Generally speaking, reality TV shows drift past me; I watch the occasional five or ten minutes here or there (to keep up with my students, if nothing else) but apart from that I tend to like my entertainment scripted, performed by professionals an/or crafted by cinematographers. I'm funny like that.
Celebrity Big Brother is my weak spot, however. It's not just that I am suckered into the "cult of celebrity" (although I probably am - even though I stopped reading Heat magazine years ago I regularly find myself hanging around the PopBitch! site like a mackerel around a sewage pipe, hoovering scandal) it's the scary combinations of famous folk-often renowned for vast egos- scrabbling around to resurrect/start a career, fighting to seem the most... something (cool, mad, reasonable, versatile, normal, employable...etc) it's fascinating.
This series of CBB however is unnerving. Taking the Barrymore issue out of the equation, it seems an odder than usual barrel-scraping of housemates: a tall, cross-dressing sportman and his ex-Baywatch ex, some minor musicians, someone famous for shagging famous people, someone famous for having been in a documentary once and then getting her norks out, an actress who peaked thirty years ago, an acid-tongued one-hit-wonder cosmetic surgery addict, a narcissistic MP and an "ordinary" lass, having to pass herself off as a minor-musician/one-hit-wonder. The whiff of desperation emanating from some of these people can almost be tasted through the TV screen.
But you can't take Barrymore out of the equation. Whatever you think of him, whatever you think has gone on, whatever take you have on his life, he remains a figure who is as infamous as famous - and who the producers must be counting on to bring some kind of dangerous notoriety to the show, maybe even to break down in front of millions. This makes me very uneasy.
- I'm not sure I want to be part of such a vicious intended manipulation. I'm not sure I can watch...(-and I'm fairly sure that's not what the producers are hoping for).
3 comments:
I sometimes wonder why BB even bothers with normal BB anymore. People say it's boring anyway. And if you can get pathetic d list celebs to made an idiot of themselves, 24 hours a day, why waste money auditioning non-famous people.
I will be watching, but not religiously, and I probably won't admit it if I am lol.
i have managed to not see any of it so far.
i think they should be chastised over the use of the word celebrity though.
I still think I prefer normal Big Brother to the "celeb" version, apart from the last series. The people they have on the celeb varient are largely the sort of people who are constantly followed round by journos from Heat magazine, so they're already used to being on camera 24 hours per day.
The "get an ordinary stupid girl to pretend she's a celeb" gimmick is a bit rubbish. It's not as if she really *is* just an ordinary person on the street - she's a Page 3 model, whose entire "career" seems to be oriented around trying to become famous.
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