Big Brother

Abstract

Foucault defined government as the calculated direction of human conduct, the means by which behavior is shaped to various ends by the expertise in myriad agencies of the state. This article explores the theme of conduct by considering Big Brother as an experiment in governance. It is important to consider the new surveillance context in which documentaries take place. Of particular note is the way in which documentaries are seeing social issues as a means of getting to the personal and emotive. This new focus has also entailed a fascination with the psychological. Big Brother stimulated a number of debates concerning the rights and responsibilities of television producers to the subjects. It is also important to consider the ways in which the subjects of the program used the experience as an opportunity to develop their sense of self as performers and subjects in process.

Reality television and the politics of mass surveillance in channel 4’s Hunted

“…Most importantly for the purposes of this paper, reality television and its mass popularity intersect with wider discussions of surveillance under late capitalism (see Andrejevic, 2003; Couldry, 2008; Palmer, 2002). In many ways, constant monitoring is the sine qua non of the genre at the level of not only technical style but also narrative themes.…”

“…Once a feared appendage of a totalitarian state, Mark Andrejevic (2013) observes, surveillance became increasingly depicted as less dominating than empowering, offering heretofore passive viewers the opportunity to participate in the creative process of television production. As Gareth Palmer points out, reality television’s reliance on CCTV cameras represents ‘an extension of urban life [in which] a viewer-society imprecisely monitored by unseen others is one that has already infiltrated consciousness as a rather fuzzy benign source for good’ (Palmer, 2002: 299). For example, programmes like Big BrotherThe Real World and Extreme Makeover (2002–2007) worked to ‘define a particular form of subjectivity consonant with an emerging online economy: one that equates submission to surveillance with self-expression and self-knowledge’ (Andrejevic, 2003: 97).…”

“…The ‘therapeutic self’ that emerges in Hunted is such that individual achievement, personal growth and family commitment are celebrated in ways that divert attention from the social problems of surveillance, increased paranoia, and anxiety as well as the abuse of state power hinted at in the first season of the series. Like other reality television programmes, ‘this approach provides a legitimate rationale for the individual to ‘work through’ personal issues rather than looking at the material circumstances in which governance takes place’ (Palmer, 2002: 302). In each of these storylines, the experience of evading surveillance seems both transformative and life affirming rather than an infringement on their personal lives and free expression in civil society.…”

Medicalized reality weight-loss television and the negotiation of neoliberalism on My 600 Pound Life

“…When media scholars began focusing on reality television as an area of scholarly inquiry, we tended to look at it in relation to neoliberalism (Miller, 2007;Ouellette, 2004) and related concepts like surveillance (Andrejevic, 2004, governmentality (Ouellette andHay, 2008) and self-discipline, personal responsibility and individualism (Becker, 2006;Bratich, 2006;McMurria, 2008;Ouellette, 2004;Palmer, 2002Palmer, , 2003Sender, 2006;Weber, 2009). Reality television programmes are known for employing hidden camera surveillance, public humiliation and other controlling techniques to get participants to comply with the instructions of television experts (Ouellette and Hay, 2008).…”