House Of Scandal Pushing Tv's Boundaries

The Age

Saturday January 20, 2007

BRIDGET McMANUS - Bridget McManus is deputy editor of Green Guide

A TURKEY slap in Australia, sex and childbirth in Holland, an HIV-positive contestant in Belgium, a three-year-old child as housemate in Bulgaria . . .

Big Brother, a phenomenon that has swept the world since its inception as an experiment in Holland in 1998, has pushed boundaries of mainstream television.

It has also tested (and proven) the public's extraordinary tolerance for a visual white noise in hour upon hour of interaction in the house between a selection of vacuous housemates (or in the case of the celebrity version, mostly desperate C-list "stars").

By igniting an international verbal barrage, the latest Big Brother incident marks new territory for the franchise - as usual for all the wrong reasons.

The Australian Big Brother has also been tainted by accusations of racism. In 2003, a hairdresser called Kim made an offensive joke that inferred Aborigines were criminals. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission threatened legal action. Producers Network Ten and Southern Star Endemol apologised but insisted Kim was acting within the rules of the game and allowed her to stay on.

Then there was the infamous turkey slap of last year, which prompted Prime Minister John Howard to brand the show stupid and call for it to be taken off air. It wasn't, but the perpetrators of the sexual prank, which bewildered and shocked most people, were promptly evicted. They went the way of most BB contestants - never to be heard of again.

In 2002, housemate Nelson referred to the unseen Big Brother as a Jew and was forced to apologise to Australia's Jewish community. And the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW website reports that last year Elise Chen offended fellow housemate Dino, of Balkan extraction, by calling him an Anglo-Saxon male person intolerant of people from non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds.

John Hartley, a professor of cultural and media studies at the Queensland University of Technology, who has written about Big Brother in academic tomes, says the Australian incarnation has less emphasis on racial diversity than its American counterpart.

The Americans certainly couldn't run the show unless they had racially mixed housemates. Here it's not the first priority.

In 2005, an attempt was made to use the show as a platform for a political message, when asylum seeker activist Merlin Luck infiltrated the compound with a plan. Upon expulsion, he faced host Gretel Killeen with his mouth sealed with masking tape that read, in SMS-speak, FREE TH REFUGEES.

Killeen was uncharacteristically thrown by this protest and SMS-voting viewers accused Luck of spoiling the show.

A year earlier, Australia had clocked up one of many Big Brother firsts, with Fijian-born Trevor Butler becoming the first black man to win the competition in this country, taking home $1 million as opposed to the usual prize pool of about $250,000. Other Australian milestones include the first twins to win (Greg and David in 2005) and becoming, along with Italy and Mexico, the first country to add a punishment zone.

As a social experiment, Big Brother remains a puzzle. Is it a bold mirror on our society, or is it a distorted reality where deprivation brings out the worst in people?

The show's success has been attributed to the timeless characteristic of drama - how humans behave towards each other when they are under stress, Professor Hartley says.

With shock value offering Big Brother's best chance of survival, producers will continue angling for a scenario more controversial than the last. The question is: when will the outrageous become just the outdated?

Bridget McManus is deputy editor of Green Guide.

OH BROTHER

? Racial taunting of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in Britain's Celebrity Big Brother house provoked at least 39,000 viewer complaints and the burning of effigies of the show's producers in India.

? The phrase "turkey slap" was introduced into general parlance when contestant Michael "John" Bric helped Michael "Ashley" Cox rub his groin in contestant Camilla's face in Australia's 2006 Big Brother season.

? In 2005 Netherlands TV showed footage of Big Brother contestant Tanja giving birth to her daughter, Joscelyn Savanna. The network agreed to limit the infant's on-air time.

? Germaine Greer walked out of the 2005 Celebrity Big Brother in Britain, accusing the show's producers of bullying contestants.

? In Australia, housemate Michael rubbed his penis in a female housemate's hair while giving her a massage in Big Brother 2005.

? Nadia Almada became the first transsexual winner of Britain's Big Brother in 2004. She later turned up as an intruder in the Australian version.