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The decor, says creator Romer, is intentional. The hope is that the "houseguests" will decorate their prison themselves. But if anyone wanted to put a warm, fuzzy face on VTV, Big Brother is not it. (In fact, Romer comes off rather like Christof, the controlling, vaguely European creator played by Ed Harris in The Truman Show.) The participants, to be chosen this week, will have no privacy and no respite; a 24-hr. website will stream video from selected cameras in the house. "When you walk through a city, you look through windows and wonder who is living there," says Romer. "That curiosity is completely satisfied by these shows." The residents will, barring emergencies, have no outside contact, except with the producers. They will harvest eggs from chickens, grow their own veggies and wash their clothes on washboards. And unlike on Survivor, they will be voted off by viewers (the last standing wins $500,000). They will be rejected by America.
The rules, the surroundings, even the name--everything about Big Brother seems calculated to provoke publicity-generating criticism, viewer guilt and inmate discomfort and rebellion. From the ads (we get a glimpse of a shadowy form behind a shower curtain) to the totalitarian overtones (the producers address houseguests through a p.a. system), it pushes every button about VTV's potential for corruption and abuse.
So how about that guilt? VTV detractors like to invoke the Christians and the lions, but there's an important element missing in that argument: volition. As in so many matters sexual--and there's almost always a sex element in VTV, right down to the syndicated candid-camera dating show Blind Date--there is a divide between those who will accept any act between consenting adults and those who will not. The criticism that VTV "reality" isn't "real"--it is edited, subjects adopt false faces--is absolutely valid. It is also, by now, a truism, widely acknowledged by viewers and many participants alike. This is part of why we enjoy laughing at these series: they let us feel superior not only to the people on them but to the medium itself. If these shows have made their viewers into savvier media critics, that's not a bad thing.
More abstract and worrisome is the overall message the shows send: that life is an elimination contest, that difference means discord. The Real World is a sort of teen-friendly Adam-and-Eve story--seven young people, set up in a coolly furnished paradise, are bound to screw it up. Survivor and Big Brother change the reference from Genesis to Lord of the Flies and No Exit. But if what they show can be ugly, it's insulting to the audience to assume viewers must take this as a model for life--that's like saying Chinatown is an immoral movie because the bad guy gets away. The argument for and against VTV comes down to this: Are people helpless against all-powerful media? Are they incapable of participating in the media of their own free will? Are they unable to watch people acting badly and yet remain good themselves?