Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Big Bedlam


This image records how the paying public in the Eighteenth century visited Bedlem mental Hospital for entrtainment, to be amused and shocked at the behaviour of its inmates.

In the danger of repeating myself, I am still appaled by the progress of Big Brother 7. Starting with Shabaz and going all the way up to the producers. The idea of the programme is to expose the psychology of the contestants.

I AM fascinated with social psychology, more so than whether any hanky panky takes place.

But I don't see that people out of adolesence should be expected to deal with disturbed behaviour, and when I saw Shabaz mugging as a spastic person to illusttarte his use of the word imbecile, well . . . . . . I have worked with people with cerebral palsy, and they have as much going on inside as you and me. Playing tit for tat with stigmas is just not on.

It also touches on something I have learnt is poison to the social compact - paranoia. It's more contagious than syphilis. My neighbour upstairs [ever wondered if I'm house bound?] since I accidently opened a letter of his, doesn't trust that I'm not spying on him. I've recently been accused of signing for the delivery of a summons, and knowing something about why his front door lock doesn't work properly.

Now I don't trust him.

If this blog disappears, look out for news that an idiot with a red nose and too much eye shadow was found stabbed in his bed.

There's a lot in the media about the shallowness of reality tv stars, Chantelle for example, but as the Big Brother house is on display, any kind of interior life, any dissembling is seen as some kind of sinister witholding, being two-faced, on a task, etc, etc. The openess of Shabaz's behaviour seems to be taken as proof of it's triviality, not the display of a behavioural pirhana in a pool of entertainment minnows. Come on Endemol, takes some responsibility!

1 comment:

Andrew said...

Having lived in a houseshare for five years in the nineties, I met a few interesting characters.

One such housemate was called Mattie, who was a late twenty-something emaciated glamourpuss, who went from one fifty-something rich homosexual to the next. Mattie moved into our house 'in between sugar daddies', to quote and ended up leaving after just four weeks following his belief that the rest of us were opening his post, stealing his cosmetics and talking about him.

The truth of the matter was that all of the letters from his exes begging him to come back had never arrived, his cosmetics were moved around by the cleaning lady and the rest of the house weren't that interested in Mattie, as he was a walking L'Oreal advert not a person.

Seems that like Shahbaz, Mattie was convinced that everyone loved him and was following his every move. Truth of the matter, not that bothered actually.

I would never go into the BB house, as for one I value my anonymity too much, I'm not an attention whore and I can think of nothing worse than being couped up with thirteen people in a dayglo version of a Butlins chalet with no mental stimulation.

I'm still hooked on watching the freaks, just don't want to be one.