Celebrity Big Brother is a reality television show based on the original Big Brother format where celebrities live together in a house under constant surveillance by cameras. The 1-hour televised episodes are highly edited to create drama and storylines from footage recorded over many hours. This editing process can distort viewers' sense of time and manipulate events. The show emphasizes the empty nature of fame by featuring celebrities who gained notoriety through talent shows or provocative opinions rather than substantive accomplishments. As the housemates are shut off from the outside world, the environment creates a hyperreal experience that blurs reality TV and real life.

1. Celebrity Big Brother
Channel 4: 2001-2010 & Channel 5: 2011-2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjtZDxeiZGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nerV-gur3Mo

2. • Big Brother was created in 1997 and the format has been used worldwide
• Celebrity Big Brother is a reality television game show based on Big Brother
(but with ‘celebrities’)
• The series takes its name from a character (the party leader) in George
Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
• ‘Big Brother is watching you’ is a key slogan used in the novel, referring to
the surveillance of society and in the case of the TV show surveillance of
the housemates
• In reality television, ordinary people and TV personalities blur…
Celebrity Big Brother

3. • Cameras film the housemates 24 hours a day, they are under constant
surveillance
• However the show that airs to the public is a 1 hour highly edited version of
what is happening in the house
• Storylines and meaning are created through the editing down of footage,
selecting and arranging what is shown to the audience
• This can distort our sense of time, it feels chronological but events could
have happened hours apart
• Usually the show is edited to create drama/tension and ‘storylines’ such as
love interest/feuds
• What is real and what is ‘media real’ a representation created to entertain?
Manipulation of space & time

4. Style over substance
• The artist Andy Warhol once said: ‘In the future everybody will have their fifteen
minutes of fame’
• This applies to much of reality television and the original Big Brother
• All reality TV emphasises the emptiness of fame
• Katie Hopkins is ‘famous’ for appearing in the 3rd
series of
‘The Apprentice’ in 2007 and then in ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out
of Here’ (also 2007). She is also famous for being opinionated and
for upsetting people with her views. Essentially Katie became a
successful celebrity without actually any real talent
• This proves that in today's society it is possible for anyone to
become famous
• There are many other good examples of this
• Style over substance = celebrity without talent

5. Simulacra or real?
• Who is the real Katy Price think of different media images, her different narratives and what she
symbolises: Jordan the glamour model, Katy of Katy & Peter, mother and role model?
• Or Perez Hilton who is famous for blogging about celebrities, who is he? Even his name is a parody
of Paris Hilton (celebrity/socialite) How do we know what is genuine and what is an act? ‘the
Perez Show’
• Or Katie Hopkins famous for being on ‘The Apprenice’ a reality show and for being obnoxious,
who is the real Katie Hopkins?
Baudrillard said we live in a
society made up entirely of
simulacra – simulations of
reality which replace any
‘pure’ reality
Is it all for attention?
Money? Fame?

6. Hyperreality: House Vs Outside/Real World
• Baudrillard said that Disneyland is the best example for understanding how our reality
works in the postmodern world – a place which is both a real, physical space, but also
clearly a fictional representation of the world.
• The same could be said of the Big Brother house, they are in a ‘house’ a real physical
space which is real but at the same time is unreal. It has the rooms expected in a house
but it is a set within a studio and there are producers and cameras everywhere
• Housemates refer to the ‘Outside World’ and ‘Real World’ although they are in the real
world, they are just shut off in a sense, from the other people and the outside
• Real life and television dissolve into each other as we are simultaneously voyeurs
(watching) and the subjects being watched on television (real people on camera, being
watched on television by other real people…)

7. Hyperreality: House Vs Outside/Real World
• Baudrillard said that Disneyland is the best example for understanding how our reality
works in the postmodern world – a place which is both a real, physical space, but also
clearly a fictional representation of the world.
• The same could be said of the Big Brother house, they are in a ‘house’ a real physical
space which is real but at the same time is unreal. It has the rooms expected in a house
but it is a set within a studio and there are producers and cameras everywhere
• Housemates refer to the ‘Outside World’ and ‘Real World’ although they are in the real
world, they are just shut off in a sense, from the other people and the outside
• Real life and television dissolve into each other as we are simultaneously voyeurs
(watching) and the subjects being watched on television (real people on camera, being
watched on television by other real people…)