Fictional vs factual characters: A Brotherly musing

[Tabouli]

Hi, OTters... (visions of the listmembers gambolling about on the shores of a loch, a la Ring of Bright Water),

I have three terrible, terrible confessions to make.  The first is that I have, of all things, started watching Big Brother.  (shrinks behind the couch, hiding her shame behind the remote control).

Second terrible confession: After all my denunciation of elitism and towers, ivory, I did, in fact, snub last year's series on the grounds that the very concept sounded like the ultimate in tedious trashy television, to which I would not lower my exalted brow.

Third terrible confession: I am actually finding it fascinating.  Entirely because of, er, the, er, er, (tries to come up with suitably intellectual and worthy excuse) opportunities for sociological analysis.  Of course.

(hangs a small tea towel off the remote control to hide more of her blushing face while preparing a less lame defence).

Though actually, lame though it sounds, it's not so far from the truth.  What a positively evil idea.  Locking up a group of 12 strangers (all dreadfully young and hip and up for it, naturally), and deliberately trying to stir up trouble among them 24 hours a day, while capturing their every move on camera.  Then, once a week, actually *inviting* them to come into a private room and backstab two of their fellow inmates, *announce* the three most disliked people in the house to them, and then getting them to live with it for a week while the viewers to vote one off.  Evil evil evil!

But, for the sinister social scientist, perversely compelling.  And for the cross-cultural trainer, an absolute goldmine, a total treasure trove of examples of Australian behaviour in difficult situations.  How many times have I roleplayed an appropriate way to give negative feedback in Australian society?  Big Brother gets every inmate squirming on the spot and forces them to provide authentic negative feedback on two people to the public in as Australian-viewing-public friendly a way as possible!  I'm almost tempted to buy the very *videos* of the series to play excerpts from them in my workshops!

Tonight was the first eviction, and the result reminded me strongly of my erstwhile main list musings about fictional versus factual characters.  Specifically, that people who make good fictional characters, to watch or read about, are not necessarily the sort of people you want to have physically present in your life.  Often quite the reverse.

You see, the first person to be thrown out of the house by the Australian public was, IMO, probably the most promising fictional character of the 12.  A handsome, 21yo Chinese-Australian guy, whose immediate response to incarceration was to look around for a cute girl to seduce on camera, while improvising bad songs about his quest to do so on his guitar, stealing other people's food from the fridge, and doing silly things like playing Luke vs Darth Vader with broomsticks and dancing around on one roller skate.  Within days he'd set up a love triangle between the ditzy blonde and the soulful violinist, settled on the latter, and lavished some of the most corny seduction lines on her I have ever heard on a young man's lips.  Truly appalling.

He was exhibitionistic and cocky, good-natured yet inconsiderate, vivacious, insufferably schmaltzy and totally shameless.  In short, a great fictional character for the program in question.

He swiftly started grating on the other inmates, but the viewers?  What were they thinking? I asked myself.  And the conclusion I came to was the one I came to about JKR characters like Hagrid and Snape... people were judging him as a factual person, not a fictional person.  They thought he was a sleazy, irritating poser they wouldn't want as a friend, and wouldn't want to live with, so they voted him off.  Which I think is a great pity.

Surely the point of the whole sordid business is *not* to form a harmonious household full of nice, compatible people everyone would want as friends, but to create an entertaining program, which requires friction between the inhabitants.  (I also admit a part of me rather liked him there confounding the perennial stereotype of Asians as shy and nerdy and dull).

I mean, where would the Potterverse be without Snape and Draco and Voldemort?  Sure, we want to fill our real lives with kind, trustworthy, dependable, considerate people, but honestly!  Sleazy exhibitionists, nasty spiteful grudge-bearers, purveyors of trite and corny comments, all these people have a place and it is On Our Screens and Pages!  Where would fiction be without them?

Tabouli.


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