Racism alleged, but TV viewers not seeing that part
By David Kronke/Television Writer
Joe Rhodes was in his Studio City duplex late one night last week, watching his neighbors in the “Big Brother” house online, when his breath was taken away.
Eddie, the young cancer survivor with one leg, was telling racist jokes, for all the world to hear.
_____ Top Headlines _____
• ‘Big Brother’: Web watchers may have revolutionized reality TV
• ‘Best in Show’ a champion ‘mockumentary’
• Clint’s past auteur transgressions are ‘forgiven’
• The Hype
“These were not just innocuous, wink-and-nod things — (a racial slur directed at African-Americans) was the punchline to one,” said Rhodes, a free-lance writer. “But they don’t show that (on CBS). They’ve posited him as this lovable cancer victim with wacky Fonzie characteristics, when, in fact, he’s in there saying harsh stuff.
“If (ousted houseguest and racial provocateur) Will told a joke that was derogatory about a white guy, I’ll bet you big money that’d be on TV.”
“William never told racist jokes, and if he had, they would not have been on the show,” responds Diane Ekeblad, CBS publicist for the series, who acknowledges that Eddie has, in fact, told facist jokes. “If an interesting conversation occurred as a result of the joke, if others got on him about it, then that would be interesting, that would be on the show. But there’s no place for that on the show, and it certainly isn’t a double standard.”
But Lisa Hoffman, an L.A. attorney, believes, “The fact that the people in the house let those comments slide is an issue in itself. It shows the effects of peer pressure and the desire not to offend people and not be voted out.”
Ekeblad suggests that as the houseguests spend more time in the “Big Brother” house, they become less conscious of the cameras and microphones surrounding them, helping remove their inhibitions. She added, “Part of the issue that’s coming out is that Eddie drinks a lot. He was talking about it (Monday). That’s more of his story; we’re learning more about him. This is not to say that side of him is never gonna come out. It depends on what they do from day to day.”
(Drinking, in fact, has been a way of life for several of the houseguests, so much so that on Wednesday evening, after the banishment, “Big Brother” assembled the remaining roomies and announced, “We have major concerns about the hours you’ve been keeping and the amount of alcohol you’ve been drinking. We’re concerned about your health. We think you’ve been keeping hours that are unhealthy and you’ve been drinking to excess.” Immediately, all the live Internet streams cut to the camera in the chicken coop.)
Given that viewers vote out the housemates — the only one not ousted wins $500,000 — based largely on impressions they get from the CBS broadcasts, how the show’s producers choose to depict each of them becomes crucial.
Robert Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television and a professor at Syracuse University, observes, “The thinking with Eddie may have been, ‘If we put this on the air, we’ll catch some flak for it.’ But it would also make it more exciting, which is something they need to do before the people who are watching it begin to drop off. A good scandal like that would be helpful. It shows a lack of spine, that they thought it was not worth doing. So why did they not do the same with Will? It goes back to the old notion that the media is still not completely fair or balanced in the way it depicts genders and races.”
Thompson laughs when calling CBS’ decision to sweep Eddie’s bad manners under the rug “a major breach of etiquette — that implies that there are some rules of etiquette for this show, which there aren’t. Putting it on the air was the major breach of etiquette.”
Viewers, particularly of the live online streams, are detecting a queasy racial subtext emanating from the “Big Brother” house.
“Since Will’s gone, with the exception of Cassandra — and she seems to be excluded a lot anyway — it’s become a very homogenous group,” observes Paul Sims, creator of bigbrotherblows.com, a Web site mocking the show. “Curtis is a very Americanized Asian. It’s an artificial world that’s very white. In a microcosm where everyone is like you, it may be easy to say hurtful and hateful things. Eddie’s very foolish. I don’t think he would’ve told that joke with Will still in the house.”
Rhodes and Hoffman also say that racism seems to be behind discussions among Eddie, George and Karen on voting in a bloc against Cassandra, the lone remaining African-American houseguest. “Cassandra is on their hit list because they don’t relate to her,” Hoffman says. “They don’t relate to (Asian-American) Curtis,” whom the houseguests had “marked for banishment” last week (viewers voted out stripper Jordan). That, too, has not made it on the broadcast version of the show — or on the series’ official Web site, which dwells on much other minutiae of the houseguests’ lives.
