Reality TV: A 21st Century Freak-Show
Writing this, I am sat in a dimly lit, overpriced coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. It is the morning after the seminal event of our times, the cultural zenith for all those who dare to be ‘edgy’, ‘hip’ and part of the ‘in’ crowd. This is of course the day after the Love Island final. Love Island is the most recent evolution of reality TV, in which first came Big Brother, some strange show in which an ever dwindling group of people (contestants are ‘evicted’ by the public each week) are forced to live with each other for the length of the series until there was 1 winner left standing.
Big Brother takes its name from George Orwell’s 1984, in which ‘Big Brother’ is always watching. One of the issues I have with the name in particular is that it implies that we’re always watching, which ...