Expect the Unexpected

             The one show my family gathers together to watch is Big Brother.  This reality game show brings in twelve houseguests to live in one house for the duration of summer.  The houseguests are isolated from the outside world and can’t even watch TV or the news.  Every week, they participate in a competition and the winner is dubbed the Head of Household, or HOH.  The Head of Household then nominates two houseguests for eviction.  However, the two nominees have a chance to save themselves in the power of veto competition and take themselves off the block.  The week finishes with one houseguest going home and the new head of household competition.  Like any other reality show, there is always drama.  I personally always look forward to each season and guess which houseguests will form showmances (romantic relationship on the show).

Big Brother prides itself on bringing in a multitude of different personalities from across the country onto the show.  Every season there is always a small town girl, a mom or dad, and a free-lance bachelor, along with people of different race and homosexuals (there was even a transgender woman last season).  The producers include these conflicting personalities to, “front-load the probability for drama into the very premises of their shows” (Rushkoff 38).  One of the most popular seasons was Season 12 when Rachel and Regan would get in a fight almost every episode.  This bickering between the two characters would create drama in the house and appeal to viewers to watch the show. 

In a presentist culture, we live in an always-on “now” where our priorities are in the present, not the future.  Reality shows, like Big Brother, roll camera 24 hours a day, hoping to catch little snippets of conflict or drama.  In the house, “any moment is as potentially significant as any other.  It’s up to the editors to construct something like narrative, after the fact” (Rushkoff 36).  These disconnected moments of the houseguests’ lives create a choppy viewing experience, however the viewers do not mind this.  In present shock, in which we are living, people are now used to not having a sense of future or direction so the individual events in the house seem normal.

Another iconic part of Big Brother is Zingbot.  Zingbot is a robot that comes into the house every season to “zing” the houseguests.  The robot’s sole purpose in the house is to create drama.  It brings up houseguests’ pasts, secrets they have, and insults that would create tension.  Last season, Zingbot brought up the fact that a houseguest had a girlfriend back home, but he started a showmance with someone in the house.  This comment and the aftermath that followed allotted for at least ten minutes of the show.  The reason something like Zingbot would be created is due to the fact that in a presentist culture, we are living in a world without narrative so, “producers of reality TV must generate pathos directly, in the moment.  This accounts for the downward spiral in television programming toward the kind of pain, humiliation, and personal tragedy that creates the most immediate sensation for the viewer” (Rushkoff 37).  Embarrassing and degrading characters on the show attract more viewers and distract them from the fact that there is no narrative being told.

Big Brother’s catchphrase is, “expect the unexpected.”  The saying was coined due to the many twists the show throws at its characters to change the game.  Twists are just another way to add drama and suspense to a show that has no story being told.  Like video games and Game of Thrones, “the show is not about creating satisfying resolutions, but rather about keeping the adventure alive and as many threads going as possible” (Rushkoff 34).  The multiple changes to the game display the effort to keep the show interesting and engage the audience, which is hard considering it does not have a narrative to begin with.

Big Brother is a classic example of a show created out of present shock.  In this way of life, we do not look towards the future or have a sense of direction and instead focus on the moment.  The reality show incorporates different personalities and many twists to create drama between houseguests and engage viewers.  As Julie Chen always promises, “expect the unexpected.”

Works Cited

Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Penguin, 2013. Print.