CONTINUED FROM HERE
Marion wrote: "Asheligh's mouthhas erupted with herpes sores -"
Lessons and Lesions.
Oh what a report you've just given, Marion! So incisive, with such straight-eyed ironing-out of the unironic without abandoning a sense of irony for us to chuckle at. You should be employed by the national tabloids and by literary essay vehicles to portray this lesson in modern life as presented by BB, a vital lesson in social lesions, a lesson so often derided by the programme's detractors.
As to Ashleigh's cold sores, these are possibly the stigmata from the recent Confessional. I only say she has the best chance to win as she exemplifies best what I said above about life's lesions and what I predict will be the voting of people-not-like-us, Marion.
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(2 August): Marion wrote: "I think the White Room may turn out to be an epic bore."
I diisagree. Well, I would. In 2002 I published the world's first blank story in 'Nemonymous' - and produced another edition with blank covers, and many of the horror stories in Nemonymous were about blanks or nothingness or gaps.
Sara is becoming more interesting. Saying on her audition something that is evidently non-characteristic of her (i.e. doing striptease) and building up the tension and sensory deprivation / mental asylum angle of the White Room by acting out antipathy towards it. Constructing anxieties for the viewers that 'enhance' such a scenario. This is 'pure' Theatre of the 20th century (not 21st century) - something we had grown out of, until now. A happening. Even Conor benefited from the surrounding whiteness.
Deana claims she was 'excluded' from four schools not 'expelled'. Indeed, intriguing. She has a deeper backstory, like Sara's.
------------------
Marion wrote: "I think the White Room may turn out to be an epic bore."
I disagree. Well, I would. In 2002 I published the world's first blank story in 'Nemonymous' - and produced another edition with blank covers, and many of the horror stories in Nemonymous were about blanks or nothingness or gaps.
Sara is becoming more interesting. Saying on her audition something that is evidently non-characteristic of her (i.e. doing striptease) and building up the tension and sensory deprivation / mental asylum angle of the White Room by acting out antipathy towards it. Constructing anxieties for the viewers that 'enhance' such a scenario. This is 'pure' Theatre of the 20th century (not 21st century) - something we had grown out of, until now. A happening. Even Conor benefited from the surrounding whiteness.
Deana claims she was 'excluded' from four schools not 'expelled'. Indeed, intriguing. She has a deeper backstory, like Sara's.
Although I agree with Marion on certain aspects of Ashleigh, she is the most natural person in the House. There is no side to her. The only one that comes close to her in that respect is Luke A. imo. {A series of reprises: here is a quote from one of my TTA forum entries in 2004 about that year's BB: "From my 56 year old perspective, last night's Big Brother was probably a bad influence on those involved and on those watching them - but the argument/fight was so well 'dramatised', 'stage-lit', 'acted', 'scripted', it was probably one of the greatest contemporary 'dramas' (full of accidental imagination, believeable grotesque characterisation, Shakespearean tragedy etc.) that TV has ever allowed to be broadcast."}
-----------------
Marion, a good White Room project would be on the constructively tedious end of things, I'd say -- a bit like a Robbe-Grillet anti-novel? With fleeting, barely caught expressions and moues in your avatar's gossamer wings or my numinous butterfly-net.
--------------
Marion wrote: "She complained of no windows in the room, no freedom, no darkness, no sunshine and then burst into tears."
Sara is becoming quite a star, with natural idiosyncracies emerging from the pressure cooker that is the BB House and its inner White Room (we all have an inner White Room) rather than faux idiosyncracies. Also without makeup we see she has spots to match the ashen-lipped stigmata or lesions elsewehere in the house...
Her political non-rant of a rant was as off-kilter as her blind Royalism (it's OK being a Royalist in my book but Sara seems obsessive and she probably believes the Queen is a benevolent alien or an angel, to which state of being Sara herself aspires). As to voting Tory last time she voted, well, she probably lost a lot of votes and gained a few others as a result of making this admission (which she failed to make in the earlier Confessional).
Yes, shake-it-all-about Becky to go on Friday!
And thanks, Marion, for posting that wonderful Robbe-Grillet story. I had not read it before.
--------------
Some very interesting points there, Marion. The chocolate on Becky's face "for the judges" passed me by because of inevitable temporary inattentions during TV watching. What on earth!
I did however think about Conor disrupting some Godgiven rule regarding the verities of the BB game with the usually default good sense of the audience having been by-passed by this event. Lessons / lesions indeed beoynd moral lip-synch.
Meanwhile, I agree that the 'white' quiz was probably the most hilarious thing ever on BB! Possibly ever in or out of BB.
I, too, was rather perturbed by the facial expressions of Becky during the interview: grotesque gurning with bulbous red lips and mad eyes that have fed on monstrous gossipings and bitchings incarnate and incarnadine.
A night stained with bad-blood, as well as chocolate. But a night also thankfully to rid ourselves of that bad-blood.
----------------
Marion's Kipling quotes and Deana's 'soldiers' and last night's Team GB medals on a 'last balcony' before the world's financial, moral and, possibly, physical, state implodes towards an unpredicatble core of destiny ... I am left in an ambivalent mood. Conor was another medal winner, but a shameful, shameless one, with his case of money (symbolic of ill-gotten Libor gains) held aloft like a conscience-less version of a soldier going over the top of his own balcony towards an unknown destiny of recrimination in hiding beyond the public acclaim as winner that he once said he wanted. Both winner and loser. Luke S martyred.
Deana was also in an ambivalent mood. But what lies behind her lispy pragmaticism? Four exclusions or expulsions from school in her past? For what? This is probably her own version of paying off any of her own debts following the less serious form of Confessional that BB earlier provided: i.e. to emerge as the Winner: the ultimate act of not being excluded or expelled.
