We have moved a long way since Peter Weir 1998 film The Truman Show. Whether we moved forward of backwards is another question altogether. The protagonist, Truman Burbank, was born for TV and lived for TV, albeit unknowingly. A corporation adopted him at birth and every moment of his life was lived in front of hidden TV cameras. The island on which he lived was a large TV set. All the participants were actors. Everyone knew what was happening bar Truman. He made millions happy by giving them something to love for. He made his “creator” – the reckless TV producer with the name of Christof – happy. However, Truman Burbank was not happy. Finally, he discovered what was happening and, against all odds, managed to escape.
The mother of all perversions
Since Truman, more and more people are living their lives in front of video camera. At this moment, I am not referring to participants in reality TV shows. I am referring to people like you and me who use elevators, go to supermarkets, buy from the village grocer, drive along our arterial roads, use banks … The list of places covered by CCTV cameras grows longer and longer.
It is almost impossible to-day to spend a day without being recorded by some camera or other. Those who think that they can escape are mistaken. Even if you plot the position of all the security cameras that turned the Western world into a TV set larger than that of Truman, you are mistaken. The cameras of Google Earth will take care of your presumed craftiness. They will catch you sunbathing on your rooftop or strolling along some secluded beach with someone that you would have preferred not to be seen together with.
Privacy is a thing of the past. In Orwell’s 1984 the loss was looked at the ultimate depravation. Today the yearning for privacy is being increasingly considered as the mother of all perversions. On TV’s chat shows people dare to say what yesterday was considered to be to intimate to recount in the privacy of the confessional or the couch of one’s shrink. The social networks make it easy for all and one to extend their circles of intimacy even to total strangers.
I am not being evaluative. I am just being descriptive. People’s concept of privacy has changed along the centuries; so what’s wrong with another change in the privacy paradigm? As McLuhan ably shows, our own concept of privacy was more the result of Gutenburg’s famous contraption than the conclusion of philosophical reflections on human nature.
I digressed, though. Let me return to my subject, i.e.
The cult of the talentless celebrity
Truman was conned into being a TV star. He was not happy. He was satisfied only when he excaped. He was unwittingly thrust in front of a TV camera at birth but did not want that same camera to broadcast his death.
Jade Goody who died last Sunday (March 21, 2009) and will be buried next Wednesday (April 1) can be compared and contrasted to Truman. Like him, she lived for TV. Unlike him, she did it willingly. Her public persona was created by TV. Her fulfilment was achieved by living in front of the TV cameras and almost literally dying in front of them as well.
After being catapulted into fame thanks to her participation in the third series of Big Brother in 2002 she became the ultimate mediatised person. A writer for the electronic version of The Telegraph described her as the poster girl of the curious contemporary cult of talentless celebrity. His judgment, though harsh, has an element of truth. What else can one say about a person who thinks that Pistacchio painted the Mona Lisa or that Rio de Janeiro was a man?
The tabloids tore into her during her participation in Big Brother. The Sun called her a hippo, then a baboon, before launching its campaign to "vote out the pig". The Sunday Mirror refused to call her as pig as this would have been “insulting – to pigs". She established herself as a great ignoramus and became more unpopular even than Saddam Hussein (whom Jade believed to be a boxer).
Jade’s shallowness and lack of tact came to the fore in 2007 during her participation in Celebrity Big Brother. She drew the ire of thousands after she racially bullied the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. In India she was burned in effigy. The television regulator Ofcom received more than 40,000 complaints from outraged members of the public.
Her scent was withdrawn from the stores; the paperback version of her autobiography was scrapped and the television offers dried up. A well-organised rehabilitation campaign that included a number of apologies and reconciliation with Shilpa climaxed in an invitation to take part in Big Boss – the Indian reality show.
A Tru(wo)man Show after all
All the above notwithstanding Jade Goody was loved: she redeemed herself after the 2002 fiasco and the second fiasco of 2007; and I don’t think that all this redemption came just as a result of good PR. The comment of the writer in The Telegraph was too harsh after all. One can be talentless but be very lovable just the same. She showed that she had talent that made her lovable and also to transcend her own problems and reach out to others.
During the great media blitz of the 2002 Big Brother people started warming up to her. They perceived her as forthright, honest and vulnerable. The tabloids had to follow suit. There was good reason to perceive her as such since a mother who was a petty thief had raised her in a run-down area of southeast London. Her father was a small-time pimp turned career criminal. Jade rolled her first joint for her mother when she was four and she took her first puff aged five. People felt they wanted to give her the love that she was denied when still very young. People always love the underdog who manages to make a success.
Her participation in the Indian Big Boss was both her death knell and her road to rehabilitation and success. During a live transmission from the “confessional” of the show, she was informed that she had terminal cervical cancer. She was devastated. All the participants were devastated. All the viewers were devastated. Goody bravely decided to spend the final months of her life in front of TV cameras campaigning to raise awareness about cervical cancer. She was transformed into a serious figure whose frankness about her illness benefitted the thousands who, for the first time, decided to go for a smear test. She won the respect of many.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who heads the Church of England, said Goody showed a brave side in the face of death. "If in her earlier career it was all about her, then I think at the end it was about something else," Williams said. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, praised her bravery. So did the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. "She was a courageous woman both in life and death and the whole country have admired her determination … and her family can be extremely proud of the work she has done to raise awareness of cervical cancer which will benefit thousands of women.”
I borrow my conclusion from one of the journalists of the on line version of The Guardian: The pig who deserved burning had become our sacrificial lamb, garnished with sentiment. Britain had turned 180 degrees to embrace a woman it had earlier scorned.