The Stanford experiment pitted Haves against Have-Nots and resulted
frighteningly high levels of abuse and confrontation. Frighteningly high levels
of abuse and confrontation are exactly what reality TV shows need. So Celebrity
Big Brother created an arbitrary and unfair divide and sat back and waited.
What could possibly go wrong?
Pretty much everything. Instead of abuse and confrontation the Big
Brother producers have somehow instituted fellowship and team-bonding. Where
there might have been discord they have created harmony. Basement-dwelling Have-Nots
cast aside personal well-being and selflessly powered their more fortunate
neighbours’ electricity and hot water despite receiving no obvious benefit
themselves. The Main house inhabiting Haves responded by sacrificing their own
luxury foodstuffs to their more unfortunate fellows. It was enough to bring a
tear to the eye. Especially if you were a member of the Big Brother production
team when you saw the ratings.
Desperately the poor dears up on the gantry tried to drag some ugly
discord out of the whole happy mess by forcing the basement dwelling Have-Nots
to put one of their fellows up for a public vote. Surely this would bring some
kind of animosity? But no! Razor, Sam, Ryan and Frankie all bravely volunteered
to face televisual annihilation. It was like Scott in the Antarctic with four
Captain Oates’. They chose Frankie after all saying how popular and loved he
was. It was the nicest eviction vote I have ever seen.
It may well have been the nicest
eviction vote they’d seen up in the Control Room too. And nice evictions aren’t
getting anybody backstage a performance bonus. The production crew threw up their hands in
despair and abruptly ended the basement/main house divide story line before the
housemates started getting matching tattoos and swearing to be best friends
forever. I suspect this wasn’t the idea three days ago.
In truth the poor Programme Makers have been outmaneuvered from the
start. First, Paula who was the housemate most likely to get grumpy in the
cellar suffered a wonderfully timed mystery illness and was released into the
land of milk and honey (or at least hot water and a working toaster) and then
Speidi…
Oops! That reminds me that I was going to write about how Speidi are
different from all the other contestants.
But first a digression into history. Not real history obviously – wattle
and daub huts, Vikings, Mary Queen of Scots and all that, but reality history
which is different. Reality TV history officially began the moment “Nasty” Nick
Bateman broke the rules in Big Brother 1 and changed the course of the future
forever (all reality time before this moment is known as BC – Before Crap and
all after it is known as AD – Advertising Deluge). Reality TV discovered the
power of evil on ratings and things have never been the same since.
Unfortunately Nick Batemans cannot be guaranteed to turn up whenever you want
them. You can obviously do your best by screening out anybody who appears
well-balanced, mature and self-contained and screening in anybody who appears
weak, needy and open to being manipulated. But even this lacks certainty. The
alternative is to hire a professional. Or professionals.
Which brings me back to Speidi and their differences from everybody
else. Most obviously they are two
people, Spencer and Heidi – a married couple (even though they did come close
to divorcing, stating, according to Wikipedia, that they believed it would further Heidi’s
career – a cheery reflection on modern society if ever there was one). Spencer
and Heidi are reality TV professionals who have been brought in knowing they
will be “villainised” – a fantastic word which they used in a previous episode revealing
just how au fait they are with what’s going on. They remind me a bit of the
pacemakers who feature in athletic events hired to keep things exciting in the
opening laps while knowing they have absolutely no chance of winning the race.
But being Reality TV professionals Spencer and Heidi have learnt the key
relationship is with the producers rather than their housemates. They signed on
to be disliked and they signed on to be voted off but they did not sign on to
do this while being hungry and cold. Once placed in the basement they responded
simply by going on strike disappearing under sleeping bags and bedrolls and
doing nothing. They even refused to meet the other housemates. It was a
masterstroke. The poor production team must have been having kittens. Having
lost their ace in the hole (Jim Davidson) to the police at Heathrow Airport, they
now had their expensive imported vapid American couple going invisible on them.
The clock was ticking. They had to get
them out before they could be voted off. It was no surprise to see Spencer and
Heidi rapidly promoted to the main house.
Now they’re there as well as everybody else they just look confused.
Spencer knows he’s supposed to quarrel with someone but surrounded by a bubble
of love and positivity he’s got nowhere to start, poor lamb. I bet things are a lot more poisonous at production
crew meetings as the increasingly desperate programme makers have been forced
into trying to attract ratings with extended video sequences of Razor Ruddock
farting. In Celebrity Big Brother 11 the lunatics are threatening to take over
the asylum.
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