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(6 August): I don't think Scott can nominate Luke S any more, Marion. Luke S now only needs to think of the public vote in the final. He needs to dress up the buzzer push as a reflex action and, as you say, get the gay icon vote. He needs to be both mansion and cottage. He's not clever enough to pull this off, though. But clever enough, however, to have these goals in mind and to have worked out a strategy.
Deana went off-the-wall, both tipsy and lispy, with her mockingly seeking the ontology as well as teleology of the buzzer push. A drama worthy of the Wednesday Play when watching Luke S's reaction.The ins and outs of that White Room climax will be spoken of darkly forever within arcane BB discussion groups. Perhaps a good ploy, after all, by BB, having that stunt?
Meanwhile, the smoking mimesis-potion 'task' was SILLY. Housemates and BB in collusion - but nobody was fooled. It was just a mindless way to fill a day.
--------------------
Marion wrote: "Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee"
....like Marion's avatar on the TTA Forum, if not Marion herself!
Meawhile Sara storks like a daddy-long-legs.
I haven't got anything to add to Marion's exhaustive and helpful and unarguable report on last night's proceedings.
-----------------
I thought Scott's task was interesting, making one wonder if there is a difference between (a) a genuine 'mole' or double-agent and (b) someone just doing various things he wouldn't otherwise have done but without changing his character, his me-ness...
The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme echoed earlier chocolate finger task, and Becky's chocolately face and Caroline actually making the House tantamount into a Chocolate House... Deana certainly gives off the aura of Valkyrie and She who must be obeyed whatever ostensibly nonsensical incantations she recites as spells to dig deep into others' souls.
Just for House 'interest' interests of character-mix rather than for intrinsic goodness or otherwise as a human being, I hope Adam goes on Friday.
-----------------
Yes, it was an amusing task. A living museum of human-filled inanimate objects from the past ancient and near modern. Another effective semi-theatrical happening. Reminded me of the 'panoply' in my 'Yesterfang' and other incidents in the overall 'Last Balcony' (and 'Weirdtongue') if I may be self-referential regarding my published work for a moment, the comparisons seeming to be relevant - at least to me! :|
I don't *think* Ashleigh actually started the food fight proper but the Proximate Cause was something being put down her back after a previous minor infringement of throwing?
Sara's new rant-in-the-cups was not something I enjoyed. But she has actually become a *personality* in the House while for the early weeks she was just eye-candy.
I now know who Scott reminds me of most: the late Kenneth Williams.
------------------
Yes, 'metrosexual' is a new word for me. A combination of being streetwise and engendering a wide spectrum of sexual orientation geared to opportunism?
I can't think who I want to go tonight. Perhaps there will be two evictions before the final. I feel very little loyalty to any of them.
But I think Ashleigh deserves to win for being herself (with all the faults of that self) and not having cuppish right-wing rants like Sara. I am suspicious of Luke A's claims regarding his backstory. And Deana is too artful for her own good, lispy, tispy, incantatory, wayward, sleek and slithy. Adam too laid back. Scott just a cipher acting a 'Carry On' cameo role. Luke S is a metrosexual ready to push any buttons that work for that self-image. Have I missed anyone out?
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Marion wrote: "She really is funny in a light waspish way."
If about Marion, I can only agree. I'd add 'perceptive' and 'astute', with a constructively stubborn touch of never forgetting why she likes or dislikes an HM - till beyond the very end of each season's audit trail of events and emotions.
And I was wrong about Ashleigh's potential popularity as a salt-of-the-earth character from within a poor bunch of wispy HMs. Perhaps because I live in Essex. But she is a far better woman than she gives herself credit for.
I was surprised, too, that Scott went before the final.
And I am shocked that Celebrity Big Brother starts on Wednesday!!
-----------
Yes, I have to admit the three musketeers or 'soldiers' in their little demob ceremony were both touchingly ironic and BB-iconic.
Mr Snuggles was the best evil clown I've ever seen. A wonderful Horror genre scenario. Coincidentally, I had real-time reviewed 'Hangfire Bubbler' by Rhys Hughes earlier in the day, a story *about* coulrophobia!
--------------
Sara's treatise upon Meatloaf and the Queen was probably the most bizarre of conceits ever straddled across by one brain. She could win, I suppose. And, marginally, I hope she does win.
Adam and Deana and Luke A are all OK-ish - and the memory-monologues about their experiences in the show were dressed up well by the BB production team. Gave them good grounds for winning. I won't be too upset about one of them winning. Especially for their communal demob speeches and mimes the other night.
The only one I definitely don't want to win is Luke S.
Mr Snuggles with Conor inside (not Brian D) awaits us all, one day, at the end of our own life's BB ramp of booing and cheering...
Watching CBB this Wednesday everyone?
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In many ways a disappointing finale to an often disappointing series, with its odd highlights along the way since the beginning of June. Without the White Room stunt it would have lost a lot of interesting friction and motivational debate etc., for example.
Luke A is likeable enough - but a winner? Reminds me of that likeable but nondescript lady who once won - Rachel Rice.
For me, Deana was crafty and her 'soldiers' and prayers won the day, so all credit to her. She strongly implied in her interview that some people took a dislike to her for no obvious reason even before getting to know her - in fact she said it many times in different words - and one can only infer that she is referring to racism. She may be right.
Thanks again, Marion, for your wonderful reports.
