Reality TV is simultaneously the most loved and hated topic for the British Public. After yet another series of “Celebrity” Big Brother (Reality TV’s equivalent of herpes), the nation is once again divided. Reality TV gets to the best of us, but when you break the ‘purpose’ of each show down, it’s really quite hilarious.
Big Brother is the prime example. Putting a number of random people that you previously had no knowledge of (This can be applied to the celebrity addition too,) into a house and watching them slowly driving each other bonkers for want of normality and personal space, whilst making the unlucky few complete some truly bizarre tasks. Whilst we can all agree Nicky Graham’s multiple breakdowns and Glyn’s “egg song” were endlessly amusing, ultimately, we’re feeding someone’s narcissism. We treat the cross section of people that end up in the house as representations of the British public, when in actual reality, they are among some of the most bizarre categories – reason enough for television bosses to cram them into the house. They’ll make “good television” of course. It doesn’t matter if they sodomise the beer bottle! It’s good viewing.
Another terrific example, and probably one of my favourites is “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!”, as the irony that the people we adore because we have elevated them to celebrity status become more/less revered by the public when we see how capable they are at being “normal people”. People who will eat widgety grubs to make sure the rest of their camp don’t starve that night. People who have to survive without a shower for a month. People who...are getting paid around 50 k to do that show. Who will come out of ‘slumming’ it richer, because for one month they’ve eaten only beans and rice. Oh the pain! The sacrifice!
The word celebrity has always been confusing to me – especially the reasons behind why we award certain individuals that status – and it becomes even more confusing when the whole glamorous idea of them is inverted. What is it that we want to see from celebrities?
A prime example is musicians. Recently, I attended Hop Farm festival, and who should be playing but Morrisey. I’m not a particular fan anyway, and even if I had been, I would have jumped ship quite quickly when I saw that when performing, because he was a vegetarian, he wanted all food stalls displaying meat on their signs to be covered. Any respect I did have for him quickly accompanied his credibility down a grubby portaloo. There’s supporting your cause and being comfortable educating people about your beliefs and the alternative choices out there, and then there’s being an idiot. But it did raise a question – what do we really want from our celebrities? We don’t want ‘organic’ rock stars like Chris Martin and his weirdly flexible wife Gwynnie Paltrow, because they’re accused of being “too fake”. Going “too far” to avoid their stereotype. Matt Bellamy, front man of Muse was branded reckless by some at Reading festival when he threw his guitar across the stage. Stars like Morrisey – obviously proud of their beliefs – are accused of shoving them down our throats. Non descript celebs who don’t really stand for anything never make it big.
What is it about the human nature that spurs us to find out what normality is? Why haven’t we figured out yet that regardless of how “larger than life” a person may seem as a character on the screen, we are all only human and EVERYTHING is real. In fact, everything bar reality TV. These people still need to use the bathroom, need to eat , need to sleep. They all wake up of a morning with sleep in their eyes and bad breath.
As a race, we have yet to realise that no-one is ‘special’. Many are talented, certainly, excelling in certain professions that are going to rake in the cash, but no-one is exempt from the taxes life takes on our body.
And I wonder if we make the choice to ignore that willingly. Escapism has always been favoured by our nation. In wartime Britain, thousands flocked to the cinemas to shut off to the world for an hour or two. To forget reality. How strange it seems that years down the line, our idea of escaping our own reality is to study someone else in a simulated environment we deem as ‘real’. The idea is boggling to me, but we need to believe that some people are better than us and deserve to adored. We all have our idols, and the famed saying is that you should never meet your own personal inspiration.
And why?
Because you might just fall back up the rabbit hole you’ve created for yourself. You might realise that actually, things aren’t what they seem. They’re a whole lot less than it.
(Sing the title to "As long as he needs me" from Oliver. Credit to Jest End)
