RACHEL'S COLUMNS

These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age

...And this little piggy stayed home
14th May 2004

I get bored easily so a television experience like "Big Brother" was never going to make my tail wag for more than two minutes, nah-make that one minute.  I can't believe it's on the Tele again and this time round – the fourth series, it's even more of a lab rat experiment than ever before.  Not only is the audience savvy to the way producers have handpicked the contestants to encourage a fake chaos, but even people who love the experiment (I can't call it a show because it's not; The Producers is a show!) agree that it's lost the lean make-believe edge it once had.

It's called reality television, but it was never that, because it's totally unreal to put a bunch of strangers in a house that's wired up for pictures and sound and expect them to act like no-one's watching.  Hello – these people know that the entire world is their stage in a way that Shakespeare could never have imagined, not even if he'd been experimenting with recreational drugs.  Microphones hang permanently like animal skins from the hips of contestants while the fluorescent lit house boasts more two way mirrors than a Guantanamo Bay interview room.  Every nose-picking, ear-licking, scalp-itching detail is transmitted into the homes of the willing via heavy-duty cables.

And for entertainment, because the housemates are deprived of newspapers, television and computers, they're encouraged to play infantilising games like telling make-believe stories to find who is the best liar.  By comparison, the challenges facing Gretel Killeen to not fallout of her outfits are far more riveting.  And I need to say right away that Gretel makes an indescribably tough gig look easy and that requires genuine talent.  That's why everybody loves Gretel - she's reaching out to us and she's never condescending in the tone that the disembodied voice of Big Brother often is.

I never agreed with the novelty in the concept in the first place.  When I clean my ears with a cotton bud I screw my face up like a gibbon and make deep purring sounds – it's funny – and I enjoy it.  But it's not entertainment; there's nothing in it for anyone else.  Sure, everyday life and human foibles are the stuff that great dramas and comedies are drawn from, but there's a process involved.  Somebody gets an idea then builds on that idea with a script and some jokes, a bit of music maybe.  Then one or two or more great performers put oxygen and life into all that stuff and voila – it's engaging, interesting and uplifting and the audience is touched by it.

Jerry Seinfeld always said his show was about nothing, but the characters and their personal relationships turned the nothing of living into brilliant comedy.  When Gina Riley playing Kim curls her lip at Jane Turner playing Kath, I crack up because all the details of their relationship are revealed in that single expression.  The Big Brother housemates don't have a relationship – they don't know each other, they're strangers thrown together so that somebody will win a million dollars.  They hug and cry, unashamedly aware of being exposed, because they all know that's what they're there for.  They go about their boring tasks without a brilliant script – in fact with no other script than to know that they're being watched.

To make the concept more interesting the producers should consider a theme, like Big Brother goes to the podiatrist.  Imagine a camera strapped onto the podiatrist's head.  We could watch for hours and at close proximity as he cuts out corns, splits in-grown toe-nails and removes verruca warts; toe-jam cam.  But it's Germany that gets the prize for the finest in viewing that's not quite kosher.  A website called Pig Brother attracted more than a million visitors in less than two weeks with its 24-hour live webcam coverage of a family of wild boar.  The site offers day and night coverage of three males, three females and more than 50 offspring in an enclosure in their natural habitat.  There are microphones in the enclosure and at least one boar in front of the camera at all times.  "The mating calls are very impressive", the spokeswoman said. 

Those pigs really know how to work a room!