----
CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER: SUMMER 2012 HERE
www.nemonymous.com
Des Lewis - GESTALT REAL-TIME BOOK REVIEWS
A FEARLESS FAITH IN FICTION — THE PASSION OF THE READING MOMENT CRYSTALLISED — Empirical literary critiques from 2008 as based on purchased books.
Showing posts with label Lydia Louisa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lydia Louisa. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Friday, July 13, 2012
Big Brother - Summer 2012 (3)
CONTINUED FROM HERE
(13 July) I have a feeling that one of Lauren and Becky - and their definite personalities, often attractive, often not so - is heading towards winning BB. They both can act disarmingly well in roles beyond themselves. Not that I particularly like either of them!
The avant garde music that Conor elicited from his megaphone was an interesting highlight last night. But I still hope he goes tonight.
All in all it has not been an inspiring bunch of people this season compared to some previous ones, if 'inspiring' is not too strong a word to ever use about this programme! Unless they have new HMs, I can't see that changing.
I am finding the 'warden' task bitty and unsatisfying. Like the HMs themselves. And Sara Long-Legs does not seem to 'grow' as a character at all...
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Marion wrote HERE: "However, Sara was funny trying not to weep in the 'no cry' task. The shoogling in her chair and stamping of her feet when her MUm sent her love was comical. Then Ashleigh's 'no sound' task was very satisfying. She had about six rule breaks for squawking when 'rocks', and what looked like dead fish and birds, rained down on her head."
Yes, richly typical BB task outcomes. More natural than staged.
I agree that Shievonne was very engaging in her interview. In fact a natural TV star in the making, and maybe she will still make it. Pity this didn't shine out in the House.
And also agree that Conor will now be insufferable and I have severe doubts about his inner stability (despite what his mother and sister said as character witnesses)... Still I enjoyed the megaphone music more than Marion appeared to do! It synergised with Friday 13th and the First Night of the Proms that clashed with BB on another TV channel. Good job that with two brains inside my head, I can be in two places at once. Still I may miss BB tonight. Because sometimes I am nowhere.
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Marion Arnott wrote: "The meanness of Ashley, Becky, Carline and Conor was shown in their appropriation of the alcohol that BB deleivered to the house."
Ashley and Carline? Are they new HMs I've not yet noticed?
The scream task had one great spin-off, however: Marianne being able to post Munch's Scream on this thread.
I saw that painting in real life in Oslo a few years ago.
Another bitty show. The wine-pilfering will run and run.
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Marion wrote:
"Why is this ape still in the house? [...]
Caroline was at her whispering best - [...]
However, Ashleigh seems to have recognised something about Luke at last. In conversation with Conor, she remarked that in the photos, Luke's eyes looked like black holes, all screwed up. Yes, Ashleigh, dead black shark's eyes to go with his shark's grin."
Ape? Or gorilla? (and I echo the question!)
Susurrating Caroline continues to bundle herself bigger towards Becky's shape in some unconscious mimicry and fleshy masochism.
You are right, Marion, a better evening. And, indeed, by osmosis, Ashleigh seems to have already 'heard' what Luke S said about her during his own Carolingian self-puffing and hero-making calendarisation...
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Indeed, Becky as well as Lauren was very funny in the 'ugly' team - and I think I mentioned before that these two are potential winners for their gamesmanship and ability to act and throw themselves about.
I got the impression towards the end of the programme that at least two HMs were either genuinely cracking up into madness or pretending to do so for Pinteresque dramatic effect - Deana and Caroline.
Thought Conor looked good as the Sheriff. One of his better nights.
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(18 July) I am sure this programme can be fully enjoyed only through the eyes of Marion. That's why millions are tuning into her reports, I guess. A ho-down, a ho-up of a report, again and again, day after day. Thanks.
The discrete Becky-boob weigh-in was something to put in the Kinga annals of BB.
Jade returns even larger than life. RIP.
And Caroline is something smothering, and placating is almost always playacting. A moving mountain of towel as a theatrical aside.
I reckon they nominated Lauren because they think she is going to win.
Luke A to go on Friday, I say!!!
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Marion wrote: "Caroline also took her insecurities to BB. She broke down in there, gasping and squeaking apologies which were practically inaudible because she had dropped into that ghastly little Violet Elizabeth Botts voice she uses when she's in trouble. Distinctly audible were 'Weally weally weally sowwy, weally weally intended no harm, weally weally ...million times better with Luke A and Lauren next week. And she weally weally hates herself."
That really stood out as a Nikki 'who is she?' confessional moment but in a different form. Didn't quite come off, but stood out and expunged near all else for me last night. Thanks goodness again for Marion's incisive eye.
Several people now seem to be wearing those one-piece snowtime pajamas that Arron once wore. Arron? That seems an age away now.
Sara is straight-talking, indeed, but lacks a 'who is she?' moment so far - and, in a funny way, so is Ashleigh straight-talking. Essex straight-talking in her case. No faux-mance for her. The land is flat in Essex and clear-sighted. The coasts with endless horizons, sometimes empty, sometimes full of hidden wisdom that one can bring to those horizons.
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Did I actually hear Becky make the schoolyard joke that was around when I was young in the early 1950s? CONSTANTINOPLE is a long word - can you spell it?
There have been racial vibes in the house since this season started, I sense. Usually unspoken, often subtle, often unproven. The Curryhouse-gate incident is just one of them. The Shilpa Shetty incident casts its shadow every year on BB mores.
I wonder if the HMs realise they are going to miss the London Olympics? Is that why they often seem so sad.
Caroline acts as if she is about to divest herself from the mountain-of-towelling and dive in the archetypal Olympic pool. A catharsis not dissimilar to a body-and-soul baptism.
