Selling Surveillance: Privacy, Anonymity, and VTV

September 19, 2013 Posted by Webmaster under Volume 11, Number 1, September 2000

David Banash

Department of English
University of Iowa
david-banash@uiowa.edu

 

Review of: Survivor and Big Brother. CBS, 2000.

 

Andy Warhol once said that the perfect picture would be “one that’s in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous” (qtd. in Pratt 269). It seems that the invention of inexpensive web-based telecasting technologies has one-upped Warhol’s vision. A web-search for “cam” will generate thousands of hits, and one can spend hours gazing at the interiors of anonymous refrigerators, litter boxes, or corporate cubicles. If the idea behind cinéma vérité was always to capture real life, its promise has been fulfilled on the web with thousands of cams trained on the quotidian in a continuous and mind-numbing stream of banality. It would seem that the perfect picture now is of poor resolution and of someone unfamous doing something profoundly ordinary. In a way, all this is very reminiscent of early Warhol. After all, there really are cams where you can watch someone sleep for eight hours at a stretch. The real surprise is that in this new incarnation people are actually watching. New cams are posted every day, and established cam operators receive hundreds of e-mails from obsessed viewers. There clearly is something compelling in all this. That fact, combined with the almost nonexistent cost of production, has catapulted the everyday into the center of our usually hallucinatory, star-struck culture industry. Television is now trying to capture what The Learning Channel calls “life unscripted.” In the largest and most successful gambit to capitalize on this new trend, CBS has produced Survivor and Big Brother, hybrid game shows that put contestants under constant surveillance.

 

Time magazine’s James Poniewozik captures the mainstream optimism associated with Survivor, Big Brother, and other reality TV programs: “there’s also a refreshing populism in the casting; here are people that you rarely see on TV: mixed-race characters; the devout; chubby gay men over 30.” Time is only one of the major mainstream media publications to be interested in what it calls “VTV, voyeur television.” In a cover story devoted to “reality entertainment,” The New York Times Magazine observes that “the new obsession in TV (and on the internet) is with capturing the rhythms of ordinary life–or, at least, the kinds of intimate human interactions that have previously eluded the camera’s gaze” (Sella 52). But given the focus on the banal and the ordinary that VTV supposedly values, Survivor seems an odd program in many ways. The basic premise of the series deftly mixes cynical corporate marketing and primal nostalgia. The producers have put sixteen people on an island in the South China Sea, and then split them into two eight-person teams (tribes) that have to feed and shelter themselves. Every few days, based on the outcome of various competitions, one of the groups has to vote a member off the island. The last person left on the island receives $1 million. How can such a scenario possibly provide what the producers call a glimpse of reality? Even more striking are the inversions that animate this entire concept. For American audiences, Survivor could not be set in a more exotic location. In fact, almost none of the audience for Survivor will have to engage in the kind of activities that define the day-to-day routines of the cast: starting fires, building shelter from raw materials, hunting for food, etc. Then there is the odd idea of shipwreck. In addition to the obligatory references to Gilligan’s Island in almost all the reviews, there is constant talk of being marooned, the very word flashing across the screen in the title sequence. One might expect that in a shipwreck scenario the object should be to leave the island. Not here. The very object of Survivor is to stay on the island for as long as possible. These kind of inconsistencies are not minor oversights, but integral to both the production and reception of the show.

 

