayed than they have now she is gone. Also, not just Emily, but other white people could have learned more about this issue of race and language with Emily in than with Emily out. It’s true that we’ve learned something about these issues from Emily’s removal and perhaps for some people that’s all you need to know: use racist language and you are excommunicated. But maybe we could have learned more from it, acknowledged and explored it further, had she stayed. She and we could have learned more about why it’s so unacceptable. It might be obvious to many why it was unacceptable, but it was clearly not obvious to Emily and I’m sure it’s not obvious to many others. I have read many, many times since Emily’s removal comments to the effect that if rappers can use the word, why not Emily? A good, long debate in the House and out may help explain why. Besides, if the use/non-use of the n-word matters (as of course it does), then surely we can’t learn enough about it in all its ingloriousness.

My (little) brother was telling me this weekend how his children (aged 9 to 19) listen to and love hip hop, and how he tells them where some of its language comes from originally, why rappers might nevertheless use it themselves, but how that doesn’t mean anyone and everyone can go round using it. Not all of the many young white people who listen to that music get that advice—and it’s not entirely their fault is they then make the big mistake a huge, Emily-sized mistake. Either Emily was never taught these things, or she never listened. But other potential Emilys might learn from her error; other potential Charleys and Nickys might have less of this kind of thing to put with. And we all might live in a better multicultural society because we know more about each other’s sensibilities. And let’s not forget, while we’re talking about the nature of multiculturalism, that Emily was, however misguidedly, adopting what she thought of as black idioms, trying, in other words, to acculturate to aspects of African-Caribbean-British culture (albeit influenced in this instance by African-American culture). If white people want to do this, and it’s to be celebrated when they do, then sometimes they will make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes will cause offence. This is not to say that offence should be overlooked. Just that it should be learned from so there can be more, and more successful, white-to-black acculturation and integration.

There would, for sure, be dangers in letting Emily stay in the House. The biggest are that further hurt and offence could be caused to Charley and Nicky, and not necessarily by Emily repeating that kind of language but even perhaps simply by her continuing presence. But BB can monitor the situation in meetings with the two women (strictly private and never broadcast meetings so they can be honest about how they feel without worrying about their status in the house or with the public). If they find they can’t tolerate Emily’s presence after what she did, if for example they feel forced to walk, then Emily’s out and they get to stay—no question, experiment over. There is also a danger of putting Emily under too much scrutiny, beyond what a housemate should normally expect and have to endure, even if they’ve done a bad thing. Again, this is a situation that could be monitored with the understanding that housemates’ welfare is paramount. There is also of course a danger of offence to the watching public and, as was evident during the CBB row, to some of the non-watching public as well. Well, offended viewers could switch off or turn over. True, some people, white and black, made eloquent and compelling cases for how good it was that Emily was booted. I don’t dispute the goodness or sincerity of their sentiments. I merely propose that it would be even better (for our mutual, anti-racist cause) to let her stay and see what we all can learn. As for non-viewers, I’m not saying they have no right to be offended by what they don’t see or hear (it’s still out there), but if we want an informative debate about how best to negotiate the sometimes hazardous terrain of multicultural Britain then we would all be better off if they listened and watched and then made their contribution.

Ultimately, and with the above caveats not forgotten, I think leaving Emily in would have been worth a try. BB, however, felt it could not defend a decision to let her stay, especially after the last CBB. I can understand that, but I still think it’s wrong. BB could have defended such a decision on the above grounds. Of course I would say that, but there are other grounds as well. BB could have added that historically it has been one of the most open and multicultural programmes on television. I can’t think of another programme that represents people of diverse racial and sexual identities more numerically or more positively than does BB (a defence, unless I missed something, that BB inexplicably failed to make for itself either last time or this). And BB could have pointed out that housemates don’t speak for BB (I was amazed how many TV experts conflated the voices of housemates and that of BB, and can only assume they were fooled by their own prejudices against the show—but that’s not the kind of wilful ignorance we need in a debate like this). BB has pointed out that the show often works as a sort of morality play: bad people get evicted. That’s seems to me a great argument for keeping her in and letting the public decide and demonstrate what it thinks of what Emily said.

