Maya Götz
The significance of Big Brother for
children and pre-teens
Big Brother actually is a programme which
was primarily aimed at the younger part of the advertising target
group, the 19- to 39-year-olds. But the ratings showed its enormous
success with the adolescents and the marketing-share is even high
among the 6- to 13-year-olds.
Of course, we know that children and pre-teens
do not only watch classic children's television, but also programmes
which are not at first intended for them. However, we have a particular
social responsibility for that younger audience. In order to evaluate
the meaning of Big Brother for children and pre-teens, and
to take positive and problematic moments of reception into consideration,
reception studies are necessary.
It is difficult to understand the mass enthusiasm
for the programme, even among adolescents and adults. But what does
the programme mean to children? How is the programme integrated
into everyday life and how is it to be educationally assessed? In
order to give at least a first impression of the Big Brother
reception by 6- to 13-year-olds we (the Internationales Zentralinstitut
für das Jugend- und Bildungsfernsehen (IZI)) carried out a
qualitative study .1
The investigation is embedded in an approach
involving cultural studies and qualitative reception research focusing
on everyday life.
To understand what fascinates children and
pre-teens at Big Brother it is necessary to see the programme as
a part of everyday life. Here it can have individual meaning in
approaching personal themes. It can provide symbolic material for
phrasing and expression of 'self-conception' and fantasies, this
means subjective-thematic function.
But it also can be the concrete situation
of reception that is of particular significance, as a situational
function or have special interactive function.
We investigated 51 individual open interviews
with children and pre-teens who regularly watched the first session
of Big Brother. With open questions like: "Have you ever
dreamt of Big Brother? What does it look like, when you’re
normally watching Big Brother " we tried to approach the
meaning of the format Big Brother in everyday life of the
6- to 13–year-olds.
The significance of the medium is revealed
from the subjective meaningful perspective, which subsequently enables
an assessment to be made from an educational and gender-specific
perspective.
The sample certainly does not allow any generally
valid statements to be made. Nevertheless this qualitative investigation
shows the typical integration of the programme and helps us to understand
and assess the phenomenon of Big Brother. Below I will give
you a brief summary of some of the results.
At first there was a tendency for age-specific
differences to emerge which became particularly clear on the border
between primary and secondary school.
In the case of primary school children a
regular reception of Big Brother is integrated into the parents'
positive attitude towards this format. All of them said that they
watched the programme with their parents and/or their siblings and
they are the ones to whom they most frequently talked about Big
Brother.
The situational function of Big
Brother of primary school children: togetherness and above all
staying up late
From the children's point of view the programme
had mainly a situational function. It was firmly integrated into
the evening ritual and because the show is broadcast in the prime
time, it had an important result for the children: they were allowed
to stay up later. Accordingly this is also the most frequently mentioned
change in the children's life which they themselves noticed. A typical
variant regarding situational functions Big Brother took
over is Lina eight years old:
"First I get ready and then I go upstairs,
(...) and then I cuddle up to mummy in bed and watch a bit of
Big Brother with her." For Lina Big Brother is a kind of
bedtime story which she experiences with her brother and/or her
mother.
Big Brother: The fantasy of adults
who have time and care for children
As for content, the primary school children
tend to stress mainly the togetherness in the group: in Big Brother
people do something in common and have fun together. Several primary
school children read Big Brother as a togetherness which
is characterised mainly by the fact that here adults have time to
play and entertain each other. This gave rise to fantasies of a
kind of "ideal parents" or "elder brothers and sisters".
So for primary school children it is particularly
the togetherness and harmony that are important. They sit with their
parents in front of the television and look at the togetherness,
which opens up fantasies of adults who have time.
Big Brother as adaptation to the peer-group
In the case of the pre-teens, responses that
parents or siblings also watch the programme drop considerably.
Now it is friends who account for 80% of those they talk to on the
subject of Big Brother. For quite a few the format "just"
was above all an "obligation" in the peer-group.
Mareika (12 years): "At school everybody
was always talking about it."
Thessa (11 years): "Everyone said Big
Brother was really cool. So then I started watching it myself
as well."