The ideological functions of these odd inversions become clearer when we look at the kind of social order the producers have attempted to simulate. The cast has been organized into two tribes, complete with native names. (Given a media culture that is often obsessed with fabricating definitive, hyper-real simulations, e.g., Saving Private Ryan, the tribal paraphernalia of the titles, sets, and music for Survivor remind one of nothing so much as a Don Ho comeback. In part, the poor production values help to persuade the audience that what they are seeing inside that clumsy frame is actually some less mediated reality.) The Survivor iconography thus plays with one of capitalism’s perennial themes, the bourgeoisie-in-the-bush. The tensions between the tribal pose and bourgeois individualism indicate just how deeply Survivor is informed by the worst kinds of reactive, neo-conservative ideology. In a way, what we see is also the new millennium’s equivalent of ’80s corporate executives walking over coals (a stunt that the last four “survivors” were actually made to perform in a symbolic ritual during the final episode of the show). As Salon.com notes “‘Survivor’ pulls in its highest Nielsen ratings in households with incomes over $80,000 and its lowest in households with incomes under $30,000” (Millman, “PBS”). Just in case the implications of this statistic were not immediately apparent, Survivor‘s staff psychoanalyst tells us that “the ultimate survivor will most likely possess the ability to combine leadership skills with being a team player. To rise to the top, they will have to demonstrate conflict management without alienating or appearing aloof and detached. They will have to care. The capacity to master the subtle social politics, to assert without offending, and to adapt to changing dynamics will be critical” (Ondrusek). In short, the best survivor will exactly coincide with the best kinds of corporate employees–i.e., those who achieve their tasks without giving in to pesky emotions or critical judgments about the company’s overall means or ends. For all its pseudo-tribal kitsch, it is clear to everyone that this is a show about corporatist thinking and management: “the show gets at some larger truth about our corporate society, where total loyalty and teamwork is demanded but seldom rewarded” (Millman, “Booted”). Clearly this formulation is dead-on, but it could also be pushed much further. What gets lost in this is, of course, the fact that the show really is a corporation in its own right, protecting its own collective interests. After all, the struggles and humiliations of all these cast members are really only there for the corporate profits, and even the winner of the show will have only a minuscule share in the real profits that are at stake. Should we choose to read Survivor as an allegory, it is a particularly dark rewriting of Adorno’s analysis of Hollywood’s mass appeal. If any one of us might become that surviving millionaire, that very possibility obscures the place of that millionaire in the vast corporate machine. Like The Real World, the production goes to great lengths to ensure that the audience does not see the well-rested and fed camera operators who would indicate the presence of the network orchestrating every aspect of the show. Above all, we are not to see the survivors themselves as the literal corporate employees that they are. In this respect, though, the show’s finale provided for a return of the repressed. For it was Richard Hatch, a corporate trainer specializing in conflict management, who finally won the game.

 

This is not to say that Survivor is not compelling. In fact, with all its narrative inconsistencies and unreality, and at times because of them, the entire show is fascinating. Like other VTV (The Real World, etc.), much of the audience response is invested in petty dramas, rivalries, and identifications with the characters. In addition to speculation about who will finally win and which cast members have the most sex appeal, message boards, chat rooms, and fan pages abound with detailed analysis and argument about the various strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies of the cast. It is this kind of focus on purportedly unscripted human interaction that is at the heart of VTV. As the show’s producer pitches it, “the behavior we saw was genuine… they either forgot the cameras were rolling or they didn’t care” (qtd. in Sella 53). This is, of course, the appeal of VTV, the promise of documenting human interaction with as little mediation as possible. In fact, the title sequence for Survivor includes a lingering shot of Jenna with a quivering lip, about to cry, barely able to gain control of herself. The episodes themselves concentrate on the conflicts that will inevitably produce exactly such visible emotional turmoil. It should come as no surprise that the entire show is a competition itself organized around competitions, for the emotional reactions to this stress comprise the set pieces every week. What seems most evident here is that mainstream TV does not yet find the majority of those practices that comprise human interaction of any interest. Only the most intense displays of emotion (be they in victory, defeat, or the humiliation of being voted off) have any real interest for the network cameras.