Also, kicking Emily out as quickly as BB did is not without its dangers, not the least of which is rendering the programme unwatchably boring and pointless. When BB first appeared on our screens (all those years ago, in what now seem like the simpler times and innocent days of Craig and Brian etc), it defended its existence on the grounds of social experimentation. If BB now forgets that mission—and forgets it when that defence is most important and most valid—then is it anything more than slightly exploitative light entertainment? There is also a danger perhaps that in attempting to underscore the seriousness of racism, Emily’s removal has in fact had the opposite effect. There is the danger of a complacency setting in: Emily’s out—problem solved. Of course few of the people who wanted Emily out would view her removal from the Big Brother House as a proxy for the removal of racism from our society. But some of the very people who have the most to learn about these issues might easily think exactly that. Ultimately, then, in booting Emily out we may have missed an opportunity—an opportunity to acknowledge the nature of some of our multicultural interactions as they are, and to explore how much better they might be.

“Thisisjimrockford”

The Reality of the Word

The transcript released earlier today by C4 certainly didn’t contain the whole story.

A most important aspect to emerge from the highlights is the obviousness and the extent of the negative reaction to Emily’s remarks of Charley and Nicky. It was very clear that the former was offended and disturbed and perhaps more so than she could really grasp at that point. Emily on the other hand clearly could not grasp how her own words exceeded her intentions even though she knew she had done something wrong. It would seem that Emily certainly did not remotely intend to cause upset or offence and Charley was aware of this, even to some degree concerned as to what the effect might be upon her friend. In a sense Emily did not intend to be offensive but was; Charley did not intend to be offended but was. We are in a context which far exceeds intentions.

Interestingly, and importantly, Emily’s use of the ‘N-Word’ derived from a particular kind of cultural appropriation and from her own very specific cultural background. One might even say that in using it Emily was behaving towards Charley in a way she might behave around her friends. But the word opens up an actually existing cultural history and a cultural structure that imposes and has effects regardless of the intentions of the parties who draw upon it when thinking and acting. Charley was at some level aware of this, even to the extent of herself feeling guilty as if she had caused the offence.

The facts of difference in our historical experiences cannot be wished away merely through good will or good intention.

In this case things are of course complicated by the intervening presence of Big Brother and the entertainment complex behind it. It intervenes perhaps partly on behalf of ‘us’ and partly on behalf of the symbolic order of the socially acceptable. but of course mostly on behalf of itself and the institutions of public communication. And in that sense it intervenes so as to attach the responsibility for the opening of a breach in propriety to an individual rather than to itself, to us or to the symbolic order.

There will of course be much public debate and discussion and this will no doubt in some cases be imagined to be evidence of our sophistication. But the reality exposed by this moment of reality TV, a reality moment that exists whether or not any individual wants it to, will remain. A viewpoint currently dominant in newspaper comment culture is that multiculturalism was and is flawed and that it draws attention to differences and conflicts rather than letting us transcend them and 'just all get along'. But in this case we can see how the facts of difference persist beyond our desire for them. And we have to start from there, acknowledging and exploring the reality, if we are going to get anywhere.

Emily to have love child with Don Imus

Emily has been fired by Alan Sugar for momentarily channelling Ron Atkinson. She needs to let go of the Indie music and subscribe to The New Humanist.

You can find the transcript here.

Obviously Big Brother's big theory thinks it excellent news. And this despite hoping that in Week 5 Emily would get strangled by Alice bands in an act of class war redolent of the great unwritten novel Ladette of the Flies.

But now we can hardly wait to see what this provokes in the wider culture. This time some sections of the press can't so easily load all the blame on stupid lower class people.

It seems hard to argue that Emily was setting out to be racist towards Charley and Nicky. It looks more like an instance of ignorance mixed with the general conviction of a certain kind of (white) English bourgeois that you can appropriate any aspect of any culture you want and there can't possibly ever be any kind of problem.

But as we know the cultural politics of this thing consist in the subsequent use of an event by wider media already exploiting 'outrage' in order to advance their own agendas. It is unlikely that the Daily Mail will run a story on the debilitating insularity of English upper-middle class kids. But I bet they get in a reference to self-hating liberals somewhere.