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Last night, I was both surprised and disappointed that Lauren was evicted instead of Luke A. It will be the programme's loss. She did however lead Adam on a bit, what they call a P****-teaser in polite circles. Her interview was very professional. She may have far to go.
Sara starred, meanwhile, with her lie detector test. Sadly, she is not a star who can be starred, though, other than by her looks. There is also a strange steely British supremacy undercurrent to her character that may appeal to some viewers and not to others.
Meanwhile, I did not cross my legs to test out Becky's p**** theory...
-------------------
I was wondering if Becky and Caroline were not so much laughing off the actual thought of close-to-hand sex acts of any sort within the BB House, but more a subconscious or conscious homophobic form of such a thought? To go alongside some HMs' subconscious or (partially concealed) conscious racism. A sad emblem for our times. Unspoken fears and antipathies pent up within an ostensible 'politically correct' society. And sometimes spoken rather than unspoken within closed social groups outside the House. Then breaking out of that pent up state during long hot summers...
I was cheering on Luke A via-a-vis Becky. I was astonished that Ashleigh broke his confidences, but having read Marion's report maybe I shouldn't have been. And indeed Luke A expected such an outcome? He is rewarding us for having been saved from eviction!
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(23 July) Scott talking like someone in Coronation Street and Sara dressed as a baby doll Queen Elizabeth II were the highlights.
Caroline and the Fish-Eye was a trauma and a half.
I felt sorry for Ashleigh. Hers was the only letter task that depended on overcoming a reflex or a glitch like a hiccough - i.e a lifetime of swearing between every other word. She was BOUND to fail.
I saw a trailer of Conor feeling sorry for Deana about her lack of a letter, but I can't recall seeing the incident in 'real-time' playback. Was it shown?
Becky has become a stranded form of an emotional sea-mammal. Excusable, though, when you're only 19.
------------
Marion wrote: "There wasn't a lot going on tonight and so I have only a few observations:"
Well, you could have fooled me! Another fulsome and generous supply of reported items. What would we do without Marion?
Ashleigh is rather buxom for her slender frame, I noted last night. The only item I can think to add.
Oh, and yes, Caroline's stern rabbit mouth when she tries to be serious. Not only casting aspersions but also then disowning them.
---------------
Marion wrote: "I'd rather look at Deana's, or even Adam's, than Becky's."
And talking of melons, I didn't get that game with the elastic bands, either, Marion. Until one of them spectacularly exploded. The nature of melons had previously escaped me.
I hope I don't hear a similar splatting noise when Luke S is in the vicinity.
And the fact that Becky was not nominated at all for eviction is something that religions are made of. An impossiblity.
Double eviction this week: Conor and Caroline!
Ashleigh or Deana or Scott eventually to win overall.
------------------
Well, I can't beat Marion's account (better than any other account on the whole internet) of the Ashleigh / Luke S 'fraughtmance'.
I'll just make mention of the GIANT slumber bed and its 'midnight feasts with crackly toffee paper' of the distaff soul. A quote I made much earlier on Facebook yesterday from 'Facial Justice' (1960) (the SF novel featuring the Tower of Ely Cathedral) by L.P. Hartley: "Little spirals of femininity had welled up in her, like bubbles in a soda-water siphon."
And those escapades contrasted with Albinoni's Adagio being played by the BB production team as background to an image of Luke A appearing as if he were about to appear in a Federico Fellini film...
----------------
Sara came out tonight - as her namesake Bernhardt:
The farrago of the Office games was hard to understand. Surely the others eventually realised Deana and Sara were cheating because they had a secret mission. They do say Hell is Other People. An 'In Camera' Hell must be even more severe.
------------
Thanks, Marion. What I was trying to remember was being woken up in the middle of the night in midsummer to enact a New Year's Eve party with all its joyous singing etc. A bleary-eyed bizazz that beats any theatrical performance of real dislocation I've ever witnessed.
Marion, are you sure that object that hit Caroline's face - with such subsequent wild playacting injury - was not caused by her own throwing it in the air playfully and failing to catch it? I can't recall it being thrown at her by someone else.
I may not be commenting again till Sunday.
----------------
The Olympic ceremony was interesting, better than I expected, but I didn't notice the giant bed, as I wasn't watching the whole time. The scene leading up to the five rings in the sky reminded me of a Wagner opera.
Meanwhile, Brian was right: the interview was as chaotic as Caroline's hair: symbolic of a negative synergy that (as Marion also says) is a bit worrying with regard to the prospect of her mental health following this experience.
An interesting case-study, not necessarily one that was comfortable to watch. I said early on she was one to watch. It turned out that I was right for the wrong reasons. She'll never be another Nikki.
--------------------
Nothing to add to that, Marion. You created a very interesting review of a relatively boring episode.
A quote from Nina Allan's excellent story in TTA's Black Static #29 (which I am real-time reviewing at the moment):
“It is true that I have formed friendships, intellectual and sometimes emotional alliances that lasted a decade or more. But the ending is always the same: a boredom that finally becomes so oppressive that I am driven to fabricate some feud or schism that explodes the relationship apart.”
Life is just a slow-motion version of Big Bother, I'd say.
Or Big Brother is a micro of life's macro.
---------------------
Marion wrote: "Sara also decided a few tears shed wouldn't do her cause any harm. She related the tale of how she and her Mother helped a man with nowhere to go by giving him the only thing he asked for - food. She complained about the lack of help for people like him and wept. Cool as cucumber, Deana told her about poverty in India and how she should be glad to live in Britain where the poverty of India is unknown. She said people did not appreciate how lucky they are to live here and that she is proud to be British. This forced Sara into agreeing with her and re-establishing her Unionist and Royalist credentials. Deana took the drama right out of Sara's control and made her look silly. Oh, that Deana is a clever one!"
