Angels & Demons




Wow! Who knew a bunch of has-been celebrity housemates on reality TV could provoke a full-blown international incident? For the benefit of those who may have missed this week’s claws celebre, a serious outbreak of bitching on Celebrity Big Brother triggered a world-wide media feeding frenzy, with allegations of bullying and racism. So how did that happen? Basically, back here in Little Britain we entertain ourselves on cold winter nights by watching the antics of a bunch of Z-list celebs locked up in a tiny house until they drive each other mad or get evicted, whichever comes first.

It’s the modern version of gladiatorial sports, only without weapons and generally without intelligence either. The house is specially designed to be claustrophobic and bring out the worst in its inhabitants, yet we expect them to behave with total decorum whilst slipping up just enough to keep us amused. When the inmates at the celeb zoo/mental asylum fail to entertain us enough, we vote them out so we can have hours of fun and enjoyment vilifying them in the press for weeks to come.

This year’s motley crew of celebs includes such bizarre choices as a not-so-famous Jackson brother, the guy who played Face Man in The A-Team, a couple of singers from now-defunct cheesy pop bands and someone who used to be on Kenny Everett’s show in the 1970’s. We’re not exactly talking topical here! Those who’ve created the furore, though, are Britain’s reigning queen of Chav-dom, Jade Goody – only famous for being truly ghastly on an earlier version of non-celebrity Big Brother and having an astounding level of ignorance – and Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood actress hitherto unknown on these shores other than by aficionados of the Indian film industry.

As luck would have it for the producers of the show, the participants did exactly what they were expected to do and fell out big-time. Ms Bollywood’s glamour and demure allure made a perfect counterpoint to Ms Chav’s foul-mouthed rants and for a while all in the garden was rosy. The show was a hit and the viewers loved the culture clash. Then it began to dawn on the public that the run-ins were starting to look more like bullying and racist behaviour than just another celebrity punch-up. A few complaints came in, got reported by the press and then suddenly there was an avalanche of outrage. At last, the media had something to entertain themselves with on a ‘slow news’ January day – and that’s where the fun really started. Now it wasn’t just a silly celebrity piece of crap TV, but a finger on the pulse of modern society, reflecting an undercurrent of racism running throughout British culture. Suddenly we had a demon and an angel doing battle and politicians rushed to enter the fray. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had the extraordinary luck to be in India at the time, so he got on the bandwagon tout de suite, getting himself the kind of prime-time coverage that should be particularly helpful to him in his ambitions to become the next Prime Minister. Every pundit in the land – and plenty around the world – had their say, falling over themselves to condemn the demon in the most devastating terms and give fulsome praise to the fragrant angel.

The row got so heated that the ‘baddie’ had to be evicted from the house without a live audience, lest she be stoned, burned at the stake or punished in any other way a ‘right-thinking’, moral audience might see fit to deal with her. The ‘goodie’ is still in the house and the country is determined to make her win the competition, just to ensure that we can all be seen to be ‘fair’.

Good has triumphed over evil and it’s all turned out well in the end - or has it? There’s plenty wrong with this story and the vilification of the main protagonist. Did she behave appallingly? Yes, obviously. Does she deserve to be thoroughly demonised for acting in a way that was utterly predictable, given that the situation was expressly created to engender the kind of conflict that resulted? Absolutely not.

Ms Chav-tastic did what inarticulate people do in that kind of situation – she shouted when she could have had a more reasoned argument, made stupid comments and bitched for Britain. Perhaps worse was the behaviour of the two hyenas who sat giggling and making much more racist comments on the sidelines when the action was in full swing. One of them, the former Miss Great Britain, has creepily since claimed that she’s ‘easily led’ and tried to lay all the blame on the Chav Queen. Nice try, sweetie, but no cigar. If you’re smart enough to claim that you’re naïve, you’re smart enough to know when your own behaviour isn’t up to scratch and be responsible for it.

To be clear, I’m not condoning the bullying behaviour or the comments that could certainly be interpreted as racist, whichever way they were intended. However, we’re all doing ourselves a disservice if we keep trying to maintain the fallacy that everything in life is black and white or a battle between pure good and pure evil. When we do this, we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater every time. We can’t just dislike something about someone, so we have to characterise them as a bad person. Until we get that we’re all a heaving mass of contradictions, part good, part not so good, we’re going to have a terribly hard time trying to learn to accept others who are different from ourselves – and even accept the dark and light within us. To me, the demonising of Jade Goody is another mis-step in our politically-correct way of dealing with the world that loves to scapegoat, but does nothing to promote true reconciliation.

Have some compassion for that girl. She’s just seen some of the darker, unrecognised parts of herself reflected back to her in technicolour on the world stage. The rest of us have the luxury of noticing where we’re cruel, unkind or thoughtless with little or no repercussion, but she’s going to lose her career and livelihood over it and become the most hated person in Britain - and not exactly popular in India either. That’s a very big price to pay for someone whose actual crimes are aggression and ignorance, not genuine racial hatred.

As for the lovely Shilpa, she has behaved with extraordinary grace in a terribly confusing, hurtful and difficult situation. Mind you, before we canonise her, let’s remember that she does have the dreadful habit of managing to mention almost every day how much she’s revered in India, how people stand up when she enters a room and how she’s never been spoken to in this way before. Despite her beauty, culture and graciousness, some aspects of her egotistic and controlling behaviour would send us all a little stir crazy in that close environment. As Germaine Greer noted in The Guardian, “I can switch Shilpa off. The people in the house with her haven’t got that option. The problem is that most of the housemates are too dim to convey what a pain in the ass Shilpa is without appearing to persecute her.”

So what relevance does this mad media social experiment have for you this week? Try taking this opportunity to look at the conflicts you’ve had in your own life, perhaps recently or from some time ago. Look at whether a conflict has made you demonise that person as wholly bad or see yourself as wholly good. Is it possible to look at the situation in another way, where you can separate the behaviour from the person, knowing that although the act may be unacceptable, that doesn’t make the person completely bad? You might find that a new look at an old situation opens the door to a reconciliation that you never thought possible before.

If you’re in the habit of self-attack, the next time you screw up just see it for what it is: one incident, not something that makes you a bad person. Pay attention too, to how you’re dealing with others this week. Is there a part of you that can be explosive or domineering, controlling or insensitive? Notice it, accept it and resolve to act differently in future, without demonising yourself in the process. Finally, be very, very grateful that you have the luxury of improving your self-awareness in private, without Big Brother, the nation, and the rest of the world watching you …

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 22 Jan 07)