Choose a current issue/debate/controversy and analyze how it is informed and determined by power, spectacle and memory within contemporary mediated culture.
In this essay I will be engaging with the object of Big Brother, how it creates power, manipulates its participants and ultimately tells its audience what to think about the content.
POWER – Power within big brother is demonstrated in great effect. Using theories of control brought about Jeremy Bentham and the Panopticon. The Panopiticon was a design of prison that kept each individual inmate in a separate cell, forever being watched by one empowered guard. Light was shone into the cells so that they could be seen but they were not able to tell when anyone else was watching. In this way the inmates could not tell when they are being watched so actually having a guard on post does not matter as the inmates would forever look at their own behaviours as if they were bring watched.
The fact that all the participants within big brother are forever being watched by cameras they are all to aware. They internalise what they think the people watching are going to think about them and act up to how they think the people watching will want them to do. The institution of big brother holds power over all that are within as it can be seen as a prison, but one major difference is that the participants do not have to stay and can leave at any point.
This reinforces the fact that power is not jus asserted one way but is an agreed discourse between the master and its slave. But even in this environment it is not always an easy discourse. CCTV cameras are often used as a means of power in the real world, and is argued that it does not work in the same realms of the Panopticon.
“… the surveillance gaze overwhelmingly falls upon individual occupying morally laden categories of suspicion : youth, homeless persons, street traders and black men”. (Lyon 2006:232)
This may be due to the different levels in which these groups are aware of the surveillance whereas Big Brother contestants are forever confronted with the moving cameras. This pressures them to continually think on what the audience expects of them and how to entertain and become popular.
Other psychological theory’s of power are in play as the regime is such they wake the same day and are rewarded and punished.
When discussing the effects of the Panopticon not all the effects are positive and works too well making the subjects docile.
“Prisoners may experience their bodies as abandoned – but then they use them to assert themselves. The disciplinary spaces actually invite and magnify disorder, pollution and noise. As they throw faeces, self – mutilated and create disturbances, they produce selves for the observer, but they also treat their bodies as bodies for the observer turning private and destructive bodily acts into spectacles.” (Lyon 2006:6)
Vanessa Felts – Table
Rules are often broken and have to be punished. Even so in the past when told to stay within their cell in the garden of the big brother house Markus chose not to and started playing by his own rules.
In a lot of ways we need institutions to construct the world around us so we feel safe and give meaning to the environment around us. In this sense after weeks of being inside the big brother house the participants will go to greater and greater lengths to stay within its walls.
Power is even greater showed when the means of communication are controlled, to give the participants an opportunity to speak to loved ones on the outside they would go to greater lengths to comply even if it meant putting the other housemates into the line of fire.
The institution also has power to convince the audience who is in the wrong as the live show is a lot more unedited and situations may come across as totally different. To this end the narrative is constructed and enables the institution to create heroes and villainies others.
Power can also be expressed as upward or downward, downwards when the institution influences its subordinates and upward when the subordinates effect the show. This is displayed in big brother when the characters are put under too much stress and chose to exit the experiment which effects the entire show so that evictions may not be able to be carried out or extra ones have to be made.
Finally to a certain extent the participants themselves hold power not only over the discourse of the show but over each other and how the audience may view them, this is often demonstrated when they start to play games and talk to the camera in the diary rooms.
MEMORY – Collective memory as well as personal memory can both factor in the case of big brother. Collective memory is when the nation has a memory of an event such as the 9/11 bombing and imprints their own back-story to what they were doing at the time. When it comes to big brother it runs within the holiday around 9 so that the audience can be wider than just adults but pre teens may well get the opportunity to engage with the show. As we watch it we instantly categorise each individual from the moment they walk into the house. This is not done by accident but the institution has defined these “types” “myths” of people so that people can quickly understand some of the characteristics of that person. Bond pretty girl, aggressive alternative, soft geek, weird foreigner and sexually different are some of the most frequent myths used.
The fourth look, after that of the audience, that of the camera and those within the shot is how we look at the material within our own history. We then relate and straight away identify those characters that may well be like ourselves or like people we know. This is almost personal memory as once we feel as we know the characters well enough we feel comfortable taking what we have seen and reporting this to other people that we know that have seen the show. This sharing of narrative is similar to that we do with the narrative of people we engage with in our own lives.
