It's coming again. That time of year when the putrid bottom-dwellers of society are shepherded cooing and drooling into a theme-park box and - fed on carefully rationed humiliation and each others' unique bigotry - and encouraged to pet and prod each other in an attempt to elicit even more evidence of objectionable breeding.
Big Brother '08.
And I'll be watching.
Against my better judgement. Against the integrity and culture and intellectual grooming efforts of my parents and friends. Against everything that is worthy and sacred in this world, I'll be watching.
I used to go to lengths hiding my irrational fascination. Program the VCR. Invent false appointments. Deny, deny, deny. I would whip myself with rusty barbed wire after every episode, feeling like a horny Catholic boarder guiltily cleaning himself up under the mothball-crusted blankets seeing the Virgin Mary waving vaguely down towards him. I was ashamed.
Then, something changed. I realised that as an anthropological record of the perverse phenomenon of B-grade fame, as a celebration of the spectacle in the inane, as evidence of the power of the pack mentality on both sides of the voting lines, and as a chance to out and out ridicule bogans, Big Brother equals entertainment.
Where else would a turkey slap be possible on national commercial television (even as a reference)? Where else do cattle drovers and uni dropouts transcend their station to be known to the wider public - albeit briefly - by their first name only? Where else would a mother/daughter pair celebrate their anointment with matching silicone surgeries? Where else do hoards of applicants pine for the chance to humiliate themselves and others to the basest level? And where else are we implicitly given license to heckle and deride the contestants from the comfort of our own couches?
Nowhere!
It is our right - NAY! our duty - to embrace this exposé of the vile and the cheap surrounding us. To watch so we can understand the lowest common denominator that drives our economy and our politics (these people vote! they shop!). To watch so we may find glorious self-righteous comfort in the primary fact that we aren't them.
Well...for the most part. Pass the poultry there, would you?
3 comments:
Your intelligently worded and carefully constructed argument has failed to convince me that your not just a average joe looking for a bit of side boob.
Damnnit! Side boob it is my friend, sideboob it is. Al la Peter Griffin...
Big Brother Uncut used to give me the major horns.
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