 

We might take our pleasure in Survivor and dismiss it as the reactive corporate ideology that it is. However, as an example of the move to mainstream VTV with its self-proclaimed focus on the banal and the everyday (so long the province of art films and Marxist critics) even the faux-exotic, faux-banal Survivor raises fundamental questions that few in the mainstream media have asked of this new genre. On the one hand, the reinvention of the banal and the everyday seems to hold progressive and critical potential. Even if a series like Survivor is more an allegory than an attempt at mimesis, it still has the promise of a more inclusive cast that gives us a frame other than the clever sit-com or the studied grittiness of neo-noir cop shows. Further, if not exactly set in the context of everyday life, it is an attempt to reintroduce some element of unscripted chance into TV. Thus, it does seem as if such a series can provide critical room to move. On the other hand, there are reasons to be deeply suspicious of this new genre.

 

If Survivor is in part an attempt to work through a corporatist allegory of ruthless competition in the face of total surveillance, then Big Brother is a soft-sell advertisement for the panopticon at home. Set within the confines of a small house, Big Brother pits ten houseguests against one another under total surveillance. Not only are live and edited television shows broadcast several times each week, there are 24-hour web-cam feeds. Like Survivor, Big Brother is animated by some very strange inversions. While the program sells itself as a glimpse of everyday life, the house is particularly odd in that it lacks almost every kind of device its core audience takes for granted: no phones, televisions, computers, or radios. All access to the outside world has been cut off. In essence, what most Americans spend most of their time doing (consuming media) is almost the only thing that Big Brother really forbids. Focused solely on each other, the houseguests have the task of nominating two of their own for banishment every other week. The final decision is then made by the viewers through referendum via toll call to CBS. The last one standing will win $500,000. In fact, given the adroit combination of claustrophobia, sensory deprivation, and prize money, it would seem as if Big Brother could really live up to its namesake, the two-dimensional image of thought control in Orwell’s novel. However, the real nightmare here is that CBS is selling its revision of 1984 as an allegory of the functional family.

 

CBS has opted to create a kinder and gentler prison of middle-class normativity. Instead of a frightening warden, the houseguests are at the mercy of the unbearably perky Julie Chen. Once a week she speaks with them from a brightly lit studio, packed with their fans, families, and friends. There is something of a carnival feeling to the whole thing, right down to the house and sets dominated by garish primary colors and the too-cute logo. The theme music’s perky, up-tempo guitar and sax feels more like a sit-com than a nightmarish drama. The focus of the episodes, both live and edited, is always on the ability of the group to get along, to conform, and actively to demonstrate that they like one another. Thus, any one of the houseguests who causes any kind of friction, or anyone who simply stays aloof, falls under threat of banishment. In part, this has been a problem for CBS. After all, interesting narrative emerges only when normative expectations are violated. The first few episodes were devoted to the ousting of the militant African American, Will, and the sexually outspoken woman, Jordan. In the more sedate episodes that have followed, it has become clear that the winner of Big Brother will be the houseguest who is best at banishing the so-called trouble-makers while appearing to be an interested but unthreatening member of the family. The amount of time the remaining guests spend giving one another hugs and saying “I love you” is probably unprecedented in prime-time television. Just in case this wasn’t clear enough to the audience, the houseguests are subjected to the analysis of MTV’s spokesman for the normative, psychologist Dr. Drew. Once a week he appears to praise the group for its ability to oust anyone who creates any kind of instability, reminding everyone what a credit it is to both the houseguests and the viewing public that they are voting for functional and stable relationships. The ideology informing the show is even more disturbing in that it turns a significant portion of its audience into a kind of repressive state apparatus. After all, it is the viewers who finally choose which houseguest will be banished. Not only is CBS selling voyeuristic thrills, it is thus encouraging each viewer to become Big Brother and delight in punishing resisters. In its original European incarnation, much of Big Brother was about resisting the disembodied voices of the producers. However, to watch the American version one might be left with the impression that living under constant surveillance is the most pleasurable experience in the world. Those who watch the web-cam feeds know better. As Martha Soukup has it, “There isn’t an episode of the show a frequent feed-watcher couldn’t tell you is, in three or six or a dozen ways, slanted. It’s too bad. George the spontaneous labor organizer [his attempt to organize a walkout by the entire cast was initially suppressed], Jordan the ex-Mormon, the code Josh and Jamie developed with a deck of cards to talk without the microphones understanding–these have all been deemed not ready for prime time. (Indeed, Big Brother made the two card coders stop.)” Not only is CBS selling a kinder, family-oriented brand of surveillance, it has consistently attempted either to edit out or to downplay moments of friction with the institutional apparatus–in short, minimizing anything which might make the panopticon look less than enjoyable.