The large-scale advertising campaign, to
which the public discussion also made its contribution, especially
for pre-teens, produced pressure. Even if the programme did not
necessarily pick their own themes, it still had to be switched on
regularly so that they could join in the conversations the next
day.
Big Brother as an aesthetic style
Here the format is used a part of the youth
culture. Big Brother as a large media- and event arrangement became
part of everyday aesthetic style. To ware signs of the programme,
to discuss it at the school yard shows oneself as young, cheeky
and authentic. It is an distinction against the older generation
and against the dominance of cultural refinement.
The format is here referring to current tendencies
in youth culture and extends them even more.
Big Brother as an extension of Gute
Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten
A considerable number of girls regularly
watched Germany's most successful daily soap opera Gute Zeiten,
schlechte Zeiten (Good times, bad times) before Big Brother.
In addition to opportunities for communication, both programmes
offer parasocial integration, the feeling of closeness among friends.
Apart from the beautiful young figures of Gute Zeiten, schlechte
Zeiten, now ten more "friends" come home every evening.
Boys use Big Brother subjective-thematic
to discuss the issue of being a man
In the case of a number of boys, conversation
each morning turned to Big Brother, and it revolved around
the behaviour of the male figures. In this way the boys are offered
a socially accepted opportunity to discuss the subject of being
a man. In the last few years critical research into Masculinity
has increasingly worked out (cf eg Cornell, 1999, Hollstein, 1999)
how traditional images of manliness have to a great extent lost
their function of providing boys with guidance. Authenticity, being
"normal" and witty are the new ideals for boys - at least in Germany
(cf Winter/Neubauer, 1998, 149, also Zimmermann, 1999). Big Brother
seems to be acting out this authenticity of people – especially
men. In particular the figures of Zlatko and Jürgen appeared
as the personification of being authentic and witty.
Mario (13 years): "I'd love to be Zlatko.
Or Jürgen."
Replying to the question as to what has
changed in his life since he has been watching Big Brother,
he says spontaneously and with complete conviction: "More entertainment.
Life is funnier. And I have a model: Jürgen."
For these pre-teens - mostly boys, also some
girls- Big Brother is integrated into an everyday aesthetic
style, young, cheeky and authentic. The format is here referring
to current tendencies in youth culture and extends them even more.
Besides traditional concepts of masculinity
other concepts are developed in fantasies, including care and house-hold
work. So 13-year-old Tim for example said:
"I would like to be like Zlatko - only
that I would love to do the cooking, that the Zlatko don’t do!"
This was the ritualised task of another male
character, John. Tim combines aspects of different male characters,
and thus adds caring aspects to body-orientated macho-like masculinity.
Apart from these surely positive opportunities
for boys to deal with male images, it is precisely in the gender-specific
perspective that problematic areas emerge. For in the depiction
of the female participants the images more frequently lapsed into
sexist relegation. While the male figures are eroticised and shown
with their abilities, female characters are devaluated as sexual
objects and produced as sneaky. Here the format of gender-stereotypes
and -hierarchies is reinforced, and this as can be shown is taken
up by the boys.
Children and pre-teens take up the
subject of exclusion
The sexualisation of the female figures is
not the only problematic aspect in the subjectively meaningful appropriation
of Big Brother. The pre-teens in particular, and here especially
the boys, picked another element from the programme and integrated
it into their interpretation pattern: the exclusion and relegation
of unpopular characters.
The basic concept of the programme is a hybrid
format of a documentary, edited according to the present modes of
soap operas and it is a behaviour- and personality-orientated game
show (cf Mikos, 2000, 205). Participants are neither nominated and
voted out because of certain specific abilities or knowledge nor
is it luck that plays the decisive part. In Big Brother people
are voted out as a whole, that means because of their (acted) disposition,
their opinions or other factors. The basic principle of the game
is therefore to vote people out of the game who are not wanted any
longer. This is in its principle a personality-orientated exclusion.
While in most of the 51 interviews with regular
viewers of Big Brother the togetherness and the pleasure
in successful everyday life were given top priority, for some it
is the enjoyment of exclusion that plays an important part. This
was often the case when the fear of someone being expelled was an
important action-determining theme. They find this basic theme again
in Big Brother, and it backs up their assumption: anyone
who is unpopular is expelled and has to go. On the societal level
these exclusion mechanisms are extremely problematic.
