Proteus,

I think that it’s disingenuous to recommend that I should “just shut up, sit back, and watch”, and that this is the point of Big Brother. Afterall, isn’t there an entire network of critique and participation attached to Big Brother? The web sites, the voting, the fact that the celebrities are normal people: there is a whole attempt here to make the viewers speak. This is why Big Brother claims to be more than ever “a product of us.” There is no simple, static, silent pleasure here, no pleasure in the ability to shut up. On the contrary, it is the pleasure of speaking, of chattering, of participating.

This is my point: it seems that more than ever there is a turn in popular culture to claim that it is representative of “us”, which assumes that there is a static and knowable “us” that the show can claim to be a product of. Big Brother feels that it has the right to say that it is “representative”, that it “gives us the power.” These are big and lofty claims, which demand to be taken seriously. Yet, at the very same time, there is this claim that it isn’t all that serious, that it’s just a matter of simple, everyday pleasure. Isn’t there a contradiction here?

There is an irony in both of our comments, in that we both try to speak of the need for certain types of silence. But whereas you demand that I should shut up and watch, I don’t really mind whether you want to read Foucault, or go to an art gallery, or not. Perhaps these are also a waste of time. Perhaps I was wrong to say that Foucault should be introduced into the debate. But in saying that Big Brother is so certainly “a product of us”, you attribute a representative dimension to the show that mimics the language that politicians use to describe themselves, and should therefore be treated with a lot of skepticism.

I think it is valid to maintain that Big Brother, and popular culture in general, is a product of 'us' because while it may not reflect categorically every part of society, popular culture effectively reflects the dominant ideologies that, while we may want and try to resist, are ultimately embedded into the value system of Australian society. Popular culture has the ability to grasp at the undeniable common hopes and dreams in society.

Most of the time though, popular culture gets it wrong - if you raise it to the standard of a direct mirroring of society, but, as a reflection of the 'ideologies' in society, popular culture always gets it right. And I believe there is a difference between ideologies in society and what is actually happening society.

The highly commercial nature of television and shows like Big Brother means that their survival on our screens must be a direct reflection of substantial viewers. And if Channel 10 has decided to run with it over so many years, Big Brother must be doing something right for audiences. Wheather or not audiences find a deep correlation with the show or not, the fact remains that they continue to watch - they continue to respond to this article of popular culture.
Perhaps popular culture and Big Brother does possess this representative dimension - at least to the extent of representing and possessing something that you and I find an interesting point of discussion..

However, at the same time, I also call for silence because I believe we should stop all this 'analysis' of Big Brother and alike because such things will always be nothing more than a superficial, but ultimately very enjoyable way of passing time. This need for 'analysis' that peptuates in academic circles representes the ultimate death of entertainment as knew it as kids. We should spare our future generations and let them enjoy a film, a t.v show, an advertisement, without the shadows of Foucault or Barthes cast over them!

I could hardly contain myself from giggling at Wesley Methams amorphous philisophical argument about the merits of Big Brother.

Big Brother is a crass piece of pornography aimed squarly at children. Three times in NSW, Big Brother Uncut has been released to coincide with the NSW school holidays. It's audience demographic can easily be discerned by it's advertisments which are directed at adolescents and young teenagers.

Like tobacco manufacturers, TV executives are perfectly aware that adolescents and young teenagers are desperately seeking guidance in how to achieve a positive adult image. Tobacco manufacturers used Cowboys and Joe Camel as role models to lure children into taking up an addictive drug which was dangerous to their health. TV executives use the Big Brother participants as adult role models to lure children into watching their peurile TV show.

Wesley Metham muddies the water with his overblown rhetoric in order to keep the public from figuring out what his real intentions are. London to a brick, that Mr Metham is an employee of the giant multimedia organisations which peddle this trash to children. Like the tobacco campanies before them, these fabulously wealthy media companies don't give a damn about the welfare of children, they are only concerned with their quarterly balance sheets.

The top executives of these companies deny that their products have any adverse effects upon their customers, in the same way that tobacco executives did the same. They will continue to deny it while ever their organisations are making obscene amounts of money exploiting young and impressionable people with their products.

I am certain that Mr Methams boss has read his article and nodded his head approvingly. Good work, Wesley, you could go far.

Again, I think that there is no question of ‘stopping all this analysis’ of Big Brother, since the show tries to make amateur intellectuals of all of us. The show draws all of us into critique. Afterall, isn’t Big Brother just a big mass-mediated sociological experiment? In other words, the show makes its viewers into amateur sociologists! This is more of a problem for school children than the question of nudity is. Children are the ones who have the available leisure time to participate the most in their socialisation: their socialisation in the very fact of being social subjects.

In such a situation the question of an intellectual class looking down from above is not as relevant. Even if academics were to shut up about Big Brother, it would make little real difference to the amount of critique being undertaken about it. The only way to stop the analysis of Big Brother would be for the show itself to end.

Can we say that Big Brother is a product of ‘us’? I agree with you that popular culture often expresses ‘the common hopes and dreams of society’ in an ‘ideological’ sense, but maybe we should question whether we should have such common hopes and dreams at all.

Even though it’s true that there can be no ‘direct mirroring of society’ in popular culture, it's also true that nonetheless the claim is often rhetorically made that it is ‘a product of us.’ Why does this rhetorical strategy emerge in all modern political regimes, from totalitarian to democratic: “I, your leader, am only here because you, the people, allow me to be”? And why, now, is this rhetoric being increasingly utilised with reference to popular culture?

Might it not be that in both there is a preoccupation with power? Why does Gretyl’s voice crack a little every week when she tells us again: “Remember, YOU have the power.” Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps we do have the power, just as we have the voice, the ability to participate. But then again, are the power and the voice really what matters the most?