More likely though, is that it will feed into wider 'debate' about Channel 4 all of which is a prelude to getting it sold off to a private corporation. That is how the Daily Telegraph has already spun it, following on from stories suggesting that Brown might flog C4 off in an attempt to avoid a budget screw up before the next election. The Tories are of course also keen.

But in these Cameroonie times who can be sure? The Tory leader will no doubt discuss it all sincerely on WebCameron. Perhaps a cultural singularity is on its way faster than expected.

Big Brother's Big Theory

Is Doris Lessing a Big Brother Script Editor?

CC mails in to point out a report on Doris Lessing at the Hay Festival:

'Lessing's latest work The Cleft is a sci-fi fiction which imagines what happens to a mythical world of only women, when men are introduced. In her eyes men had been introduced to "pep up" a slothful, lazy world of women," said the 87-year-old.'

Let's hope that the BB producers also read Lovecraft.

Herland?

“Nobody will ever believe how they looked. Descriptions aren't any good when it comes to women, and I never was good at descriptions anyhow. But it's got to be done somehow; the rest of the world needs to know about that country”.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian novel of an all woman society, Herland starts with the male narrator confessing to this inability to describe his subject.

Mark Lawson had no difficulty in finding words with which to mock contestants, laughing at their intelligence and likening them to rats (but not of the lab variety which of course we like).

Perhaps he'd prefer less Herland and more Caged Heat.

BB functions very well as a cipher through which observers perceive what they want to perceive. For some newspapers it is the dead hand of commercialism and for others simply indications of general decadence. What they tend not to see is much of the thing itself.

‘None of them had ever seen it. It was dangerous, deadly, they said, for any man to go there. But there were tales of long ago, when some brave investigator had seen it -- a Big Country, Big Houses, Plenty People -- All Women’ (Gilman).

Glass and Plastic

'Focuault is Dead' has an interesting take on the OFCOM ruling. OFCOM ought to be discussed in relation to Kant, Baudrillard much more often. Check it out here.

A World of Wrestling?

It can't be coincidence that a week before the summer Big Brother OFCOM puts the show in the headlines with its public criticism of it. It is also widely reported that in the Australian BB house a contestant will not be informed about the death of her father. The Daily Mail says that there will be public grovelling at the start of the new series and the The Daily Star claims that certified sex addict will enter the house. Who issues such as certificate?

Unrestrained sex. Unknowable death. This story has already been written. Transgression and punishment have already been trailed.

But this time it will be more explicit than before that we are to jeer and boo not only the contestants but the programme itself, its makers and its broadcasters. You don’t even have to watch to join in.

Big Brother has exceeded itself and the show has become the show.

Here’s Barthes:

‘The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess. Here we find a grandiloquence which must have been that of ancient theatres. And in fact wrestling is an open-air spectacle, for what makes the circus or the arena what they are is not the sky (a romantic value suited rather to fashionable occasions), it is the drenching and vertical quality of the flood of light. Even hidden in the most squalid Parisian halls, wrestling partakes of the nature of the great solar spectacles, Greek drama and bullfights: in both, a light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve’.

Time, then, for twelve weeks of society-wide wrestling. I hope there is free bread. The circus is back in town.

BigBrother's Big Theory

Beginning

This blog exists for the core audience for Big Brother UK: cultural theorists and their graduate students, sociologists, philosophers and the rest. It is for online real-time needlessly intellectual dissection of the programme: what it all 'really means' and 'what it says about the culture'?

The blog will incubate 'Big Brother Theory' in all its forms, to all levels of excess. It invites debates and disputes, theorisations and deconstructions of all kinds. It wants economistic critiques, genealogical studies of celebrity production, psychoanalytic explorations of the desires invited and repelled by CelebReality Media. You can apply neuroscience if you want to.

But we also want to know who you want to win.

Comments are invited. Anyone wishing to initiate a post on which others may comment is invited to e-mail their text to bigbrothersbigtheory@yahoo.co.uk. It will be posted.