The box game was OK. But that bit Marion describes above was the most remarkable event, with lots of fleeting emotions over some people's faces, hard to read, inscrutable, but there nevertheless and interpretable in various ways, especially when Deana praised living in England or was it Britain, seemingly giving a right-wing salute as she said it? Ironic or sincere or subconscious or simply misinterpretable? Sara and Ashleigh were particularly inscrutable listening to Deana. Sara's Bernhardt tears returned and, already knowing about her extreme idiosyncratic Royalism, this model makes a very strange mix. Shall I ever fathom these people, as in a all great dramas and literature?
More significantly, can they fathom themselves?
------------------
I wrote a week or so ago: "In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described by Marion above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!"
(31 July) The BB authorities obviously been reading this thread and pinched the idea.
Actually, like Marion, I thought it was a very good task. A lot of home truths shining through the self-theatre.
Sara seems to be growing middle-aged phsyically and mentally as day follows day in the House.
I still think Essex girl Ashleigh is a good bet for the eventual winner.
Deana's 'improvement' speech was well thought out and delivered.
CONTINUED HERE
----------------------------------
(13 July) I have a feeling that one of Lauren and Becky - and their definite personalities, often attractive, often not so - is heading towards winning BB. They both can act disarmingly well in roles beyond themselves. Not that I particularly like either of them!
The avant garde music that Conor elicited from his megaphone was an interesting highlight last night. But I still hope he goes tonight.
All in all it has not been an inspiring bunch of people this season compared to some previous ones, if 'inspiring' is not too strong a word to ever use about this programme! Unless they have new HMs, I can't see that changing.
I am finding the 'warden' task bitty and unsatisfying. Like the HMs themselves. And Sara Long-Legs does not seem to 'grow' as a character at all...
-------------
Marion wrote HERE: "However, Sara was funny trying not to weep in the 'no cry' task. The shoogling in her chair and stamping of her feet when her MUm sent her love was comical. Then Ashleigh's 'no sound' task was very satisfying. She had about six rule breaks for squawking when 'rocks', and what looked like dead fish and birds, rained down on her head."
Yes, richly typical BB task outcomes. More natural than staged.
I agree that Shievonne was very engaging in her interview. In fact a natural TV star in the making, and maybe she will still make it. Pity this didn't shine out in the House.
And also agree that Conor will now be insufferable and I have severe doubts about his inner stability (despite what his mother and sister said as character witnesses)... Still I enjoyed the megaphone music more than Marion appeared to do! It synergised with Friday 13th and the First Night of the Proms that clashed with BB on another TV channel. Good job that with two brains inside my head, I can be in two places at once. Still I may miss BB tonight. Because sometimes I am nowhere.
------------
Marion Arnott wrote: "The meanness of Ashley, Becky, Carline and Conor was shown in their appropriation of the alcohol that BB deleivered to the house."
Ashley and Carline? Are they new HMs I've not yet noticed?
The scream task had one great spin-off, however: Marianne being able to post Munch's Scream on this thread.
I saw that painting in real life in Oslo a few years ago.
Another bitty show. The wine-pilfering will run and run.
------------------
Marion wrote:
"Why is this ape still in the house? [...]
Caroline was at her whispering best - [...]
However, Ashleigh seems to have recognised something about Luke at last. In conversation with Conor, she remarked that in the photos, Luke's eyes looked like black holes, all screwed up. Yes, Ashleigh, dead black shark's eyes to go with his shark's grin."
Ape? Or gorilla? (and I echo the question!)
Susurrating Caroline continues to bundle herself bigger towards Becky's shape in some unconscious mimicry and fleshy masochism.
You are right, Marion, a better evening. And, indeed, by osmosis, Ashleigh seems to have already 'heard' what Luke S said about her during his own Carolingian self-puffing and hero-making calendarisation...
------------------
Indeed, Becky as well as Lauren was very funny in the 'ugly' team - and I think I mentioned before that these two are potential winners for their gamesmanship and ability to act and throw themselves about.
I got the impression towards the end of the programme that at least two HMs were either genuinely cracking up into madness or pretending to do so for Pinteresque dramatic effect - Deana and Caroline.
Thought Conor looked good as the Sheriff. One of his better nights.
------------
(18 July) I am sure this programme can be fully enjoyed only through the eyes of Marion. That's why millions are tuning into her reports, I guess. A ho-down, a ho-up of a report, again and again, day after day. Thanks.
The discrete Becky-boob weigh-in was something to put in the Kinga annals of BB.
Jade returns even larger than life. RIP.
And Caroline is something smothering, and placating is almost always playacting. A moving mountain of towel as a theatrical aside.
I reckon they nominated Lauren because they think she is going to win.
Luke A to go on Friday, I say!!!
-----------------
Marion wrote: "Caroline also took her insecurities to BB. She broke down in there, gasping and squeaking apologies which were practically inaudible because she had dropped into that ghastly little Violet Elizabeth Botts voice she uses when she's in trouble. Distinctly audible were 'Weally weally weally sowwy, weally weally intended no harm, weally weally ...million times better with Luke A and Lauren next week. And she weally weally hates herself."
That really stood out as a Nikki 'who is she?' confessional moment but in a different form. Didn't quite come off, but stood out and expunged near all else for me last night. Thanks goodness again for Marion's incisive eye.
Several people now seem to be wearing those one-piece snowtime pajamas that Arron once wore. Arron? That seems an age away now.
