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First published online January 1, 2009

Playing House: Participants' experiences of Big Brother Finland

Abstract

Reality television has inspired a vast amount of theorizing and research. Nevertheless, although speculations and popular accounts of participants' experiences of processes of reality television making, including the publicity, have fuelled many (often moralistic) public discussions, systematic research on the topic is scarce. This article analyses the housemates' experiences of the first Big Brother Finland (2005). Their interviews reveal three key themes: (1) the allure of the experience; (2) the ambiguous celebrity status; and (3) the need for defining the `ultimate truth'. They also reveal the participants' views on the complex power relations emerging in the process of reality TV production.

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1.
1 Both German and Dutch scholars can claim to have produced the first academic publications on Big Brother, ranging from cultural reflection, debate and analysis to empirical research (see the account in van Zoonen and Aslama, 2006). One strand of analysis has since been to look at BB from the vantage point of documentary tradition, and discuss, for example, documentary versus game-like elements (e.g. Bjondeberg, 2002; Killborn, 2003). Another take on BB is to discuss the phenomenon in the context of new characteristics of television production, such as multimedia versions of content, international format business and novel product placement practices (e.g. Fredberg and Ollila, 2005; Raphael, 2004). Consequently, BB has also been used as an example to call for new kinds of media policy approaches for the new era of `knowledge society' (Cunningham, 2005). The format is truly global and thus the collection of articles in Big Brother International (Mathijs and Jones, 2004) features analyses from Europe as well Australia, the US, the Middle East and Latin America. Interestingly, while comparative international research is scarce, a recent French article discusses BB in the context of localization of the `Anglo-American value matrix' in Europe (Frau-Meigs, 2006). A popular interpretation is to see BB as a televised replica of today's `surveillance culture' or `surveillance economy' (e.g. Andrejevic, 2004; McGrath, 2004; Palmer, 2002). Some sociologists have condemned Big Brother as an extremely `banal' phenomenon (Baudrillard, see discussion in McGrath, 2004: 203—4) that recreates the hard and harsh values of our individualized society (Bauman, 2000). In contrast, some scholars propose that BB can offer a model for more transparent practices of political decision-making (van Zoonen, 2005). It has also been suggested that BB is a latter-day version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, as both deal with performance of the self (Hartley, 2004). Finally, Big Brother, with its `diary room', can be said to exemplify today's confessional media culture that produces emotional self-reflecting monologues and the like in talk shows as well as reality programmes (e.g. Aslama and Pantti, 2006).
2.
2 An area that has received the most attention, because of the immense audience appeal of BB, is reception: the `viewing' experience and pleasure, fan culture and participation, and multimedia use (Hill, 2002, 2005; Jones, 2004; Mikos et al., 2000; in Finland: Hautakangas, 2006; Rasimus, 2006) have been addressed. The most significant effort so far has been Annette Hill's multi-method study on audiences and popular factual entertainment that included Big Brother as a special case.
3.
3 The production team members were interviewed during the BB production (August—December 2005) and afterwards. The fans were interviewed after the production ended in December 2005 and January 2006.
4.
4 Some interviewees wanted to remain anonymous and therefore some parts of their interviews had to be omitted from the examples. For the same reason, the citations are not credited in detail.
5.
5 Finland is one of the few countries that aired a non-domestic Big Brother production. Finns could watch the first three seasons of BB UK prior to their own version in 2005.
6.
6 The rules entail, for example, that the housemates cannot discuss their individual decisions for choosing someone to be evicted, and so on.

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Article first published online: January 1, 2009
Issue published: January 2009

Keywords

  1. authenticity
  2. celebrity culture
  3. participation
  4. reality television

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Authors

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Minna Aslama
The Social Science Research Council, New York, USA, [email protected]

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