Big Brother is watching us because we humans are watching Big Brother. The show was launched in the Netherlands in 1999 and quickly became a worldwide phenomenon.
An American version followed the following year, still with the same simple formula (and a tad Orwellian…) of locking up competitors to observe them 24 hours a day. The franchise then spread to around sixty countries and regions, for more than 500 seasons in total. The accounts accumulated in more than two decades of success add up to billions of people glued to screens and billions of handsome dollars in profits.
This phenomenal global success is partly explained by the malleability of the formula, capable of adapting to cultural particularities visible even in the sets. In the United States, participants have their basketball hoop. In Brazil, you need a collective bathroom.
The “celebrity” version produced in Quebec for the past two years turns into a residence in the style of a château-de-banlieue-neo-traditional-imitation-Renaissance. Pure ostentatious 450, what. In Dubai, the divisions of space clearly separate men and women, in addition to providing them with a room for prayer. Allah is watching us too…
the cast adapts to local realities. When Big Brother appeared in South Africa in 2001, the production competed against a multi-ethnic band that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. After racist remarks launched by competitors in previous years, Big Brother Beach Houseof CBS, concocted last year the cast the most diverse in the production’s history, including non-white people (POC) and four members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Some corners of the world resisted the invasion outright. In China and Japan, the formation of ephemeral romantic relationships out of the lure of gain shocks morals too much. In Russia, the habit of arbitrariness and scheming in everyday life has favored the development of a different production, DOM-2, where the rules can change without notice for the participants, who are also not locked in. The production, launched in 2004, was stopped in 2021 after 16 years of continuous broadcast, or nearly 6,000 episodes in total, a world record.
“Studying reality TV in the world involves a risk, that of reducing cultures to a set of stereotypes locking each country into a radical difference”, however warns Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini in an article on the variations of the genre, written for The Media Review of the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) of France. ” In the case of Big Brother, it is interesting to underline that from a common matrix accepted by many countries, we arrive at cases where it is the reality shows themselves which have radically transgressed the codes of the show and justified this transgression by claiming their cultural difference. »
Characters and people
Mme Nadaud-Albertini knows all about it. In 2011, she defended a doctorate in sociology at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales on “the content and digital reception of reality TV shows in France”. The scholarly work began years earlier, when the genre was born in France. She admits having had difficulty finding a director in this prestigious school. “It was a subject that was very taboo,” she said in an interview with To have to.
“For me, reality TV is a story that is based on a character which itself is based on a person, she summarizes. In classic fiction, once the script is written, you look for actors for the filming and, possibly, other actors for adaptations. […] In a reality show, you determine the rules, the sets, the places of life. you make a cast. Except that here, the value of the character, all its narrative potential, depends solely on the people. »
This reality of reality TV makes it an open work giving a lot of latitude to producers and candidates. The malleable format, which can be declined as desired, has enabled France, like many other countries, to create their own concepts and exportable successes in turn.
Here we have Double occupation to compete Big BrotherWhere the island of lovethen The Chiefs ! to replace MasterChef. There, national favor goes to shows like Koh Lanta (30 seasons) to imitate the adventure production at the Survivoror The battle of couples, The people of Marseilles and The angels of reality TV. The latter plays on duplication by bringing together stars from different productions, such as big brother celebrities brings together second-tier celebrities.
A global juggernaut
So we come back to it. Big Brother was brought worldwide by the Dutch company Endemol, founded in 1994 by producer John de Mol, quasi-inventor of the genre, which made him a billionaire. Endemol is now owned by the French group Banijay, whose active catalog includes around 60,000 hours of production.
Vice-president Jane Rimer, who now heads the Canadian branch of Banijay Rigths, negotiates the sale and purchase of rights for productions in both official languages. It was she who signed the agreement for a Quebec version of Survivorwhich will appear this winter on a screen near you.
She explains this urbi et orbi success by the universal appeal of entertainment organized around the gathering of individuals who develop relationships by competing with each other. “Reality TV is about what we all have inside of us as human beings,” she says. We are generally competitive. We like to form communities. In general, we don’t like living in isolation. »
She gives the example of Lego Masters, which puts two construction teams in competition with miniblocks. The show already has 18 versions worldwide. Another show (Blow Up) is organized around the creation of “baloune” sculptures…
Eat from the next…
The exploded trends of the last few years go in all directions (food, celebrities, datingfashion, body transformation…) and constantly push the limits. RuPaul’s Drag Race (since 2009), an empire within the empire of signs at the time, has been described as “the closest thing gay culture has to competitive sport”. Participants from Sexy Beasts (2021) mask and dress up as mythical animals to flirt. In the falsely puritan show High Voltage Seduction (2020), firecracker participants must adhere to strict chastity. alter egothe first artificial intelligence reality show, offers a tele-hook with a singing avatar as a character.
Without judging either of the productions, Mme Rimer speaks of characteristics common to current productions. She cites the growing concern “for the mental well-being of candidates”, a very topical subject here after the mishap of the last season ofDouble occupationwhich led to the withdrawal of three candidates accused of having harassed another.
“We are really aware of the importance in today’s world of protecting our talents,” she says, again citing diversity and inclusion as constant concerns and the multiplatform declination of productions. “We also know that our programs must pay attention to what is culturally and socioeconomically important in the different broadcast territories. »
The Canadian “territory” is no exception. Banijay just bought for distribution Wild Cooks (Heads of woodfrom the Quebec company Toast Studio), which launches twelve chefs into the great Canadian wilderness where they must survive and prepare a gourmet meal from the harvested elements.
There is more astonishing still. Travel with a Goat offers just that: a four-day trip from foodie from point A to point B in the company of a goat. The dramatic tension is organized around the final destination, a slaughterhouse, where the carnivore will have to decide whether or not to consume his new meat companion. The production is made to stimulate thoughts and discussions around the treatment of animals. It can also serve as a bit of a metaphor for reality TV itself…