Hoffman sent a letter of complaint to CBS stating, in part, “CBS and ‘Big Brother’ ’s producers have publicly announced that hate speech will not be tolerated in the ‘Big Brother’ house. Yet, within the last week alone, Eddie has told racist ‘jokes’ about African-Americans, Puerto Ricans and Asians; he has called a female houseguest a (mysogynistic slur); and he has spoken approvingly about physical violence toward homosexuals. The fact that Eddie’s housemates have apparently let such comments go without objection is disappointing. The fact that CBS has permitted Eddie’s repulsive, hateful words to be broadcast over the World Wide Web, yet has failed to include any reference to them in the television broadcast or Web site articles that reach the vast majority of ‘Big Brother’ ’s audience, is deplorable.
“The producers have apparently decided to conceal Eddie’s vile comments and behavior from the viewers, while highlighting the negative behavior of other houseguests. The network’s viewers — as well as its sponsors — are entitled to an honest portrayal of Eddie’s conduct as well,” Hoffman wrote.
“There is no conspiracy in terms of trying to position people to look one way or another,” says Ekeblad. “We have a 22-minute show to scrunch a lot of stuff into.”
Hoffman’s not so sure. “The producers of the show are manipulating things far more than they let on,” she says. She pointed to the house’s “roast” of Jordan and Curtis — the guests “marked for banishment” — that aired Tuesday night. According to those who saw it on the Internet, the houseguests were told to put on the roast and even given jokes to tell.
“They were forced to do it even though they didn’t want to,” Hoffman says, adding that the broadcast version didn’t make it clear that many of the jokes delivered during the roast were scripted by “Big Brother.”
At the roast, Hoffman says, “Eddie made comments that Jordan was welcome in his home. But they didn’t show that later, he said if she did show up, she’d get a drink thrown in her face. They’re attempting to portray this one person in a much more positive light.”
“Big Brother” was certainly not shy about showing Will “Mega” Collins at his most confrontational, which promptly led to his ouster, the first of the series. But as Rhodes saw it online, the other houseguest “marked for banishment” — Jordan again — “was clearly more a pain in the butt than he was, but they didn’t show any of that. Sure, Will was juvenile, but he was also thoughtful, insightful and compassionate. They clearly wanted Jordan to stay, though, because they thought she was more provocative. So they showed just enough to make her interesting but not enough to show what a pain in the ass she was. It was a foregone conclusion that he was a goner.”
Collins, the first ousted houseguest, had ties to a militant African-American organization, which tainted the meaningful points he made regarding race, believes Thompson, who says that certain racial stereotyping seems to be at work on several levels on the show.
“They have to take material and in a very short time work it into a pseudo-documentary,” he says. “Editing film is a fictionalizing machine — you create characters and conflicts. No matter how pure their intentions may be, the general prejudices and biases of the culture have come out. Will ‘Mega’ was presented as dangerous, somewhat threatening, and aggressively male. They knew what they were doing with his depiction.”
Cassandra, “Big Brother” ’s other African-American houseguest, “mitigates Will’s depiction somewhat since she’s shown as the only one with her head on her shoulders,” Thompson says. “But the fact that there is no apparent male counterpart for her and her alone is telling. She’s been desexualized by casting, not by her physical characteristics. She’s not considered part of the romantic equation. Hooking up is not part of her options. That speaks volumes.”
Collins, after being ousted from the house, complained that the broadcast episodes offered “a major imbalance” in the depiction of his character. “You only saw the intense, analytical, debated, confrontational, argumentative, issue-pressing ‘Mega.’ You didn’t see ‘Mega’ who every morning would get up and pray.... You didn’t see Will ‘Mega’ ’s poetry.”
Executive producer Paul Romer dismissed Collins’ complaint, saying, “There are people out there who say this show is boring. What would be boring is to show the lowlights.”
Posted on Sep 27, 2000, 12:11 PM from IP address 24.24.217.26