[Published in the June 2007 issue of The Benildean]
The universe has enough troubles.
And the Pinoy Big Brother show insists on shoving down throats the wretched hang-ups, and love sorrows of twelve stereotypes sifted out from tens and thousands of other stereotypes. Not to mention bombarding prime time with song and dance numbers of celebrities-formerly-known-as-Big-Brother-housemates, causing its viewers’ brains to bleed out of their ears. Wow, and I thought government advertisements are total waste of precious air time.
The Big Brother show, real-life soap, invented by Dutchman John De Mol, was first aired in the Netherlands in the year 1999. A prime time hit in 70 countries, the show’s name was derived from George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which an omnipresent character, Big Brother, is the deific leader of the dystopian Oceania in year 1984.
Residing in a communal house, the twelve ‘housemates’, as they are appropriately referred to, live under a 24 hour surveillance. Speaking in a psychological perspective, the show is designed to observe an individual’s behavior in a circumstance which involves a close confinement in the company of eleven other strangers of various personal histories.
The Pinoy Big Brother show or PBB, first aired in December 10, 2005, has had a couple of seasons and two editions namely The Pinoy Big Brother: Celebrity Edition and Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Edition, respectively. Since 2005, ABS-CBN, through the PBB show, has amused and entertained the gossip-hungry, controversy-mongering boob tube fans with the PBB’s censorship issues and casting allegations. And yes, PBB with ABS-CBN lurking behind the walls, has launched the television, music and movie careers of PBB’s former housemates. Talk about having your cake and gorging it too.
When the PBB Teen Edition was first launched, I had this conversation with a friend who explained that ABS-CBN used the show for a fast go-through of its possible teen celebrities. “It’s the Star Circle Quest substitute. Didn’t you notice that all the kids who got in are cute?” Fair enough, I examined each and every of Big Brother’s newest hostages and none qualified as unattractive to me. There were the usual Amerasian kind, with hazel eyes and sallow complexion, reminiscent of hundreds of Filipino television idols through the years of pathetic Philippine show business history who sing and dance at noon time variety shows and later on get thrown in a love team for a blockbuster sappy movie. Sure enough, several months after Kim Chiu was declared the PBB Teen Edition’s Big Winner, her arse was signed up for a television career and is now happily pushing hamburgers and jeans along with ten other products.
But what I find especially miserable about the whole PBB conundrum is not just its housemates later pretending they could belt a song on an ABS-CBN variety show Sunday afternoons. It is also the real-life relationships jeopardized because of romantic relationships formed while confined inside the Big Brother house—relationships developed out of the desperation brought by the prolonged absence of their real-life romances.
Of course, I’m counting in episodes with controversial content, sexual in nature and controversies in nearly every of its godforsaken episode. Whatever happened to really exploiting the human nature which, by the way, is what really the Big Brother show is created for?
Kapamilya. Sure.
