but perhaps it's time to put a cork in it
Mark Lawson
Thursday August 4, 2005
The Guardian
Guardian
Although Day 67 of the sixth series of Big Brother will go down in the history of reality TV for the sight of a pissed young woman ********** with a wine bottle, it's arguable that the most shocking scenes occurred during the first commercial break: an advert for the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, certificate PG.
Channel 4 will doubtless argue that Tim Burton's films have an adult audience as well. But, if a marketing agency is buying television slots between 10pm and 11pm to push a film aimed at children, it can be taken as an acknowledgement that the series, although transmitted beyond the watershed, is watched by many teenagers and perhaps even younger viewers. It's this possibility that makes Kinga's gross improvisation of a wine rack significant.
Over the past 30 years - since Kenneth Tynan provoked parliamentary motions and calls for his hanging in 1965 by becoming the first person to say "****" on television - taboos on the tube have tumbled at an astonishing rate.
In the same edition of Big Brother in which the housemates worried that Kinga would lose her bottle, the f-word was spoken at least 100 times, unbleeped. Tynan's ghost must have laughed at housemate Craig complaining of a fellow contestant: "Then he said: 'Language!' Who the **** is he to say that?"
But who is anyone to say it now? In the past two years, John Lydon and Jordan have used the c-word live without career consequences. And, in a previous series of Big Brother, a couple became the first in Britain apparently to have sex on factual television.
The attitude of television regulator Ofcom is that broadcasting decorum depends on "labelling" and "expectation." It would be a serious matter if the choir of St Anne's suddenly burst into a chorus from Jerry Springer: The Opera during Songs of Praise because the show's audience had no reason to think this might occur. But, conversely, anyone tuning into a reality TV series - a genre predicated on causing shocks - is assumed to have forgiving ears and eyes.
It was also generally thought that, after Rebecca Loos pleasured a pig in Five's The Farm, there were no moral barriers for TV left to cross.
Yet, even for a veteran of reality TV, Kinga's misunderstanding of the products of vineyards was a landmark moment of depravity. Even if Channel 4 can prove that no one under the age of 18 was watching, the question arises of whether even adults should be watching this stuff.
The traditional argument of regulators is that controversial moments should be judged by context. It's a fair point: Lydon's c-word outburst, for example, was a brief loss of control during a live transmission. But Tuesday's scenes occurred in a recorded and edited programme. And Kinga's disappearing trick was actually made worse by the context of the show around it.
Never has there been such loss of dignity in a single hour of TV. Housemate Makosi, in one of the most disturbing broadcast moments since David Icke confided to Terry Wogan that he was the Messiah, announced in the diary room that she was able to speak only with her eyes closed. When asked why by the unseen voice, she replied: "I can't tell you. It's not safe."
Then Craig had wept and yelled during what appeared to be a nervous breakdown, screaming about the other residents: "They're evil! They all are!" Then Kinga, in the moments before she opened up a surprising branch of Oddbins, also sobbed in sodden distress.
Reality television has always been vulnerable to the charge that it trades on psychologically unstable contestants. In edition 67 of series six, there were at least three contestants who looked as if they would easily have got a sick-chit from a shrink.
In pubs and on aeroplanes, they stop serving drink to people who are at risk of embarrassing themselves or others. Yet, in the Big Brother house, nothing stops the fragile from getting smashed and nothing spares them from the consequences: not even editing. After six years of escalating excess, it may be time for this show to bottle out.
@Cal
