FREE SPEECH FOR THE DUMB
FREE SPEECH FOR THE DUMB
Big Brother is watching you. Watching you watching Big Brother. Knowing that out there, on our sofas and our living rooms, twelve special people - special in the way that Downs Syndrome people are special - are watching now, debating if they should enter, thinking up wacky video stunts to prove to the bewildered at Channel 4 that they should be the victims in the most public experiment the country offers. These days you don�t have to have anything but ugly ambition to be famous.
In less than 48 hours, the winner of the third Big Brother will emerge victorious into acclaim, fame, and camera flashes, �70,000 richer, but without their dignity. But right now, after several weeks of tedium on a film lot in Elstree, Big Brother 3 is winding down, and four goldfish are wandering around, bored and banal, in the biggest, most public, bowl in the country.
The thing that strikes me most about Big Brother is the boredom. The fascination with a world where absolutely nothing happens. People cook, people clean, people sunbathe, and people bitch. And we flock to it in our millions. It�s Punk TV - anyone can do it, but not anyone will. And it certainly requires no talent.
Big Brother has no agenda. It�s just simple voyeurism. For only 30 minutes a week does Big Brother even hint at being anything more than meaningless reportage - with its superficial attempts at �human analysis�, its psychologists reports, that are by several miles the most interesting things about the programme. Because instead of all that so-called reportage on human interaction, most of the time all we actually get to see is a bunch of egotists trying to cope with each other in a confined space. Living with each other, each competing for attention and acceptance in a comfortable prison, doled out a pittance in food and treated like cattle by Channel 4. Channel 4 says �Jump!�, and all they do is say �How High?�
The only time Big Brother looked even vaguely interesting is when most of the house was debating just walking through the prison bars and challenging authority. Frankly though they were all too weak. Herd mentality gave us spineless wimps who�d rather live in fear of some imaginary punishment than stand up for their own dignity. Spineless sheeple.
I�m not quite sure what the British fascination is with this programme. Is it that we are reveling in our own mundanity? Compelled to view the embarassment that is the low standard of Modern Britain? Or simply voyeuristically watching other people doing things television doesn�t normally show, like going to the toilet?
Like a carcrash in slow motion, humanity has a natural fortune to pry into the business of others, but there�s nothing compelling about watching a thick upperclass arrogant twit shave his chest in secret to hide his ginger roots. The same man sat around boasting about his fabulous car he�s got at the age of 23, the life of luxury he lives, cracking racist jokes, and when disciplined, acting like everything you�ve ever done wrong is someone else�s fault. Arrogance is next to godliness. Blame culture these days is always someone else�s fault. How convenient. And irresponsible.
All of this is for the sake of �70,000. It�s frankly peanuts compared to the revenue Channel 4 are raking in. Whilst Channel 4 charge you �9.95 to watch it on a Webcam, 25p per text message update, and premium rate phonelines to vote, the winner of two months of public humiliation gets �70,000. In the meantime, all around them, people are getting rich off the naked, ugly ambition of people who�d want to be famous without having any talent to deserve it. It�s ugly, it�s desperate. It�s on E4.
It reminds me of �The Decline Of Western Civilisation II : The Metal Years�. A multitude of anonymous longhairmetal guitarists were paraded in front of the camera, each answering the same question with the same answer that only the boneheadedly arrogant and stupid can provide. Johnny Nobody, peroxided and spandexed to the hilt, was asked a question. The question was the same every time :
�But what happens if you don�t become famous?�
These days the guys flip burgers and do office jobs.
That is the kind of pigheaded stupidity and naked ugly ambition Big Brother is offering us. I expect Darius to be in the house next year.
Meanwhile, the front page of The Sun is eulogising sweet little Jade, everyone�s favourite thick as pigshit common white trash. Now, this isn�t a snide or jealous comment., But she is genuinely thick. She thinks Cambridge is a suburb of London, that they speak �Portunageese� in Brazil, and Spanish in Portugal. She�s got an individual tattoo of a chain of flowers, or a dolphin, or something equally independent on her ankle. Just like everyone else. She�s like a puppy dog - with the puppy fat : loyal, dumb, but devoid of a puppy�s charm. Poor Little Babba.
And Pages 4-5 of The Sun every day this week feature an interview with her white trash Jerry-Springer trailer park mother and her �cute� baby photos. Now I tolerate everyone. But I really fail to understand why on Big Brother they have to choose contestants who are not only dull (that is boring), but dull, as in plain stupid.
Unless of course, she�s incredibly clever, and for the past ten weeks she�s acted like a ignoramus. You almost hear her crinkle her nose up and vomit �Wot�s that? You comparing me to where I went on me hollydays?�. But I doubt it. She hasn�t shown an ounce of anything resembling intellect or compassion. just the kind of girl who�d nicked lots of stuff from shops at 15, bully people in glasses, put out for a pint, and yell �What the fuck you looking at?� whilst her mates walked menacingly towards you in the High Street on a Friday night trying to find out if you�ve got a problem, and if you haven�t, would you like one?
These are the kind of people who don�t care about politics, because they government always gets in. They don�t care about corporate evasion of tax. They don�t care about mass abuse of power. Or wars being fought with taxpayers money. Just so long as they�ve got the TV, some fags, and a pram they�ll be OK. The government will keep them in white trainers. Oh no. The big problem with the world these days is all them bleeding immigrants innit? And this is not a return to Thatcher�s eighties, where all single mothers are evil. It�s not single mothers that are evil - it�s the deification of the dumb. It�s hip to be thick. It�s cool to be stupid.
