Way back in the year 2000 when Big Brother first exploded onto our screens, it was a brand new concept. An interesting Game show where all you had to do was live in a house with a bunch of strangers for 3 months and at the end of it you could win £70,000.
The whole country was gripped. Would Nasty Nick get caught? Would Mel and Andy get it together? How did Craig Phillips - The most boring man in the country ever end up the winner??
Right across Great Britain, from Schools to Offices; Supermarket queues and coffee shops, everyone had an opinion and everyone had their favourite for one reason or another. It was new and exciting TV. No script and no plotline just throw them all in together and give them challenges to complete and see what happens.
The winner - Craig Phillips - went on to be a TV Handyman and popped up everywhere. He even tried his hand at the music biz and brought out a cheesy Christmas song for which all the profits (Along with his winnings) went to charity.
Season 2 got a little bit more exciting with the outspoken Brian Dowling being the final winner only just pipping Hairdresser Helen Adams to the post. Helen also had her will they won’t they story with fellow housemate Paul Clarke. Amazingly now 4 years later they are still together so Big Brother was a fairy tale ending for them.
It was from season 3 that things started going downhill when BB started playing with the format and added the Heaven & Hell sections of the house. Those on one side had more luxuries and better food than those on the other. A weekly task, shown live on Saturday nights, determined which housemates lived on which side of the Heaven and Hell divide. This season also brought us Jade Goody who, aside from her dumb blonde personality, is the highest earning ex-housemate of all the BB series’. Kate Lawler the Winner of BB3 enjoyed success as a Breakfast TV presenter for a while.
The whole Big Brother idea has just gone downhill from there. It is no longer new and different and no matter how much the producers play with the format, it will never be as good as that first season. These days it is all about who will get their boobs out first and who will have sex first. Whoever wins it is not important anymore as everyone just wants their 15 minutes of Fame!
I am a single mom to 2 teenagers. I watch a lot of Reality TV.
I am striving for success with my online store http://www.cafepress.com/jembiecreations.
Those of us who are 82 years old or older might remember the premier of a novel motion picture. While many movies during the Great Depression aimed to provide good feelings and a ray of hopeful sunshine into devastated lives, this particular movie had a somewhat different effect on the audiences. When people got their first glimpse of the giant ape called Kong, pandemonium broke out in the theater. People unintentionally mimicked sacrifice Ann Darrow (played by almost constantly screaming Fay Wray) and panicked. Like Darrow, they screamed, some fainted; others ran to the aisles and out of the theater.
Times certainly were different back then. The War to End All Wars was in the past, alcohol was banned in the United States, people had faith in the government, radio was the electronic medium of entertainment, and you could buy a cup of coffee for a nickel. Producers could also present entertainment that would engender total belief, and get reactions to match. By the same token, even as people learned that King Kong was a small model animated by pioneer Willis O’Brien, the apparent reality that electronic media could produce would have a lasting effect. When a young Orson Welles aired his version of War of the Worlds on Halloween night, 1939, people once again reacted as if the events were really happening. They fled their homes, or locked themselves in cellars, armed with rifles and stores of food. Some were hospitalized by hysteria, and a sad few committed suicide.
Some observers argue that by 1939 Americans were in a constant state of fear about possible invasion by Nazis. U.S. ships had already been attacked and sunk by u-boats in the Atlantic, and stories about the blitzkrieg that had conquered Poland two months earlier made reports of anything hostile coming from the sky something to worry about.
How different are we now? In 2005, Hollywood (having been, I suppose, unable to find a single new story or book about which to make a movie) released new versions of both King Kong and War of the Worlds. But reactions have been entirely different, as if the new movies had been presented to creatures from another planet. Today, the war on terror is ominous and ever present, alcohol is exempted from the war on drugs, people loathe government, X-Box rules among electronic entertainment, and a nickel isn’t even a tip for a $2.75 cup of java.
What changed? Are we so addicted to excitement that we need more graphic images to feed our craving? Have we become a society of adrenaline junkies? When King Kong emerged on Skull Island in 1933, audiences were exposed to shock after shock. The natives (and Darrow, eventually) were suggestively scantily clad, gorillas were little known and greatly feared, and movie cuss-words included gems like “gosh!” and “golly!” As for the 2005 War of the Worlds, let’s just say the most news-generating story was about the film’s overly hyped star when he announced his new love by jumping on Oprah’s couch.
How tame that all seems now, when the shocks of Kong are standard fare on our televisionson kids’ shows. We don’t even have to go to a theater to see far more adrenaline-pumping “entertainment” than Kong can hope to match. On any given day we can tune in for monsters, dismemberments, murders, terrorist acts, car chases that defy physics only thanks to computer-generated effects, nudity, and a whole lexicon of cuss words (in which “golly” doesn’t even appear). Amazingly, we often are left untouched by these images as we merrily talk on the phone or sift through a snack.
Maybe the increased use of coffee and other caffeinated drinks has become so pervasive over the past few decades because we need the chemicals to boost our adrenaline craving. Adrenaline and exciting movies are not enough; we must use other stimulants, try to stay wired as long as possible.
As for me, I was and remain sorry for Kong. Originally, I pitied him because of what the humans in the film did to him. I pity him now because the magic is gone. We are so insensitive to so much that even the idea of a giant rampaging gorilla fails to move us. And that thought makes me wonder if Kong would now feel sorry for us.