Big Brother As A Triumph For Traditional Values

The Age

Wednesday July 23, 2003

And so another season of Channel Ten's Big Brother has ended - and with it, undoubtedly, another opportunity for thin-lipped tut-tutting from those who despair at the demise of culture, standards and the moral integrity of the today's youth.

But I for one will look back on the third series with satisfaction and pride. For it has proved to be, once again, a triumph of the traditional social values that Australians hold dear: mateship, care for others and finding pleasures in the simple things of life, which emerged from the razzmatazz and smut that characterised early episodes.

Each week the characters in the house struggled to find valid reasons to nominate their housemates for eviction. They were concerned about doing so on flimsy grounds because, for the most part, they found something good in all. Each week the audience voted out those they judged to be unsuitable. And who did they choose? The loudmouths and backstabbers, those who were seen to be lazy, sleazy, bossy, unsupportive and overly cocky.

Gradually viewers reduced the house to a bunch of genuinely nice nobodies - the sort of people they would like as friends, people who are quiet, funny, at home within themselves, thoughtful and caring. That these qualities could rise above the temptations put before them is a credit to those who had lived in the fishbowl for three months.

It was not riveting television: bugs were liberated, scones and bread were baked, conversations, reflection and thoughtfulness took centre stage. The housemates did not rise to the bait of tabloid-style interviews and the sexual come-ons from a deliberately provocative intruder. And the late-night live program was hardly the raunchy ``bed-fest" that Channel Ten might have hoped for: the housemates mostly chatted and slept, just like the normal folk they are.

Let us celebrate the success of this program, in which no one was killed, nothing exploded and public ridicule was not a form of entertainment - where young people lived for three months without the very media upon which they were appearing, where they played parlour games, and where the highlight of the day was as often as not the simple pleasure of conversation.

Congratulations, Reggie, on your victory, and commiserations to Daniel and Chrissie. And thank you, the young viewers who have demonstrated once again that traditional values live in these morally confusing times.

Jo Flack, Glen Iris