As the show runs through the weeks we are guided by the institution to have a collective memory of each person and tell us who we should be liking and who we should lynch, this is a pivotal point in big brother as the show relies on the audience getting involved and voting out characters to be thrown to the mobs and short term stardom. Big brothers little brother is one of the ways they attempt to do this as they have guests in power such as past housemates and famous icons putting their viewpoints across and arguing with the live audience attempting the narratives to be forever discussed.
Memory is now different within mass media as news can be sent pretty much instantaneously making the audience not just an audience to tell a narrative after the event but now we can be described as participants as we too can see things unfold and act as the moral judgment on the show through the interactive elements.
Events on big brother are televised 24 hours a day making the real scandal/historical events first of all seen by the masses before the institution gets a chance to edit it on the evening shows. This gives the institution a chance to create myths about the characters and chance the representation of them. But once they leave the big brother house they still may not have control of their own representation as tabloid newspapers grab them straight away and creates images for them. Such as nuts forever doing topless photo shoots.
“broadcasting has developed, whether in its public service or commercial manifestations, as an industry and, as such, it feels mo obligation to preserve its output for subsequent scrutiny it’s very immedediancy gives it its potency, and within the industrial context, if there is an urge to preserve the output, it is for subsequent repeat broadcasting or for sale to other broadcasters.” (Edgerton 2001:245)
History within television can be archived and thus is not only the memory of its first viewers but topics can be re used and re invented to new means. One example of this is within the Vanderbilt Television Archive started in 1968 which encloses television news since 1968.
This can be seen as every week the events are displayed on the evening show and when they leave the house a video is shown to give the views a memory of what happened to the character throughout their journey. This is also complements with a face of the contestant showing their emotional reactions to the memories created by the images.
These memories are chosen in terms of that persons character within the show to create that persons history in the show. And thus a myth of what that person is like
“Like history, cultural memories are produced and must be understood in relation to an array of cultural and ideological forces.” (Edgerton 2001:247)
History of the show is not just in constructed shared memories in the media most of all in the contained narratives updated all the time on the website. This could be seen as a top down source of power as if you control peoples memory you control their experience, their knowledge of pervious struggles and is used as a tool to convey the characters within the narrative under different myths, Jade Goody (virgin, fiend, hero)
SPECTICLE – each one of us have been brought up in institutions to tell us what is and what is not “normal” behaviour. People all too often have the opinion that big brother is literally just people sitting around a house all day acting normal when in actual fact it is more like hyper realism as the institution attempts to play with normality by forcing confrontations to make the audience react and choose sides which creates spectacle.
Within big brother the main drawing point is that CCTV is used to give the audience the ability to spy and watch peoples lives in a very invasive manner. CCTV on the other hand is argues to work in a different way as the panopticon “… the surveillance gaze overwhelmingly falls upon individuals occupying morally laden categories of suspicion : youth, homeless persons, street traders and black men”. (Lyon, D 2006: 232)
One explanation is the different levels of awareness that these types of people would be aware of the cameras. In the case of the Big Brother contestants would be forever confronted with the moving cameras behind the two way glass. This knowledge would make them continually think on what the audience expects of them and how to give the viewers what they want to become popular. On top of this other forms of control are in place as they have set times of the day to wake up and are often encouraged to do things behind the backs of other contestants and punished if they do not.
When discussing the effects of the panopticon not all the effects are positive and works too well making some subjects docile, this can be seen when characters’ go out of their way to make a spectacle such as writing on the table with chalk.
“They produce selves for the observer, but they also treat the bodies as bodies for the observer, turning private and destructive bodily acts into spectacles.
As we see these hyper real almost false relationships we feel engaged and wish to have our own opinions on the spectacle and thus report this to other people we know in the real world. Every eviction can also be seen as a spectacle as the audience react to the institutions constructed character that has been built up either by boos or by cheers.
Edgerton, G and Rollins, P (2001) Television Histories, shaping collective memory in the media age.
Lyon, D (2006) Theorizing Surveillance, the panopticon and beyond.
Raymed Williams
Samuel Beckett
Debords society of spectacle
Michael Wesch
Jean Baudrillard
Michel Faucault
Jack Lecan
Fred Jameson
Moores, S (1993) Interperpreting Audiences,
The Ethnography of Media Consumption.
Hall, S (1973) Encoding and decoding in the television discourse, cccs stencilled paper 7, university of birgingham.
Rayner, P. Wall P and Kruger S (2004) Media studies : the essential Resource
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