The end result, of course,is that kids are stupid. Not because they�re born that way, but because it�s easier. People who think get singled out in school. People who aren�t stupid act it to fit in. And 13 year old boys shoot pellet guns at passersby in Derby High Street and act all surprised when someone actually takes offence at being shot at.
Don�t worry though eh? The government are in charge. They know what they�re doing. Don�t question authority - obey. Leave the thinking up to us. Just go out, get pissed, get laid, get married, have kids, and be like everyone else. You�ll change your mind when you start paying tax.
But more importantly than that, don�t aspire to anything. Don�t aspire to changing the world, don�t aspire to being responsible, or ambitious, or anything. Wait for Channel 4 and the Lottery to save you. We�re easier to govern, easier to rule, if we�re fed a meaningless spectacle whilst somewhere else our Government decides to mobilise it�s armies in a pre-emptive strike against Afghanistan, and leading mankind into the Third World War against the Muslim State which is really just a battle for oil dictated by big business. People don�t demonstrate against this, because its not on the news. They don�t even know, because it�s not fit to print. Even the news is just another show. Shut up. Be happy. Watch TV and don�t dare fucking think for yourself. You�re more difficult for the status quo to control if you actually question the order of things.
�There is no such thing as society� Thatcher said. Exactly right. We�re all cocooned inside our shells, watching TV and playing computer games. The easiest way to rule the world is to distract the population with shiny objects. There is a war against intelligence. A secret war that is undeclared. Big Brother is not just watching you, he�s trying to stop you thinking. Watch people eat live insects for a potential reward on a desert island instead. That�s what the people want. Not world peace or equality. Not food or a home that doesn�t cost us all of our money. We want game shows instead! See, Thatcher was right. Capitalism DOES provide. This is what it�s given us : game shows, bread and circuses.
Every one of the three years on Big Brother so far has seen a group of individuals carefully selected by psychiatrists allegedly under the pretence of ensuring they were �psychologically stable�, but probably more likely selected on the grounds that some of them won�t get on, but none of them have murderous traits.
Though Big Brother is shot on the same site as where Kubrick shot The Shining, Sid The Sexist probably won�t bash through the door with an axe and declare �Honey, I�m home!�. No, actually, I thought it was Spencer who�d flip. Everyone on Big Brother suffers from one thing - naked ambition, a desire to be famous - without having any talent, any ability, any thing that elevates beyond the rest of us.
Imagine Rorsarch inkblot tests in front of this lot. Jade�ll tell you it looks like a pram. Sid The Sexist would tell you it looks like pair of tits. Kate would flirt with the paper, and Alex would moan about how it looks like wee in the shower. Alison would eat it. The only smart person on the show was Sandy. He broke out.
What fucking dull dull people. Why not get someone interesting in? or someone *smart*? Or even someone who knows that in Portugal they speak Portugese. All these people on the show with degrees are only doing it to get a fucking job. They wanna go down the bar on a Saturday, have a few bevvies, meet a few girls, and cop a feel. They�re not interested in spreading their horizons, just concentrate on spreading your legs love, and I�ll show you my whistle. It makes dogs come..
People aspire to this level of stupidity. I�m just wondering who they�ll have on next years Big Brother? An actually fully-declared retard? or just another uneducated simpleton who thinks �politiks is for poofs innit?� These people are lowering the standard.
What I�d like to see is Big Brother go two ways. Either for one of them is say something before the mirror breaks the silence with the declaration �YOU ARE THE DEAD� and a troop of black helicopters descend to subject them to their worst torture, (which is probably knowing something of importance about the world, like where Cambridge is).
Or perhaps even better, get the ten hardest criminals in the country and set them up inside. Hopefully not those who�ve written such helpful books as �Killer�, "Bruiser" and �Hard Man� that Waterstones stock that glamourise violence and go on about how they used to work for the Krays and were hard, but fair. We only killed the men. We just mutilated the women. Cor blimey guvnor, ain�t he a geezer ?
Set these criminals up inside the Big Brother house and surround the land with a moat full of land mines. Let them loose with all manner of weapons and parachute in food. Call the programme �Escape From Dorking �even. In 2002, Elstree Studios is a maximum security prison. Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in is insane. In the meantime, assuming they don�t kidnap the President, every week one of them gets voted off by the public, and suffer public execution on TV . That is of course, assuming they haven�t all killed each other with sharpened weapons, knives, and sawn-off automatic chicken beaks. The last man left - the winner - gets to die quickly and painlessly by sleeping injection administered by his victims (or their relatives). The rest would get torn apart by wild horses, or forced to fight each other to death inside a giant televised bullring, or something.
In the meantime, some thick-as-pigshit, classless unambitious beast is being tipped as the next winner of The Big Brother show, with film, TV, and record offers being thrown at her - and her talent? Being able to call herself �Babba�, cry and scream a lot, and not know that in Portugal they speak Portugese. Praise the People�s Princess.
Are these the type of people we want on TV? Babba and her tribe of stupid, charmless zombies. Wake Up E4. You Are The Dead. It�s cool to be stupid, it�s fun to be thick. Don�t aspire to having brains, they only get you into trouble. Stay dumb. Stay oppressed. Stay poor. War is peace. Love Is Hate. 2+2=5. Love your slavery. Aspire to nothing. You�re easier to rule that way.
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