The whole world went Big Brother mad this month. This time it wasn’t naked body painting, PJ getting a blowjob or a wazz in the shower that got us all excited, but accusations of racism. Although it all seems to have blown over a bit now, the whole debacle reflects perfectly the state of the world today. For anyone who miraculously managed to remain oblivious to the onscreen antics and the surrounding media frenzy, that even prompted a statement by His Royal Highness to-be, Gordon Brown, here’s a short summary of events.

Among this year’s desperate and downtrodden hoard of housemates was Shilpa Shetty, millionairess Bollywood superstar and complete unknown to just about every viewer in Britain. Then on DAY 3 Jade Goody entered as self-proclaimed Queen of the common people. Cue rising tension between the two respective celebrity royals, endless bitching and not forgetting, a voice that makes you want to eat your own ears. Others soon became embroiled in this playground pantomime that had the world ‘outside’ burning effigies, complaining in their tens of thousands and ultimately heralding the dawn of a new era for multi-culti Britain and its new Queen, voted in via SMS, Shilpa.

Firstly the question of whether Jade and her cronies’ actions constituted racism. Jade’s attack on Shilpa was racist in nature, yet her motive was not racial hatred but rather plain old jealousy and envy. Jade’s first assertions in the house were of her wealth and success. She obviously felt threatened by Shilpa’s celebrity and deep-down the knowledge that despite a boob-job, skinny boyfriend and Kate Moss’ wardrobe, she’ll never be as big a celebrity i.e. she’ll never be loved as much as Shilpa is in India. The need to be adored, which fuels the entire celebrity circus, is a natural one yet these material and aesthetic associations reflect exactly the confused values of young people today.

Secondly, the way racism is ‘discussed’. In a dumbfounding moment of stupidity, of which even an infant puppy from a particularly dim-witted breed of dog would feel ashamed, H out of Steps remarked “She (Jade) can’t be racist cos she’s mixed race.” Comments such as this expose the sort of fallacious clichés, which constitute an alarming amount of the everyday discourse on racism. In November last year Tory MP Eleanor Bland was accused of racism after circulating an “utterly dreadful” poem in which she labeled immigrants as scroungers, who breed like rabbits. She wheeled out the well worn out defense - “I can’t be racist. I’ve got Asian friends.” Just because you don’t walk around with a Swastika tattooed on your face doesn’t mean you’re not racist. Take a survey of Britain tomorrow with the simple question “Are you racist? Yes/No” and marvel at the results that confirm beyond doubt that we are a nation of Martin Luther Kings.

Photo: Protests in India against Big Brother

Actions speak louder than all these empty, clichéd words and in doing so reveal far more about our society. At first we were bored by BB7. Then enthralled rather than appalled and finally after all that fuss it seemed too much to think about and more folk decided to watch a 380 mph car crash on the BBC. We’re hooked on a diet of brutality, sex and violence which all forms of media feed us. Examples of this degenerate form of ‘entertainment’ are shows such a Fear Factor and The World’s Most Extreme Videos or our very own X-Factor that have audiences reveling in the humiliation of bikini-clad, everyday folk longing for recognition and wealth. Morality gets gobbled up and watching human’s act like animals satisfies the animalistic desires of the tamed modern man. Programmers wash their hands of any responsibility by simply arguing that they’re giving the public what they want and if the demand wasn’t there then the shows would stop. This is bollocks. “The public want what the public get” (Paul Weller) - not the other way round. The truth is that this modern trend in broadcasting completely irresponsibly targets the subconscious mind. We tune in and turn off. This Trash TV breeds generations of devolved humans who never engage their critical potential but instead become thoughtless drones, themselves shirking all responsibility. Such phrases as “Being true to yourself” (roughly translated by shows like Deal or No Deal as “Doing whatever you want”) become get-out clauses for malicious or vindictive action for which you could otherwise be held culpable. Irresponsible Trash TV programmers program us into irresponsible, unresponsive recipients who only know how to consume this late-night-pay-per-view-DICK.

So what should or can we do?

A widely favoured response to Trash TV would be a boycott. Although perhaps sending an overdue message to the TV companies, it would not bring an adequate response to what BB7 has exposed. Channel 4 justifies Big Brother as a form of psychological and social experiment and therefore it would make most sense to actually engage with the results.

We have to consider what has instilled this latent racist mind-set. The lion’s share of the blame has to lie with the tabloid media that frequently publish material, which validates and impregnates racial stereotyping and prejudice. When The Sun heralds the victory of its army of ‘righteous’ readers, it does little more than to stick the collective head of the nation back into the sands of ignorant bliss. Rather than a medieval witch-hunt that denounces the actions of a single party and adopts a position of moral fortitude, we should concede that there are underlying racist attitudes within our society, as in almost all societies across the world, and make the best possible attempts to raise awareness of these issues and challenge them. As Shami Chakrabarti, director of ‘Liberty’, suggested, perhaps a first step would be for Channel 4 to donate the millions of pounds they make from viewers’ phone calls and text messages to organizations committed to raising awareness of racism in Britain.

Regarding the plague of Trash TV and other media, that has infected the minds of millions with an intellectually wasting disease, it is hard to see much hope. The internet has also finally empowered man with his democratic voice, such a shame that this voice is more often than not the bark of an abusive blog or forum post. Nevertheless the corrupt TV companies and newspapers no longer hold a media monopoly and praise be to God that in this supposedly progressive, utopian democracy any old sod can post executions on YouTube and magazine articles have to swear to be listened to. The future isn’t quite as bright as advertisers would have us believe. In fact it looks far more like the Dark Ages.

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