Sara is straight-talking, indeed, but lacks a 'who is she?' moment so far - and, in a funny way, so is Ashleigh straight-talking. Essex straight-talking in her case. No faux-mance for her. The land is flat in Essex and clear-sighted. The coasts with endless horizons, sometimes empty, sometimes full of hidden wisdom that one can bring to those horizons.
---------------
Did I actually hear Becky make the schoolyard joke that was around when I was young in the early 1950s? CONSTANTINOPLE is a long word - can you spell it?
There have been racial vibes in the house since this season started, I sense. Usually unspoken, often subtle, often unproven. The Curryhouse-gate incident is just one of them. The Shilpa Shetty incident casts its shadow every year on BB mores.
I wonder if the HMs realise they are going to miss the London Olympics? Is that why they often seem so sad.
Caroline acts as if she is about to divest herself from the mountain-of-towelling and dive in the archetypal Olympic pool. A catharsis not dissimilar to a body-and-soul baptism.
---------------
Last night, I was both surprised and disappointed that Lauren was evicted instead of Luke A. It will be the programme's loss. She did however lead Adam on a bit, what they call a P****-teaser in polite circles. Her interview was very professional. She may have far to go.
Sara starred, meanwhile, with her lie detector test. Sadly, she is not a star who can be starred, though, other than by her looks. There is also a strange steely British supremacy undercurrent to her character that may appeal to some viewers and not to others.
Meanwhile, I did not cross my legs to test out Becky's p**** theory...
-------------------
I was wondering if Becky and Caroline were not so much laughing off the actual thought of close-to-hand sex acts of any sort within the BB House, but more a subconscious or conscious homophobic form of such a thought? To go alongside some HMs' subconscious or (partially concealed) conscious racism. A sad emblem for our times. Unspoken fears and antipathies pent up within an ostensible 'politically correct' society. And sometimes spoken rather than unspoken within closed social groups outside the House. Then breaking out of that pent up state during long hot summers...
I was cheering on Luke A via-a-vis Becky. I was astonished that Ashleigh broke his confidences, but having read Marion's report maybe I shouldn't have been. And indeed Luke A expected such an outcome? He is rewarding us for having been saved from eviction!
-------------
(23 July) Scott talking like someone in Coronation Street and Sara dressed as a baby doll Queen Elizabeth II were the highlights.
Caroline and the Fish-Eye was a trauma and a half.
I felt sorry for Ashleigh. Hers was the only letter task that depended on overcoming a reflex or a glitch like a hiccough - i.e a lifetime of swearing between every other word. She was BOUND to fail.
I saw a trailer of Conor feeling sorry for Deana about her lack of a letter, but I can't recall seeing the incident in 'real-time' playback. Was it shown?
Becky has become a stranded form of an emotional sea-mammal. Excusable, though, when you're only 19.
------------
Marion wrote: "There wasn't a lot going on tonight and so I have only a few observations:"
Well, you could have fooled me! Another fulsome and generous supply of reported items. What would we do without Marion?
Ashleigh is rather buxom for her slender frame, I noted last night. The only item I can think to add.
Oh, and yes, Caroline's stern rabbit mouth when she tries to be serious. Not only casting aspersions but also then disowning them.
---------------
Marion wrote: "I'd rather look at Deana's, or even Adam's, than Becky's."
And talking of melons, I didn't get that game with the elastic bands, either, Marion. Until one of them spectacularly exploded. The nature of melons had previously escaped me.
I hope I don't hear a similar splatting noise when Luke S is in the vicinity.
And the fact that Becky was not nominated at all for eviction is something that religions are made of. An impossiblity.
Double eviction this week: Conor and Caroline!
Ashleigh or Deana or Scott eventually to win overall.
------------------
Well, I can't beat Marion's account (better than any other account on the whole internet) of the Ashleigh / Luke S 'fraughtmance'.
I'll just make mention of the GIANT slumber bed and its 'midnight feasts with crackly toffee paper' of the distaff soul. A quote I made much earlier on Facebook yesterday from 'Facial Justice' (1960) (the SF novel featuring the Tower of Ely Cathedral) by L.P. Hartley: "Little spirals of femininity had welled up in her, like bubbles in a soda-water siphon."
And those escapades contrasted with Albinoni's Adagio being played by the BB production team as background to an image of Luke A appearing as if he were about to appear in a Federico Fellini film...
----------------
The farrago of the Office games was hard to understand. Surely the others eventually realised Deana and Sara were cheating because they had a secret mission. They do say Hell is Other People. An 'In Camera' Hell must be even more severe.
------------
Thanks, Marion. What I was trying to remember was being woken up in the middle of the night in midsummer to enact a New Year's Eve party with all its joyous singing etc. A bleary-eyed bizazz that beats any theatrical performance of real dislocation I've ever witnessed.
Marion, are you sure that object that hit Caroline's face - with such subsequent wild playacting injury - was not caused by her own throwing it in the air playfully and failing to catch it? I can't recall it being thrown at her by someone else.
I may not be commenting again till Sunday.
----------------
The Olympic ceremony was interesting, better than I expected, but I didn't notice the giant bed, as I wasn't watching the whole time. The scene leading up to the five rings in the sky reminded me of a Wagner opera.
Meanwhile, Brian was right: the interview was as chaotic as Caroline's hair: symbolic of a negative synergy that (as Marion also says) is a bit worrying with regard to the prospect of her mental health following this experience.
An interesting case-study, not necessarily one that was comfortable to watch. I said early on she was one to watch. It turned out that I was right for the wrong reasons. She'll never be another Nikki.
--------------------
Nothing to add to that, Marion. You created a very interesting review of a relatively boring episode.
