« The Chronic | Main | Lovecraft »
January 14, 2005
The Anomaly, the Bastard, and the Group
14. Ta Yu (Possession in Great Measure)
| 8. Pi (Holding Together)
|
"It might be supposed that HOLDING TOGETHER (8) would be a more favourable hexagram than POSSESSION IN GREAT MEASURE (14), because in the former one strong individual gathers five weak ones around him. But the judgment added in (14), "Supreme success," is much the more favourable. The reason is that in the eighth hexagram the men held together by the powerful ruler are only simple subordinate persons, while in (14) those who stand as helpers at the side of the mild ruler are strong and able individuals."
"I didn't bond with anyone. I saw myself as a hostile witness" - Germaine Greer
If Germaine Greer's stated reasons for her departure from Big Brother seem weak (and it's true that she ought to have known what she was in for, after all), it is important to realise that it was not a solitary gesture but a group decision, albeit an unspoken one. One must grant to reality TV its ability to demonstrate to what an extraordinary extent, even in a totally artificial environment, the basic loathsome human herd-instinct rules. People would, in general, rather be lied to, manipulated, enslaved, so long as they retain the comfort and security of a group.
Both times I have seen BB the same situation emerges: there is one person, let's call her "The Anomaly" or A, who is more outspoken than the rest. Greer, or in the previous non-celebrity series, the brilliant and witty Emma. While this person is present, the rest of the group remain quiescent, friendly to them, but invisibly, quietly resentful.
Now, there also exists person B, or "The Bastard" (John, or the appalling duo of Jason and Victor) who is an evidently unpleasant and juvenile bully, or at least has decided to take on this persona. In between these two there are the rest of the group who represent various personifications of banality, the desire for ease and the gregarious instinct.
For a while the group, together with A, will appear to be united against B, since it seems that B's negativity is creating schisms and discomforting the group.
But at the first opportunity you can be one hundred percent sure that the group will savagely turn on A (or in Greer's case, maintain a steely silence as she exiles herself from the group). And then the group will reunite enthusiastically and with great relief with The Bastard. The group may even appear to follow A in her uncompromising ideas: Greer's revolution against the abjection of Big Brother's tasks was not dissimilar to Emma's revolution against the underhand plotting of The Bastards themselves, both had access in different ways to the underlying ugly truth of the group situation and attempted to reveal the truth to the group. But if they do so at all, the group will only join A's campaign under duress and with great discomfort that they are leaving the safe bounds of safety, petty politics and authority (Lisa's refusal to let the crown go.) As soon as they can break from A, they will.
"We had our moment, when we could have had a revolution." - GG
This swift regrouping after the exit of the Anomaly can only be explained by the fact that there is a perennially reserved place in the group for The Bastard, and he has only been kept out of this rightful place by the perceptive eye of A, who asks questions concerning the legitimacy and function of this pre-ordained order. Questions that would take group conversation out of the realms of ineffectual chatter.
Whatever the counterindications, it is The Anomaly who represents an actual disturbance of the group, whereas The Bastard is an economically-afforded factor within the group. B fits where A cannot. It's only the group's residual fear of A that makes them hesitate in assassinating her.
Perhaps, then, realising the situation, A will remove herself, as Greer did. Or, as in the case of Emma, she will be removed by authority on some trumped-up charge (the group will find numerous "reasons" to dislike her whilst remaining unable to articulate the actual reason).
Of course, people "respect" A's intelligence and spiritedness. They just don't want it in their backyard, they don't want it to cause trouble. And it doesn't really matter whether A says or does anything anomalous, since it is clear from the start that her unwillingness to submit her intelligence to the security-pact of the group marks her out for slaughter or exile. She doesn't belong.
Group-members, as a species, would rather be humiliated by submission to the rule of a transparently insincere manipulating fool like Lisa precisely because they know that she is as enslaved to her own stupidity and cowardice, and to the law of the group, as they are ("we want a leader who is just like us, a people's leader"). They know she will not encourage them to break the rules. In fact, any one of the group could take up this "leader" role; it is a merely contingent matter of the loudness of their voice, or the effort they are willing to put in to gain this marginal increase of power (a power that is constitutively only exercisable by the mutually-agreed pretence of its absence - "we're all just friends" - since its public display would disrupt the miserable ease of the kingdom). There is a clear, almost symmetrical pact betwen humiliating and humiliated, even without Big Brother's games to make this explicit.
So, even in a situation which will only last two weeks, which is utterly artificial, people feel the need for this comfort. If this is the case with a game (and the same pattern is certainly identifiable in other micro-social situations, from Dogville to blogville), how much less likely are people to pay heed to the Anomaly in "real life"? The clarion call of the group is: "that may be true, but it is not conducive to group life." The zombie chant of the future as they lead you to the pyre - "...she was not a team player..."
What is most sinister is the speed with which the wound left by the departure of A always heals. It is the silence of the closed ranks of a Hammer-horror village inn when the husband comes looking for his ritually-sacrificed wife. The Anomaly will be forgotten almost immediately, in fact they never existed, they are mentioned only as a distant, blurry memory, a fable. "She was once here...things didn't work out..."
Whilst we might regret her lack of persistence in the role of irritating anomaly in a TV genre she avowedly hated, we can perhaps understand that Greer was not prepared for such a concentrated demonstration of the terrifying tenacity of the banal.
At least we can stop watching now in the sure knowledge that nothing is going to happen, nothing ever happens, nothing will happen...there are winners and losers, leaders and followers, but in reality TV as in life, nothing happens. We can only hope for the smallest pleasures..."I want Lisa to go really soon...with maximum humiliation."
[thanks to eleutheria for her observations and discussions on the above - also see her BB series!]
Posted by robin at January 14, 2005 12:42 PM