Celeb Big Brother

Ok so yesterdays video was of course a clip from the brilliant Christmas special of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchants Extras. Scarily accurate if you look at this years line up and the events to date. Though I have to admit that I have not been bitten by the Big Brother bug, have I finally escaped the curse. Though as much as I lament Big Brother, I know it it is trash tv but, there are people out there, myself included who from time to time need some form of over your head entertainment that doesn't require any brain power. What better than Big Brother as the viewer sits and watches the world go by. Though Celeb Big Brother should be more interesting than regualar summer Big Brother due to the strength of celebrity culture at this time. It gives us a chance to see how "the other side live". If you ever wondered how a middle aged rapper from Compton or a glamour model lived then this is a show for you. Though it's not really their reality, it is the faux world created by the producers in an attempt to provide entertainment through the ridicule of the fame hungry and money grabbing celebs. The most insightful thing I have seen thus far was Verne Troyer and Coolio being at least honest and saying out loud to each other that they were here for the money. Verne Troyer I undertand this he hasn't had the most prolific career, but Coolio must surely have made a good living he had a successful music career back in the nineties. Anyway this faux reality does it's best for an insight into the celelbrity lives so many people clamour for but we are never going to get the so called "truth" or real world unless we have a Truman Show type show where the occupant is not aware that they are being watched. So called reality shows that "follow" celelbrites around are so predictable and created that any actions or interactions are merely as a result of them being watched.

“ man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.” Clifford Geertz: An American Anthropologist and professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

It appears we will stay in a cyclical cycle of creating celebrity culture and reinforcing it through these reality shows until we have perhaps all had our 15 mins fame, where we have satisfied that thirst for what we deem celebrity to be. Or perhaps if we can understand reality but through a form that does not conduct itself in a faux reality setting then perhaps the cycle can be broken.