If you can, grab a copy of The Sydney Morning Herald, today - The Good Weekender features an interview with John De Mol, the creator of BB, called "How Low Can He Go?". It's actually a not so coincidentally timed counter-PR to BB - very subtle, very well done, I must say, exploring the creator of the show - a delusional, morally misguided money-maker who has run out of ideas. A nicely crafted metaphor, if you understand what it's doing. It's aimed at the intellectual left, at the end of the day (who De Mol, not too surprisingly, hates), so it's not going to pack any punch on the broader BB demograph, at the end of the day (I don't think too many are Good Weekender readers), but if BB wants to pull back a slightly "higher" image, this shows what they'll be up against in terms of media.
The interesting trivia for those who can't get a copy: after all our laughing at the show's housemates for not knowing the Orwell novel the name comes from, it turns out John De Mol hasn't read it, either.
And some quotes from the man himself featured in the interview:
"What I like about the US is that if you have contestants in any show... they are ready to kill. Whereas in a country like Holland or Sweededn, everyone is nicer."
"The criticism is a generation problem. It's not a question of morality. We live more intensively - I should say "they", the new generation. They're not looking at the future; they want to enjoy themselves, now. I think that's good."
and my favourite - a classic defense of his morality, where he tries to explain that he is in fact a man guided by a sense of moral responsibility... "If I created a show with ten people in a plane with nine parachutes, and I stalled the plane at 600 metres, I would get thousands of people to volunteer for that show tomorrow. I would never do that: there's an ethical line in my head."
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Katg Platinum Boarder
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Re:John De Mol article - 2007/04/14 14:55 Maybe if the creator had read the Orwellian classic we would have a very different show.
On a different note, I have always wondered what the point of removing newspapers and tv from the housemates is.
Surely you would actually get some more stimulating conversations if you allow some politics and pop cuture starting points (much like this site!).
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aaron Admin
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Re:John De Mol article - 2007/04/14 15:17 It has a few functions. It's important for them to remove all stimulation, so that their minds have nowhere to escape to beyond dealing with each other and the dynamics of the house. Have you ever heard of Vipassana? It's the famous buddhist camp, where you sit on a mountain for ten days (or longer, preferably) and cannot speak, write, or engage any external stimulation. The affect of this is that you basically fall internal, and have every distraction removed, so that it kind of distills your existence. What this results in is an extremely intense space - and quite a vulnerable one - because you are essentially being driven by a core part of the subconscious, and without the stimulation you are left with insecurities and damage that tends to rise to the surface (why people suffering from disorders, etc, are not allowed to partake in Vipassana). And you actually go into a kind of withdrawl, because suddenly your experience of consciousness is denied the various things our mind usually turns to. Because your mind is going at a normal rate, but has less things to engage externally, the things there are become amplified - one of the things the show always fails to explain as to why the housemates become so over emotional about seemingly simple things. Think of it like this - you have a certain amount of energy and attention to allocate to the experience of your life, but in this environment, you only have a few things of which to allocate it to, so suddenly, if there's no news to read, no music to invest thought to, no TV to watch, and if all that happens is that you spend the day cleaning with ten other people - that cleaning is going to become a big deal to you, and you'll basically be over-reading and over-reacting to every little thing your mind picks up, because your mind will be so hungry to pick something up, and because you are overly internal (too much is left to fester in your mind). There's no validation or affirmation, because you can't really turn to the people in the house (you dont know them, nor trust them). And there's no other outlet - if we feel angry or sad, we turn to external vices - such as TV, music, and yes, even news. Alot of the energy we put into bitching about things here serves a function for us, because it gives us an outlet for our frustrations, etc. But if you don't have such avenues, where are you going to put them? Into something you hear in the news that makes you angry? No. You're going to attack that person who looked at you the wrong way when you were cleaning the house. It's how they get so much of the drama.
It also heightens the anxiety in another way, because the housemates can have no means to decipher how theyre going on the outside (if they're winning the game). We underestimate that - if you're in there playing the game and you have no idea how you're being portrayed/perceived, who is popular, what controversy has made the news, etc, etc, you play the game completely unsure of what is working for you and what isn't. It's why a scream from the crowd is so important and why Gretel stops the crowd from reacting. So they're entire assessment is quite off the mark, because again, they can only go off the dynamics in that house and essentially presume that people on the outside agree, etc, without really knowing. That's why every time someone is evicted, you see people get spun out by it - much of the time, those people are spun by the realisation that they have assessed how the public are reacting in a way that is not what the case is. It takes away their sense of control, of cause and effect. It's extremely anxious. Add this anxiety to deal with in an environment as I just discussed before, and you start to get an idea of how much fun being in that house really isn't, and how "un-natural" what we're watching is (and you can couple that with the taking away their sense of time, sleep patterns, etc, etc).
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Katg Platinum Boarder
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Re:John De Mol article - 2007/04/14 16:27 Thanks! So it’s really this delicate balance of control and manipulation – creating anxiety for the drama.
And I guess that’s why I ultimately find reality TV so difficult to watch, but think it is a fascinating idea.
By having “real people” rather than characters we should be presented with these amazingly diverse, multi facetted people. Full of contradictions both realised and unrealised.
Instead we received highly edited footage of a game which the producers constantly change hoping for a desired outcome from their “stars”.
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aaron Admin
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Re:John De Mol article - 2007/04/14 16:51 NUTSHELL!! Exactly.
And if you can understand the environment from a psychological angle in this manner, you'll understand why it's absolutely no place for those who actually suffer from disorders or depression of any kind - particularly anxiety disorders, because it will draw them out and heighten them (if it heightens anxiety levels in "everyday" contestants, imagine that as an environment for people who already suffer from abnormally high anxiety levels).
THE MIC 
