While I’m almost ready to drop this particular bundle (dang I’m carrying some thesis-anxiety), the BB discussion continues.
There’s another article by Mark up at Lavartus Prodeo (where I’m quoted a bit, as are a few other interesting items by people like Galaxy (also here) and Ms Fits and others).
One of the heaviest heavy weights, Ms Greer, has chimed in, which must have the BB people “hugging themselves with glee” (to quote this article), PR-wise. This is an article which addresses the sorts of issues I’m most interested in, yet when Greer writes:
When Camilla heard that Ashley and John had been evicted, her response was baffling. “I’m really sorry, guys,” she wept. “I feel so bad.”
I’m surprised. Surely she can understand why this woman felt this way at that moment? I mean, it’s nothing new to see a woman ladened with guilt for the actions of male sexual misbehaviour… If only we could all be as robust as Germaine, strong enough not to carry that guilt*.
Perhaps more interestingly, surely its not so baffling that Camilla’s having a bit of a cry, when it’s been made so clear that she (of the three) was not expelled from the house? I imagine I’d be up there in the crying stakes in such a strange, pressure-cooker situation even without mysterious suprise ‘evictions’, public humiliation and implied guilt-by-exemption.
And as this story continues, part of me wonders why it’s so simple for BB to evict difficult housemates, when it always took us weeks and weeks to get rid of difficult housemates when I was share-housing? If we could simply have whisked them away, perhaps I’d still have my copy of The Mists of Avalon.**
…in an aside, I wonder if it’s worth thinking about the context of this ‘sexual harassment’ (I use quotes because the status of the incident is still in doubt in some minds… not mine, though). These things happened ‘in the home’. Yet this is a very public private space. Am I pushing too far when I wonder if this issue, the entire BB program, offers a fascinating opportunity to think about the perormance of public and private space, the sexual relationships between young people in public/private space?
Of course, we can’t really say that BB offers an ‘authentic’ view of private domestic life, but it does offer us an opportunity to think about the way particular types of men and women live and behave together under trying circumstances. And while the issue of sex seems foremost on everyone’s minds (anyone who objects to mixed-sex showering should avoid Herrang… hell, any dance camp), the gastropod in me is always wondering what exactly they’re cooking for dinner, and who will do the washing up.
Though not to forget Ms Greer’s points:
Every picture tells a story, but no picture tells the whole story. No word is more abused by Big Brother producers than “live”, unless it is “uncut”. Perhaps universities should start running courses on how to watch Big Brother, teaching students to discern how, when and where the mix is being manipulated, and what insultingly tatty television it is, in terms of production values.
Setting aside the whole issue of ‘taste’ (something Galaxy and others could no doubt discuss more cleverly than I), is anyone else kind of digging the fact that all of this online bloggage (rather than ‘news’) on the topic is conducted by people who are engaged in teaching the ‘BB demograph’ (ie young men and women) about media and cultural studies and gender and so on, as made particularly clear on Moment to Moment?
Speaking as someone who’s had to explain why feminism is important in a media studies subject, to a group of young(er than me) people who are training to become media producers, I think that the comments and ideas we’re sharing online are kind of important. After all, these bloggers are the sorts of people who are on the ‘front line’ of these university courses Greer suggests. And many of us will go on to do the sorts of jobs that Lumby is doing.
Really, if anyone’s in a position to ask the sorts of endlessly nitpicky questions, or to spend hours thinking about and talking about this issue, aren’t we postgraduate/early-career academic types the one(s)?
Even if we really should be off editing chapters.
Speaking of guilt…
*This is kind of a joke. If were speaking about this, in person, you’d have been cued in by tone of voice.
**Was that too frivolous a joke? I mean, we are kind of talking about feminist readings of history, ideologically informed narrative and all…
Here is my comment on Mark’s article (http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/04/discuss-not-dismiss/) at LP.
I think I’m least interested in whether or not other people want to label this as “sexual harassment†(though I, personally, feel that it was), and _most_ interested in why people aren’t interested in the complexities of the issue. I’m quite prepared to accept that Camilla didn’t want to call this sexual harassment, but, as Mel (http://wildyoungunderwhimsy.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_wildyoungunderwhimsy_archive.html#115191154220383729) pointed out with this comment:
“I mean, if I’d spent the last week being sexually humiliated… I would welcome any vague gesture that I belonged. And if the gesture did turn out to be an unwelcome turkey slap, I’d feel so acutely humiliated that I would just want the whole thing to go away.”
…I’m unwilling to accept that Camilla _wasn’t_ embarassed or humiliated. The term ‘bullying’ seems a bit more workable, here. Certainly less heavily weighed (…perhaps).
In all this, I wonder if the alacrity with which it was all dismissed as a ‘joke gone wrong’ is in part to obscure the part played by ‘BB’ setting Camilla up for a fall. In pursuing all housemates for kisses (whether they read this as a grab for attention, for sexual thrill, or even for simple intimacy), how could she then be read by these men (who had already been presented to us in carefully edited programs as having little good regard for her) as anything other than a ’slut’ who ‘wanted it’ (but would never get it as she was a unattractive) and therefore deserved a bit of punishment/derision?
And as any woman knows, there are few actions more effective for managing a ‘difficult’ woman than a public, sexualised joke whose intention is to humiliate and exclude through humour, rather than celebrate and _in_clude.
The difficulty with being in the BB house, and being a woman, is that you must balance the strategies of invisibility-through-group-membership which many women (and men) adopt to avoid this sort of public maintenance of the pecking order – laughing along, not speaking up, agreeing, etc – with keeping a favourable profile in the eyes of the television audience. You don’t want to be evicted for being ‘boring’ when there’s a cash prize at stake. Or perhaps more importantly, a group to be ‘in’ with. The young and other self-doubting people are particularly vulnerable in this sort of situation.
In all this, I have the greatest problem with the tasks set by BB, which set up a conflict between the kisser and the kissee, and more importantly, encourage conflict and competition between house mates which is then sexualised by a range of other elements.
I’m not surprised that this happened. That these men felt that their actions were ‘ok’ tells us that they felt they could not only get away with this, but that our culture _generally_ agrees with them: that it’s ok to sexually humiliate someone in public in this way. These men did not forget that they were on television. And so, when we watch and do not find a problem with this, we are participating in Camilla’s humiliation as an audience.
This is one reason why I’m so disturbed by the dissemination of footage and stills of this event on a mass scale. I, for one, choose not to play that particular game.
Yeah that’s what it means for me. I’m not disinterested in Camilla’s feelings but more interested in this idea that it’s cool to do this to women and call it a joke and we should all have a good laff about it.
As for the media studies/feminism thing: it seems to be deeply uncool right now to critique sexism in popular culture (outside of a the academic context). We seem to be undergoing such a prevasive backlash — I’m also thinking about the idea of raunch culture — and how whenever you do try to critique male behaviour either in the media or real life you’re accused of not getting the joke. Nothing really new here but sometimes it is literally rubbed in our faces. Pardon the pun.
They are all interesting points, Kate. Especially the stuff about raunch culture. When I have more time I’ll have a think about it some more (I’m suddenly caught up in a wave of house guests and a major dance weekend – all just in the last week of chapter editing!).