A quote from Nina Allan's excellent story in TTA's Black Static #29 (which I am real-time reviewing at the moment):
“It is true that I have formed friendships, intellectual and sometimes emotional alliances that lasted a decade or more. But the ending is always the same: a boredom that finally becomes so oppressive that I am driven to fabricate some feud or schism that explodes the relationship apart.”
Life is just a slow-motion version of Big Bother, I'd say.
Or Big Brother is a micro of life's macro.
---------------------
Marion wrote: "Sara also decided a few tears shed wouldn't do her cause any harm. She related the tale of how she and her Mother helped a man with nowhere to go by giving him the only thing he asked for - food. She complained about the lack of help for people like him and wept. Cool as cucumber, Deana told her about poverty in India and how she should be glad to live in Britain where the poverty of India is unknown. She said people did not appreciate how lucky they are to live here and that she is proud to be British. This forced Sara into agreeing with her and re-establishing her Unionist and Royalist credentials. Deana took the drama right out of Sara's control and made her look silly. Oh, that Deana is a clever one!"
The box game was OK. But that bit Marion describes above was the most remarkable event, with lots of fleeting emotions over some people's faces, hard to read, inscrutable, but there nevertheless and interpretable in various ways, especially when Deana praised living in England or was it Britain, seemingly giving a right-wing salute as she said it? Ironic or sincere or subconscious or simply misinterpretable? Sara and Ashleigh were particularly inscrutable listening to Deana. Sara's Bernhardt tears returned and, already knowing about her extreme idiosyncratic Royalism, this model makes a very strange mix. Shall I ever fathom these people, as in a all great dramas and literature?
More significantly, can they fathom themselves?
------------------
I wrote a week or so ago: "In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described by Marion above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!"
(31 July) The BB authorities obviously been reading this thread and pinched the idea.
Actually, like Marion, I thought it was a very good task. A lot of home truths shining through the self-theatre.
Sara seems to be growing middle-aged phsyically and mentally as day follows day in the House.
I still think Essex girl Ashleigh is a good bet for the eventual winner.
Deana's 'improvement' speech was well thought out and delivered.
CONTINUED HERE
----------------------------------
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Big Brother - Summer 2012 (2)
CONTINUED FROM HERE
(24 June) Marion wrote: and Lauren , although willing, not particularly impressed by his efforts to massage.
She seemed to go the extra mile, though, in her willingness!
A great report, Marion. Nothing else to add or subtract.
-------------
With all the excitement of England versus Italy last night, BB took a bit of a backseat. But I did note one birthday party versus another birthday party to become the Platonic Form of Birthday Party. The rude awakening regarding life's penalty shoot-off is that any Platonic Form is infiltrated by fallible humanity and Clockwork eye-decor. Even Fallibility itself is not what it was.
We go through life with eyes wide shut.
Thanks, again, Marion, for your infallible reports keeping me up to speed. (BTW I believe it's Conor not Connor)
--------------------
Marion wrote: "gender insults abounded [...] We're right, Des - this is not a likeable house."
The only feasible likeables are Deana and Luke A, I feel. And perhaps Sara. Otherwise, not a good crowd, and mostly boring people, too (other than Lydia). So I don't know what BB is going to do to make this a likeable season in the weeks ahead. My spirit drops.
Agree that Conor is not only short of something vital in the intelligence stakes but also showed a very ugly side yesterday and BB should have evicted him. However did he pass the original audition?
Only glad that race doesn't seem to have come into it. On the surface anyway, with this factor having been drummed into all HMs, no doubt, following the Shilpa Shetty matter. But endemic 'genderism' has come into it and BB should deal appropriately with all such attitudes.
-----------------
Well, another big beast is liable to go on Friday: Lydia; Dislikeable yet interesting. A future politician on the centre right.
Caroline listed out the city venues for her Romantic 'Grand Tour' of Europe when she eventually meets the man who wants to care and service her. A highlight of the season so far. Luke A suggested St Petersburg would be better than Moscow in her list. I agree.
------------------
Marion wrote: "hashing"
A new technical term for applying internet social media methods to real life situations, situations like Reality TV, even Reality itself!
Lydia was hashing hard last night in the diary room in a ploy to stay in the house. See the sparkle in her eye, see the metaphorical moustache of mischief being preened and then tagged?
Caroline - no doubt my favourite housemate from day one (even before she said anything) - who nevertheless goes up and down in my estimation day by day - is today's H. Rider Haggard 'She' or Mrs Bennett in the making (even Lady Catherine de Burgh) or an EM Forster heroine who yearns interechangeably for a room with a view and a passage to India. Travel by sedan chair or rickshaw (who's he) if not by motorised hash tag.
--------------
Marion wrote: "Oops! BB's nerve was struck and Caroline was summoned to the Diary Room and given a formal warning about what she had said. For a moment I thought BB was referring to her remark about his having no sanitation (her grammar is execrable) but no, he hinted tentatively about racism and then threatened her with removal from the house. Is she racist? I really don't know - there's no art to find the mind's construction in a word - but I find it odd that she can be threatened with removal for a single word while Conor can contemplate beating a woman and raping her with a hairbrush and only be gently chided."
Indeed, Marion.
And love Caroline or hate her, she certainly has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about her. A talking point so much more credible than Benedict.
Deana to go tonight, I say.
--------------------
Marion wrote: "So. The game is all over bar th shouting, isn't it. Luke S's group outnumber the outsider group by a wide margin. Next week, either Deana, Scott, Adam or Lauren goes...and the others will soon follow."
I think you and I should go in there as wild cards: Marion of Diamonds and Des of Spades.
