Notes on Jadeism

Oh my lordy, wasn’t that Big Brother stuff mental? Having been working hard this week, I have had no chance to pass on my thoughts on the issue until today. Which is a blessing, cos it means I’ve seen the whole event pass.

In my mind, reality tv is a lot like sport- football –where real people are performing a spectacle in such a public arena, that we attach a massive significance beyond the sign or signified or simulacra or whatever. That is my interpretation of the mentalness behind the events. So back to the story…

Jackiey, Jack and Jade enter a house. Shilpa, Jermaine and Ken are adopted into their family. A host of other people become their slaves. Everyone in the situation is being paid, and it is all for the benefit of television. The producers of the show (the owners of the means of production) are exploiting everyone in the house. The contestants have signed contracts that make this exploitation official and consensual. For the contestants, this is work- yet work without the protection of employment law, probably for tax purposes.

Jackiey and Shilpa don’t get on. Jackiey is evicted. On the eviction show, Jackiey is cheered by the crowd, but evicted. Shilpa is booed by the crowd. Davina casts a quizzical look at the crowd; there is no need for this booing and no apparent cause. Over the next week and a half, Shilpa is picked on, ruthlessly. By Jade, Danielle, and Jo. It doesn’t take a brain to realise that this spiteful aggression towards Shilpa displays a few features: Jade is adored by the other two girls; Danielle is the most spiteful; Jade is bitter about her mum’s eviction; Jade is angry. These arguments are manifestly ‘cultural’ or ‘racist’.

Now then, there are a few points to mention here- racism, and anti-racism are social phenomena. As much as we would like the law to do all the work in stopping racism, it doesn’t work like that. Fighting racism is something that takes place through national discourse- thanks to the Daily Mirror, at times –or on the streets- like Cable Street. It also doesn’t take place through Channel 4 executives intervening in a show. In this way, Channel 4 not intervening was a good thing. Had they nipped everything in the bud, as the papers were demanding before the abuse became overtly racist, what would have happened? It would have been reasonable for people to defend the racists under the banner of political correctness gone mad. A vocal minority of liberals spoiling it for everyone. When the pressure reaches a mass where sponsors start to pull out (probably down to the depreciation of TV sponsorship in the light of new media), 80% voting against the former favourite to win, international protests, tens of thousands of complaints, The Sun agreeing that the behaviour is racist. This makes a better point than pulling the programme or reprimanding housemates. Racism is not an argument, it’s a force, and it must be opposed.

Now then, I was hoping to see this opposition force manifest on eviction night. I really was. At 6.30 Friday morning, on the bus to work, I was visualising Jade leaving the building to heroic booing. A booing that would send a shiver down the spine of the two remaining racists. A booing that may even descend into chanting. ‘Scum, Scum, Scum’, something like that. A justified end to the loser of the referendum on cultural racism. The karmic, medieval ending that Big Brother’s audience dispense to its playthings. And I’m not proud of thinking like that. It would not be a force for good. It would be the destruction of Jade, Big Brother’s little sister, who is a person, not the symbol of racism.

This brings me to my main point. To what degree was Jade racist? To the degree that someone clueless can be. There is a habit of mind which is so widespread when thinking about racism. On leaving the house, Jade remarked that she wasn’t racist because she doesn’t care about skin colour. In the same vain, neither did Hitler. He killed Jewish people. I would call Hitler a racist. On the streets, Channel 4 conducted vox-pops. An asian man argued that there was not racism, it was the product of cultural difference. That is the defence of the BNP and the UKIP. Under no circumstances should cultural difference be the veneer of racism. And that is the habit of people not keen to get involved in the racist argument, misguided optimists, racists, and those who have spent their lives without an education or regular exposure to racism. And Jade falls into the last category here.

Big Brother is the first time in a long time that British people have had to think about their attitude to race. This is because a lot of us don’t interact with working-class people of other races, and non-whites are grossly under-represented in the media. Reality TV has an intrinsic power to challenge the way we all think about other people. Maybe this is why so many people are snobbish about it- they are unwilling to look at poor people. Perhaps this is why people on the left are so keen to call it tacky, dumbing down, and exploitation- they are not keen to see the subjects of their ideals manifesting themselves in their own words and in their own ways. This is what Big Brother does. To ban it, or anything else, is to remove a racism that is real from the TV, because some find it distasteful. It’s censorship. Without censorship, the public, on the streets of the media, has responded and battled the racism of Jade, and undoubtedly won. The object now, is to win the peace- not to punish Jade in such a way that she can become a martyr. What she said is unforgivable, the words cannot be retracted, but as a person, she can be forgotten and rehabilitated.

As said by Trevor Phillips:

“And I don’t suppose that the Big Brother house is most people’s idea of any kind of reality. But in Kamal the bisexual Muslim; Derek, the world’s poshest black man and Makosi the feminist Zimbabwean nurse who seems entirely capable of putting a quick end to Mr Robert Mugabe’s rule if she were to get anywhere near him with an enema …... we have three people who would confound any possible stereotyping.
Most encouragingly, according to the man behind Big Brother, Peter Bazalgette, the evidence is that the voters do not line up in any way - that is to say they seem completely uninfluenced by issues of race and ethnicity in deciding who they want to chuck out or keep in.
I could also have mentioned Wife Swap, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, or any of the talent shows like Pop Idol, and of course, Mastermind. Many of these also now feature black and Asian authority figures as judges. Fame Academy's David Grant, Strictly Dance Fever's Stacy Haynes, and Big Brother psychologist Sandra Scott are all minority role models for young people of all kinds.
Above all, I would like tonight to remind us that the media can change this nation for the better. Thank you for being here, and thank you for what you’ve all done, are doing and will do for the cause of integration. Nothing is more important to our country’s future.”

Or was it:

“The reason so many people are disturbed by what they have seen is that the programme is holding up a mirror to our society and few of us like what we see.

"We need to confront questions much larger than whether we approve of a TV programme and we have to ask ourselves whether we are as tolerant a society as we would like to be.

"This programme has laid bare the dark heart of private prejudice that all too often sits behind the public veneer of tolerance.

"It tells us we still have work to do to feel at ease with our diversity."”