Читать книгу Grumpy Old Men: New Year, Same Old Crap - David Quantick - Страница 60

The bastard who came up with the title Big Brother for a reality show may be more cynical than previously advertised. Because if there’s one thing that perfectly sums up your 1984-style Orwellian prolefeed culture, it’s the replacement of actual real content with made-up stuff. Newspapers and news-media stuff were originally designed to transmit information about events that had happened largely uncontrollably – wars, famines, earthquakes. Now they just tell us the adventures of someone who passed an audition. And by audition, they don’t mean a display of performing skill, they mean ‘were prepared to show off their personality disorder in public’.

In 1984, the news channels showed footage from possibly made-up wars, interchangeable names of adversaries, and randomly selected hate figures. These days I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here is our Oceania, the Big Brother house is Airstrip One, and Heat magazine is alternately the Ministry of Love and Hate Week.