Big Brother is Watching Out for the Whole Family

I don't normally watch the television show Big Brother. Other than a few moments here and there in which I've happened across it and a couple times in the last two years when I put Big Brother After Dark on with no sound for something on television while I was working, I have never paid attention to the show, and I've certainly never become invested in the show in any way before. However, I am watching Big Brother this season because I know one of the contestants. Ragan Fox, with whom (as I've mentioned on this blog before) I went to graduate school, is on the show this summer. So, I'm watching.

There are plenty of things to comment about in connection with the show. The kinds of things that the competitions emphasize, the relationships between the houseguests and CBS as a network, and the ways that the producers edit and present the footage to produce the show are all ripe for examination. Among all of this, one particular situation has caught my attention.

A few weeks ago, when host Julie Chen asked Ragan what it was like to be taped to a wall in one of the competitions, Ragan responded by joking that that's just a typical Friday night for him. Immediately, Chen moved on, citing that this is "family" programming. In another episode, when another of the contestants--Rachel--cursed when frustrated during a competititon (and had this censored out by the network), Chen told her to "keep it clean." Clearly, then, the producers of the show hope to present this as "clean," "family" entertainment during the 8:00 primetime block, and they see joking about one's night life (I'm assuming especially for an openly gay man to be the one doing the joking) and using certain kinds of language as inconsistent with that image.

Given that, it's telling what does seem okay for "good, clean" programming. Notably, numerous guests have referred to women repeatedly and consistently as "bitches," while a group of guys who call themselves "The Brigade" have used the phrase "bros, not ho's" to declare their loyalty to their all-male alliance. Apparently, then, derogatory references to women--and the misogyny that comes with it--have become "clean," "family" programming on CBS. To me at least, that sounds a lot more damaging than vague allusions to sexual exploits on a Friday night and words like "fuck" and "shit," which don't directly attack people as these other terms do.

Now, we might argue that in fact the show is countering misogyny by depicting the users of the terms "bitch" and "ho" in unflattering lights, perhaps using this to convey the idea that using these terms is damaging and/or inappropriate. However, one look at message boards in places like this seems to suggest that that's not the kind of message a lot of people get from the show. Rather, there appears to be a lot of buying into use of these terms as okay.

I tend to be all for the liberalization of language use. I think we could use a lot more openness in terms of what can be publicly discussed and how it can be publicly discussed. I've argued things along those lines on this blog before. The allowance of terms like "bitch" and "ho" on network television has become part of that liberalization process. Twenty or thirty years ago, we wouldn't have heard these things on primetime network television programming. Yet, we need to be cognizant of the way that this process proceeds. Namely, it's telling what choices media programs and organizations make about what is now considered "okay" and what remains considered "inappropriate," particularly given how much footage from the Big Brother house is left out in the editing and arranging processes for the actual episodes that air. And it's telling what ideologies--in this case ideologies regarding gender--these choices promote and reflect. In this case, Big Brother sure seems to be suggesting that mistreatment of women, loyalty among men against villianized women, and verbal abuse of women are meaningful and acceptable aspects of regular and appropriate family life. The producers of the show choose what they want to portray to viewers, and these choices seem pretty misguided.