Orwellian vision of institutional peeking and private fantasies

Carel Alberts

Big Brother is George Orwell’s term for the intrusive state. In 1948 Orwell had the nightmarish (he thought) vision of a Thought Police, a Ministry of Love and all manner of other institutional creeps arrogating themselves into the sanctity of our private lives. How wrong he was, how paranoid. How ignorant of human swagger.

At another time he wrote about the autobiography of Salvador Dali, calling him “even by his own diagnosis narcissistic”. Orwell said the supposedly factual account was tainted completely by fantasy. Dali had written an autobiography so wholly out of touch with reality that the whole thing was simply a “strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight”.

But fantasy, says Orwell, is an interesting phenomenon — “a perversion made possible by the machine age”.

Now that’s more like it. With this, Orwell touches on far deeper aspects of the human psyche than he did with 1984. With this realisation, his vision of a technology-powered police state (or intrusive corporation, but he didn’t see that one) is at once clarified and better substantiated. When instincts are neglected, fantasy takes over, as does self-regard.

Setting the scene for Big Brother

At the time when Orwell wrote 1984, information technology was in its infancy, known only to some (as information theory), and important only to the war effort on both sides, to encrypt messages. Yet he might have said the same thing about IT as he did about industrial machines. Information technology has long been accused of alienating man from his surroundings.

If it’s not the computational skills of children disappearing with the use of calculators in school, it’s psychiatry going on about the loss of interpersonal skills with some of today’s killer apps — online sms, e-mail, chat — you name it.

Mightn’t a new millennium, where we have almost ubiquitous Internet access, satellite TV, and instant, cheap (sometimes free) communication, have the same effect of focusing our minds inwardly and estranging us from others and our surroundings? Of course it might have. It’s been argued for a very long time.

Might it also lead to the enablement of governments and companies to use the information we leave everywhere on the Internet and telephone networks about ourselves to their advantage? Of course. Sometimes you agree to being a receptacle of someone’s mindless advertising broadcast, and sometimes you are photographed or tapped without your knowledge. But that’s OK. Our lives are not that interesting anyway, and the software they use to track our buying patterns aren’t telling them as much as they need to know yet. To sell stuff to us, I mean.

There’s a far more important effect of cheap, universal communication and broadcast technologies. It is the integration of just about everyone (Africa and to some extent parts of Asia and South America are exceptions) into one viewing and broadcasting horde.

Think about it. Previously you had access to books. They had to be damn good or sufficiently prurient to be printed. Few could buy them, certainly not the poor. Now, if you have a TV or PC with a telephone line, the world’s your oyster.

Not only can you watch or read about everything for next to nothing, but you’re quite welcome to hook your PC up to a webcam and film yourself snogging, and then broadcast it. You can get married online or have sex for the first time.

Call it democracy at its worst and most pruriently interesting. TV spawned Jerry Springer, Oprah, Survivor and Big Brother. (Man, how embarrassingly the SA chapter must compare to others! Cultural cringe, all right.) The Internet brought us (among many fine things), exhibitionism, mindless chatroom natter, incredibly stupid online relationships, a stupendous amount of crap to sift through and poor, poor taste. I could name the good things also, but the point of this is to illustrate how cheap and convenient access to a medium changes it.

So, to get back to the point, Orwell was right, I suppose, when he said the bastards are becoming too powerful and adept at watching us. But he was more right when he said we LIKE being watched. Well, some of us anyway.

So why do people go on Big Brother?

It comes down to the human need for pampering, attention and 15 minutes of fame. No matter how dull your life or how uncomplicated your particular maladjustment, it has to be showcased. Because it can be. And because our lives are otherwise so excruciatingly dull.

You’d think this is a reason to stay off people’s TVs. But gazillions of viewers can’t be wrong, right?

I don’t know. I prefer accomplished performances. A year ago I was telling everyone who would listen how perfect (and important) The Blair Witch Project was. With only a conceptual script, it had the best dialogue ever. With no real scripted acting, the performances were all-round the best I had ever seen. With little direction, the progression was among the most acutely gut-wrenchingly suspenseful that I’d ever seen. This is until I saw Juliet Binoche in Code Unknown recently. I assume she was acting. She was better than anything I’d ever seen. And the movie was awesome.

So, talent and accomplishment still have a place. I do, however, agree that the artistic world has for too long been dominated by the highbrows, and that it can do with some new blood. More about that further down, where I discuss some of the possible merits of watching this stuff.

So why do I like it so much?

I’m sorry, I haven’t watched Big Brother, or more than two episodes of Survivor, none of Jerry Springer, and Oprah makes me want to throw up. But I’ll probably try to get some BB time just to see if I’m wrong. I could very well be.

It’s definitely a phenomenon. The Cape Times published someone showing her bits on the front page, readership shot up, and all of that can’t be a bad thing for business. People are waking up, thinking, “Oh, shit, is the fire still going?” (Work that one out if you can.)

But you’re all taking it way too seriously.

People watching BB et al are simply living vicariously through the contestants. They haven’t got the moxy to go on themselves, so they lie in wait for the first fight. Not the nude scenes. That you can get anywhere. Not the pretty people. Lots of that everywhere too. They’re waiting for the first confrontation.

Oh, well, don’t hold your breath for a truthful exchange of blows. I’m told the one and only person who ever spoke her mind on Survivor got voted off pretty smartly. Everyone thought she was a cow. At least she was a real cow.

The reality-TV phenomenon seems to require human subterfuge and deceit like nothing else. If it is politically-correct-conflict-resolution-grievance-procedure-ordinary-professional-drudge you want to get away from by watching this, forget it. You’ll get string-pulling for sure. Dealmaking and politicking. But you won’t get the truth.

So why should I watch and be in Big Brother?

Why not? You like it so much. You’ll see humans at their most competitive or depressed. You’ll fantasise in the shower about being filmed. You’ll get so caught up in it you’ll dream you’re there. And you can be.

Furthermore, it gives you marketability. Once I saw someone playing a Playstation game — theme: moto X. The sides of the track had plates shielding the spectators from the bikers. “Hey, I wonder when Microsoft will start advertising on those boards,” some bright spark remarked. He was right. What keeps Ferdinand, the most popular guy on BB, from suddenly hauling out a pack of Lover’s Plus and doing the finger thing and making a pile of money? It was done in the Truman Show.

My favourite moment.

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