What would Orwell say?

I just saw an ad for Big Brother – a very nasty and narcissistic reality TV show which makes its way around the networks like a virus.

First Ten, then Nine, now Seven. The people are not shy physically, and they are not exactly shy emotionally.

People want to be on that show, fine. People want to be on that show, equally fine.

I always have the problem with it being titled Big Brother. On his dead bed 75 years ago, Eric Blair, the artist otherwise known as George Orwell, wrote a novel which originally was called The Last Man in Europe, but which was eventually released as 1984. In it, the technological surveillance of the population was seen as sinister and pervasive, but still very limited to what we have available now.

Big Brother was the name of the totalitarian patriarch always placing the thoughts and behaviour of the members of the society under control and surveillance.

Now, for the past two decades, we have had that subject to mockery through a highly banal TV show, where people who are tested by the appropriate measurements for being the best TV fodder end up on such shows. This is totally wrong.

However, I note that Channel 7, the new owners of Big Brother, is owned by Kerrie Stokes, the billionaire who has otherwise recently used his ownership of the media to advise the Australian public that communist China is not a threat to our security. To me, this is just dialling up the water on the boiling frog one more degree. Kerrie Stokes – you need to choose what nation you should be loyal to – a free country like Australia or a vicious dictatorship like communist China.