Best analysis of Celeb BB yet

Celebrity Big Brother ... a great natural history show. All it's missing is David Attenborough

Catherine Bennett
Thursday January 12, 2006
The Guardian

"There can be no doubt", wrote Charles Darwin, "that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense". An "anthropomorphous ape", he went on - "if he could take a dispassionate view of his own case" - would have to admit that he could not "follow out a train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on God, or admire a grand natural scene". But would not an anthropomorphous version of, say, Big Brother's Jodie Marsh, or Dennis Rodman, or Michael Barrymore, have to admit to very much the same sort of limitations? Marsh struggles to classify an egg as animal, vegetable or mineral. Another housemate doesn't know what "gynaecologist" means. Like Darwin's brighter apes, the housemates might feel confident in their ability to "form an artful plan to plunder a garden", or to "make other apes understand by cries some of their perceptions and simpler wants": in claiming anything more complex, one runs the risk of attributing human-style consciousness to a group which appears, no less than David Attenborough's subjects, to be governed principally by a variety of urges - to dominate and display; to mate, feed, rest and groom.

More than in any previous year, this programme seems to demand reclassification as natural history, along with a new script combining the dispassionate analysis of an ethologist in the tradition of Tinbergen, with the whispery, interpretative flights characteristic of the BBC's regular lionfest, Big Cat Diary. Earlier this week, for instance, when "Jodie" and "Chantelle" went in pursuit of younger males (disregarding repeated attempts to mount them by the big one researchers have christened "Dennis", and risking the disapproval of older members of the troop), the programme lacked only a Jane Goodall-style commentary, pointing out the females' rituals - such as lying on their backs, legs in the air, to signal receptiveness - to rival the acclaimed natural history film March of the Penguins.
If they are, in their indolence and solipsism, incessant squabbling and ungovernable promiscuity, less appealing in every way than the tenacious Arctic commuters, that only heightens the fascination, and charm of recognition, surely, when we see one of Big Brother's primates act in a way that reminds us of us. Look! one exclaims, doesn't "Michael" seem very nearly like a man - or at least, a bereaved penguin - when he lowers his head to one side and wails mournfully for attention? Couldn't the quaint reservations expressed by "Preston" about an orgy be likened, almost, to family values? And wasn't that encounter between elderly lone male "George" and fellow beta-housemate "Rula" so like a proper conversation - except that he was, of course, talking gibberish (ordinary Iraqis, he claims, were happy with Saddam ... ). See George - dressed in pyjamas - drink tea and puff on his cigar and look at the camera! Almost as if he has feelings!

Whereupon, of course, the housemates revert to their instinctive rituals of bonding, grooming, and power play, and one recalls instantly the missing DNA and the dangers of anthropomorphising. Consider the lack of fellow feeling shown by the two alpha males, Pete and Michael, as they repeatedly rebuff the near-outcast, Jodie's, attempts to ingratiate herself. Notice the utter indifference to age, personality or expressions of horror that marks the middle-ranking Dennis's repeated attempts to mate with female members of the troop.

If only this programme could find an audience among the same Christian fundamentalists who saw, in March of the Penguins, clinching evidence of a divine creator. Is there anything in nature that comes close to Big Brother as a refutation of intelligent design?

Posted By: Old Git, Jan 12, 14:00:50