 

As these programs wind down, it is clear that they are transforming the lives of the participants. The casts of Survivor and Big Brother are busy fielding offers from radio, television, film, and other media. Playboy is interested in the women of both programs, Rich has become an AM talk host, Jenna is beginning to show up on MTV and, in what has to be the most apt career change of all, Survivor‘s Sean, a neurologist, will give up being a doctor in order to play a doctor on the daytime soap opera Guiding Light. And, for the moment, these shows are also transforming television. Television and the internet are merging, and there is a sense that Big Brother is a preview with much more to come. How viewers will be transformed by all this is another question altogether. In the case of Survivor and Big Brother, as a mass audience it seems as if the culture is working through what once might have been called the difference between private and public virtues. As Robin Goodman puts it, “It seems that most people have lost, or at least loosened, the boundaries between our public and private selves. The public is able to get ‘up close and personal’ on every issue and for everyone. President Clinton’s misconduct is one prime example of our fascination.” However, Goodman goes on to say of Survivor and Big Brother that people watch these shows in hopes of seeing something that is considered forbidden, such as something you wish you could do but would not do. Yet the reaction to Big Brother particularly seems to contradict this kind of analysis. After all, the viewers have gone to great lengths to banish any one of the houseguests who seems to threaten the serene and seemingly happy family space that CBS is constructing. Indeed, it seems no accident that George, the forty-something white male and would-be father figure, is usually identified as the most popular houseguest by the viewers. Dramatized through its domestic setting, Big Brother argues for private virtues that include getting along with others, throwing out those undesirables, and telling everyone how happy you are. As private virtues, these are surely suspect. As private virtues made public, they can only be the wish fantasy of a corporate world bent on the manipulation of docile and well-disciplined bodies.

 

Curiously, the most frequent fears identified in the mainstream media suggest that the reception of all VTV is deeply embroiled with larger fears about the emerging electronic panopticon. Thus, Survivor and its Orwellian kin are compelling because they help us work through a world in which there is no privacy at all. As Time puts it, “the mainstream embrace of voyeurism comes precisely as many Americans feel their own privacy is in danger, be it from surveillance on the job, marketers on the Net or database-wielding bureaucrats in their HMOs.” But maybe our fear should not be that there will be no more privacy, but that as a culture we will become even less able to value the very privacy we have. Perhaps part of the problem with this very fear is that it is framed as a debate about privacy when it is really a debate about anonymity. Following Debord and Deleuze, Paul Trembath observes that our culture is animated by “the reactively certain sense, or capital sense certainty, that value is always elsewhere (on screen, in books, or ‘in’ other attention-invested media…).” What Trembath points out is the danger in devaluing our anonymous, untelevised lives. Not so much because our privacy is somehow threatened, but because our very ability to devote our attention to our anonymous practice is at stake. After all, it is in the anonymous that our banal practices might be transformed into the invention of new forms of counter-hegemonic desire. What then happens if our experience is of value only to the extent that we can recognize it in the alienated images of the culture industry? In terms of something like Survivor, this might be our inability to recognize or value any emotion or thought that is not a caricature, that is not immediately readable through the lens of the spectacle. Warhol brilliantly exploited the idea that anyone could be a star. There was, however, a critical irony at the heart of this notion. If The Factory stars unabashedly enjoyed some of the privileges of fame, they nonetheless underscored the arbitrary basis and alienating effects of the entire process. It is just this element of critique that Survivor, Big Brother, and the rest of the VTV productions have succeeded in stripping away.

 

Works Cited