Over thirty years ago, Eugène Ionesco wrote a play called 'Rhinoceros'. In the background of the story is Eugène Ionesco's disgust when he saw how his friends slowly accepted Nazism. The protagonist, Bérenger, an average middle-class citizen, shows little interest in the fact that a rhinoceros is loose in the city. However, little by little he is surrounded by people who willingly transform themselves into rhinoceroses. He quarrels with his friend, Jean, and Daisy, his pretty secretary. In the office, Bérenger witnesses that the staff is gradually joining the rhinoceroses. Finally Daisy and he are the only human beings and when Daisy too turns into a rhinoceros, Bérenger decides to defend his humanity with a gun. It is a very powerful play with a message that goes beyond Ionesco’s intended attack on Nazism and comments well on how easily we can be subverted if we are not vigilant. If several of Ionesco's aims were obvious in 1960-warnings against both totalitarianism and the tendency of free societies to grow complacent and overly tolerant of moral wrongs, his ideas are even more relevant in today's computer-linked, global-village world.
Sadly, this years American version of Big Brother on CBS television has been marred by several apparent racist remarks aimed primarily at Asians and a lack of response from the network and most surprisingly by the host of the show, Julie Chen, who as an Asian American woman should be appalled at the derogatory comments being made flippantly and often by this year's cast against Asian houseguests.
I ran a Google search on 'racism in the Big Brother house' and came across a number of articles from the South Africa edition of Big Brother and how they had zero tolerance for such behavior and evicted a houseguest because of comments made.
I wonder how a major television network, in a society that is fighting for justice, freedom and equality in several foreign theaters, can possibly allow, both on the live feeds and the televised update shows, such an apparent breach of civility go unchecked or uncommented on. In the aftermath of the civil rights and the multi-cultural movements of the 60s and early 70s, it stopped being correct to allow racism to flourish openly on America’s airwaves. Instead, racist impulses in the media seemingly fled underground and emerged as something that is almost reactionary to the politically correct movements of the 80’s and 90’s. In a country that pays lip-service to a heightened consciousness toward race and equality, a slow decline has emerged in the media, a return to xenophobia and racism. Not surprisingly, racism has become increasingly commonplace in American media, primarily in the glitzy ghettos of TV-land. In some sort of warped response to the ‘PC’ movement, racism has begun to emerge quietly and without fanfare.
During the first weeks of the Big Brother4 television show, we caught several houseguests using slurs and innuendo referring to Asian-American houseguests. On a recently broadcast episode, we saw cast member Erica voice a slur against Koreans. What message does this send to young viewers? To all viewers? I think that a campaign should be launched to get host Julie Chen to comment on the issue and for Big Brother producers to do the same! What is unfortunate is that the small prime-time television audience sees only sanitized, cartoon stereotypes of the Big Brother housemates, whose uncensored actions have horrified Internet viewers.
In an earlier edition of the Big Brother show (BB2), conflict escalated to threats of violence, sexual harassment, homophobia, and racism as contestants Will, Mike and Justin formed an alliance with the basest of frat-boy mentalities. In a late-night conversation, the three made plans to intimidate and control the competition. They dismissed one female houseguest as fat and ugly, but not entirely useless to them. Mike stated that he would have sex with her to string her along. Justin bragged that he would sexually humiliate Krista and then spit in her face right before he voted her out. They discussed gaining the allegiance of an African-American woman by falsely accusing another contestant of calling her the vilest of racial epithets.
Eddie McGee, a Big Brother winner was the subject of a letter to CBS from an L.A. attorney accusing him of racism, sexism and homophobia for some jokes he told one night in the Big Brother house. He laughs heartily when a portion of the letter is read to him:
“That’s good,” he says, then he tries to explain.
“I told some black jokes and Puerto Rican jokes and I think some gay jokes, some handicapped jokes, some Irish jokes, some Italian jokes.'
'I bashed on basically anybody and everybody.'
“Hey, if they want to call me a racist, I’m not. Let me make that clear. If you’re going to call me racist, then you’ve got to call anybody and everybody who ever laughed at a racist joke racist as well. And everybody at that table laughed at every one of those jokes.'
“The fact of the matter is, it was a stupid thing to do, granted, but I didn’t just single any one group out. I bashed on myself. I’m an Irish person. I told one-legged jokes. ‘Where do one-legged people eat breakfast? IHOP.’ And I apologize if I upset anybody, I’d like to say that.”
- from an interview with Manuel Mendoza, The Dallas Morning News
Sadly, Eddie doesn’t get it. Nor does CBS get that they should intervene. After all, they are Big Brother and they do control the house and what goes on there and what the viewers see and absorb.
Of course, this is a reflection of society. But it is also a place to do something about it. My own daughter is Asian-American and I am offended. If these people used the N-word or did watermelon jokes, you know there would be noise. If they did Jewish jokes, you know television producer, Arnold Shapiro, would have pulled the plug. Why not the same rights for Asians?
While CBS has heard protest before regarding race and Big Brother, it has been most often aimed at African-American houseguests. In order to take on the propagators of negative and nihilistic stereotypes in the media, we must take on the class forces that denigrate not only African-Americans, but denigrate Arabs, gays, Jews, Asians and other marginalized groups as well. Putting muscle into cultural reform means joining with other despised groups in challenging the owners and propagators of the negative imagery. In order to overturn these cultural barriers, both social analysis and class action is required.
Often times racists don’t need to toss around slurs at minorities. They have learned that it is more effective to use non-verbal, implicit and subliminal techniques to convey the same message, namely that minorities are inferior. In the Big Brother house mimicking accents and nasty comments go unchecked almost daily. And while this ‘social experiment’ is cast with an eye toward reflecting society at large, and with racism being a very big part of our society, it is not surprising that we see slurs as just part of the scenery. It seems wrong to me that Julie Chen, as a member of the fourth estate, has not made comment on the issue to this date.
It's up to the more intelligent among us non-rhinos to stay aware of the increasing attacks with which racists continue to poison the American media well and to keep articulating phrases that neatly pinpoint their cowardly strategies. I think it is time for the fans of this show to give notice to CBS and Arnold Shapiro that we will not tolerate this abuse of free speech by sending emails to the network informing them of this outrageous lapse in civility.
Email webmaster
Write An Article!
![](images/"clear.gif"){kind=spacer}
![ETV Store](<IMG SRC="images/store.gif" WIDTH="129" HEIGHT="17" BORDER="0" ALT="ETV Store">){kind=link}