I love critical theory

[andrewducker]

Paragraphs like this make me happy:

Big Brother on the other hand, to take a typical pseudo-modern cultural text, would not exist materially if nobody phoned up to vote its contestants off. Voting is thus part of the material textuality of the programme – the telephoning viewers write the programme themselves. If it were not possible for viewers to write sections of Big Brother, it would then uncannily resemble an Andy Warhol film: neurotic, youthful exhibitionists inertly bitching and talking aimlessly in rooms for hour after hour. This is to say, what makes Big Brother what it is, is the viewer’s act of phoning in.

Another nice snippet:

The pseudo-modernist communicates constantly with the other side of the planet, yet needs to be told to eat vegetables to be healthy, a fact self-evident in the Bronze Age. He or she can direct the course of national television programmes, but does not know how to make him or herself something to eat – a characteristic fusion of the childish and the advanced, the powerful and the helpless.

and a final one:

This pseudo-modern world, so frightening and seemingly uncontrollable, inevitably feeds a desire to return to the infantile playing with toys which also characterises the pseudo-modern cultural world. Here, the typical emotional state, radically superseding the hyper-consciousness of irony, is the trance – the state of being swallowed up by your activity. In place of the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism, pseudo-modernism takes the world away, by creating a new weightless nowhere of silent autism.

From a fascinating article called The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond.

Comments

[chuma.livejournal.com]

Is it just mean or is that last paragraph lost up its own arse via pretensiousness?

[andrewducker]

He does get carried away by his own prose.

I can see what he's getting at though.

Even if I only partly agree :->

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Isn't Big Brother rigged though? Which means that people are just -thinking- that they write it?

[andrewducker]

So far as I know it's not. The rigged TV series recently caused massive fines. If BB was doing it the fines would have been astronomical :->

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

If something as simple as phone in quizzes were repeatedly and ridiculously faked in various different ways.... why would Big Brother -not- be?

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Why rig it? the more the public voted the more money they get - why interfere with what the public wants?
If you mean "rigging the events that go on so there's lots of fighting and emo and drama" then oh yes:)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Send it to Vincent!!

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

The last paragraph reminded me of everyone who got a new iPod for Christmas, and now uses it to block out the bus or subway during their commute.

[andrewducker]

I'm not actually sure it's in their interests to do so. It may well be really badly run (and has had a few problems before, causing people to get refunds), but it's more in their interests to be honest, as they get so much money from it, and having people lose faith would mean they no longer did.

[eduard-green.livejournal.com]

The last paragraph was over written but I found the first one ridiculous - "would not exist materially"? I think "would not exist" would suffice, even though there is a difference, I think most readers would be able to understand.

[andrewducker]

I think "materially" there means "in any way that matters". It could still exist as a show, but nobody would really care about it.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Phone in quizes were a major source of revenue for ITV and yet fixing seems to have been rampant. Of course, now that they've got caught, they're very sorry and it won't happen again, except look how many stories about it have come out. Those quizes were one of their major sources of revenue after advertising - I can't remember the percentage but it was insanely high.

So yes, I think Big Brother -would- risk it because otherwise you run the risk of actually letting the public who are able to vote decide who stays and gos. And if you've got plans to do odd things unannounced or have planted certain people in the house for whatever reason, you're pretty much stuck.

[neriedes.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link Andy