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Racism on Big Brother
Isn’t everyone over reacting? A few comments (bullying comments, but not racist) were made by some very stupid and shallow “celebrities” on an awful TV show and there is uproar; 20,000 complaints, motions in Parliament and a crisis between us and India.
Yes it was hurtful for Shilpa Shetty, but the real blame is left with executive producers of Big Brother. To try and raise ratings they pick people who are completely different. What is better than to stick a Bollywood actress in to shake things up? This clash of culture is exactly what the producers wanted and it got them an extra million people on the ratings – success for them, but at what cost?
I did enjoy though watching Keith Vaz MP in PMQ’s today; attacking this story plus asking for a motion on the issue earlier. This from a man who openly admitted he has not seen the footage!
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January 18th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
It is the mentality of Jade Goody and friends, though, that needs to be combatted to stop the steady growth of support for the BNP. We should take this seriously if only for what it tells us about the failures of schools to help their most weak students.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
You are completely correct; it is sad that our society enjoys watching programs like Big Brother and that they have such a huge effect on us!
Part of a change in education needs to be our values towards programs like that. Most people care more about who got evicted than they do about the Government…
January 18th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
I happen to agree with the statement made by Channel 4, and Richard, that race is not the determining factor here, and, thus, disagree that this has anything to do with the BNP. What is more important is the clear disparity in class between Goody and Shetty. That’s not class in the sense that socialists would use it, but class as a matter of personal distinction, character, and respect, both for oneself and for others. Sheety oozes it, but you couldn’t squeeze a drop out of Goody.
No matter how sensible it is to hate Big Brother, and all that for which it stands, I don’t think that it has anything, whatsoever, to do with education, except in the broadest definition of the term. Government has no more right to tell future generations to prefer Newsnight to Big Brother than it does to tell them the opposite. The only factor that complicates the matter is that the state is responsible for broadcasting both Newsnight and Big Brother, despite being clearly incapable of doing so.