Let me finally summarise and stress this
last argument once more:
Conclusion: The themes of togetherness
and everyday life that are given priority conceal the interpretation
patterns of exclusion
Big Brother is a sort of staging of
everyday life. "Quite normal" men and women are apparently shown
who together work out their everyday life and resolve problems.
It is also these moments of togetherness which primary school children
emphasise.
Here they could watch how problems can be
solved, conflicts be overcome and how the modern idea of being a
man can turn out. The role of parasocial friends who could be relied
on to come into the living room every evening like the figures of
the daily soaps. The programme seemed to be an easily digestible
evening entertainment.
On the other hand the surface structure,
however, conceals what lies beneath it. This is not only the gender-specific
sexualisation but also exclusion for not conforming to normal behaviour.
Children adopt this interpretation especially when recognition and
being "in" or "out" often becomes a decisive orientation factor.
The pressure to be "normal", that meens not
to drop out, is part of the background to the efforts of many older
children and adolescents to have the "right" style, with which they
are not excluded and appear "normal".
Big Brother, as a media arrangement,
offered them, on the one hand, the guarantee not to stand alone
because (in the case of the first session) everybody watched it.
On the other hand, it is precisely a symbolisation
of this mechanism, in which one must not deviate from the norm and
has to support the correct opinion and correct interests.
On the surface structure Big Brother
seems to be a model: apparently competent young adults master their
life under difficult circumstances. This seems to give orientation
and to offer help. But in the depth structure it aggravates the
mechanism, since what does not go down well and who is going to
be thrown out is presented. This intensifies the pressure on the
individual and confirms that the fear of being excluded is justified
and it makes it even harder to find a way of dealing with the fear
and the pressure to be largely integrated.
Then it would seem easier to adopt the interpretation
patterns of the programme and also to use what seem to be the generally
accepted forms of behaviour: to actively exclude others.
ANNOTATIONS
1 It is a part-study
within the framework of the research project "The Significance of
Daily Soaps for Children and Adolescents". The overall project centres
on interviewing some 400 children and adolescents who regularly
followed the programmes Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten, Marienhof,
Verbotene Liebe, Unter Uns, Schloss Einstein and
Big Brother. In a catalogue of questions thematic areas are
examined as figures and contents of the programmes, the social integration
of the reception situation into the family and everyday life, subsequent
communication, fantasies and dreams connected with the broadcast.
The formulation of the questions is deliberately left open and is
meant to offer the children and adolescents scope to articulate
their individual preferences and perspectives. The first findings
of the study were published in the review TelevIZIon in December
2000, and they will appear in book form in the middle of 2001 in
German; the English publication will follow in 2002. (See also www.IZI.de).
REFERENCES
- Cornell, Robert W.: Der gemachte Mann.
Konstruktion und Krise von Männlichkeit. Opladen: Leske &
Budrich 1999
- Hollstein, Walter: Männerdämmerung. Von Tätern,
Opfern, Schurken und Helden. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht 1999
- Mikos, Lothar; Feise, Patricia; Herzog, Katja; Prommer, Elizabeth;
Veihl, Verena: Im Auge der Kamera. Das Fernsehereignis Big
Brother. Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft.
BFF-Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen
HFF "Konrad Wolf", Potsdam-Babelsberg Bd. 55. Berlin: Vistas 2000
- Winter, Reinhard; Neubauer, Gunter: Kompetent, Authentisch und
Normal? Aufklärungsrelevante Gesundheitsprobleme, Sexualaufklärung
und Beratung von Jungen. Eine qualitative Studie im Auftrag der
BZgA. Herausgegeben von der Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche
Aufklärung (BZgA) – Abteilung Sexualaufklärung, Verhütung
und Familienplanung Bd. 14. Köln : BZgA 1998
- Zimmermann, P. : Junge, Junge! Theorien zur geschlechterspezifischen
Sozialisation und Ergebnisse einer Jungenbefragung. Dortmund:
IFS-Verlag 1998
THE AUTHOR
Maya Götz, Ph.D., is an academic member
of the staff of the IZI, Munich.
maya-goetz@brnet.de
www.maya-goetz.de
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