Lydia was supposed to have a famous boy friend but when she got out, I didn't recognise him. Who is he? Who is he?
I agree with what you say about Ashleigh's behaviour. Being an Essex boy through and through, I assure you she is not typical. But Essex is getting infamous... When I was young, it was simply another county.
---------------
(1 July): Thanks for another excellent report, Marion.
Scott is actually quite shrewd, amid his posh accentuation of vowels and consonants, describing the 'presence' or lack of it with the then potential of Lydia or Deana going. He is pontifical, strangely with his hair (that Marion once described as his brain bursting through the top of his skull) now shaped into a kippah-like eruption of orange-knitted lava. Also his kamikaze belittling of the Conor-'purchased' table (almost its phenomenological conception as the essence of Table) was like watching the Martyrdom of St Sebastian...stuck all over with toy-footballers on spinning stakes.
Becky's internal thigh slapping - after Deana describing her as possessiing the Wonder of being comfortable in her own skin - was something that martyred us viewers...
----------------
I agree Deana was the star in 'calling' the Luke S and Ashleigh fauxmance. But she, too, is perhaps operating her own moral sting... A fauxmance between two chancers (or one chancer and one gullible individual) and a crusade (such as Deana's) on an unprovable point are both game-ploys that have grown up with BB over the years.
I think I'd keep a cool ployless, plotless head ... like Caroline?
---------------
I'm glad you didn't divulge tonight's nominations here ahead of time, Marion. BB's Reality should not become real-time! I look forward to their gradual 'evolution' tonight.
Caroline's stony-faced assurance about who had not talked to her in the last three days begs the question of why she had not talked to them. Ever the mirror reflected back, that lady.
Although I think Deana is playing a game, I'm glad Luke S is rattled. Don't like him.
The Shievonne task was indeed brilliant and natuarlly flowed from her earlier Clownophobia (is there a more psychologically technical expression for that? Like the Stephen King Red Nose and Custard Pie Syndrome?)
------------
Coulrophobia, apparently!
------------
(4 July) Scott Gyrning
I continue to find Marion's reports invaluable for many reasons, e.g. because of the way the Housemates' gyrning and making Pinteresque absurdisms, rolling their eyes up into whites (particularly Caroline) and generally blocking sense with veils of misgotten telepathy-with-grunts-grins-and-gawps. But Marion miraculously seems to be able to transcend all this with her TTA Forum reports. The masque that rolls beneath the Geordie chanting of the Marcus over-voice that seems merely to achieve punctuating further diversions of sense.
An interesting foursome up for grabs this week. I hope Conor goes (he must have conned the auditioners for BB about his true nature). But I fear that Marion may be right about the fulsome current of the Beck flowing ineluctably back to source upon a wave of the TV audience's tactile voting.
Today is Higgs boson day - finding the dirty Diamond in the Cern Zoo. Seems somehow to be running parallel with BB.
----------------------
Marion wrote: "Is the world ready for yet another fauxmance?"
Or grosmance (pronounced growmance) where a fauxmance becomes real and/or gross with mass or dark matter -- or grows or morphs into something other than faux, if only in the self-deceived minds of the participants of whatever 'mance' it is.
Becky in trousers; I had to laugh at Big Brother saying he couldn't see her legs as they were in army camouflage trousers.
There is a lot of physical and mental gurning going on: even the furniture going green and blue with its own camouflage of 'genius loci'. (Sorry I mispelt gurning as gyrning yesterday: it was almost as if the word itself had started gurning: a vexed texture of text).
The world may have discovered the Higgs boson (or at least its lookalike) and Reality itself (as an extrapolation of Reality TV) has effectively started its gurning process: almost the opening of a Pandora's Box by the discovery of the 'God particle'; the next step will be Avian Flu passing human to human, I fear.
The Big Brother House: the ultimate CERN Zoo.
Meanwhile, I pray (not too strong a word) that Conor is gurnt off on Friday, the scorched earth of his designer stubble on his extended chin and all.
(From Wikipedia: "A typical gurn might involve projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible, and covering the upper lip with the lower lip, though there are other possibilities.")
--------------------
Marion wrote: "It's coming to something when a man who has spent time in one of America's prisons can be shocked by the behaviour of Britain's youth."
Proof that BB isn't just silly games but a Morailty Tale, too.
But the HMs' heads acting as green or blue loo-brushes was a real 'Happening'! A bit too bitty last night, though. We all know who we hope is going tonight. Becky is shaping up better, so I hope it's not her at least.
----------------
Marion wrote: "A lesson must surely have been learned here - you cannot make people see things your way; there is such a thing as objective reality. He tried to drown out their protests by talking over them (he's what my Gran used to refer to as a wee yap o' hell)..."
A lesson for us all, indeed, as this Morality Tale - with Classical Horror's Hubris and Nemesis - Shakesperean even - perspicaciously rolls on. During the live streaming on 5* between cup and interview's lip, it became Continental Art Cinema of the Sixties with close-ups dwelling on faces, almost in dreamy slow-motion as emotions flickered between expressions that escaped involuntarily or were poised deliberately before slipping away again: a true revelation, brilliant TV as only Reality TV of this nature can achieve.
Marion is spot on with her epithet about the interviewee: "prize prat". And about everything else she says above. It turned out perfectly for justice, leaving Conor marooned in his own Sophoclean Tragedy, with Marion and I -- and other members of the audience with whom I'm in touch osmotically -- the Greek Chorus.
------------------
(8 July) Marion wrote: "On this board, we talk a great deal about how HMs true characters are revealed in the house but so, it must be said, are the characters of commentators."
We reflect back from the stagings of others in the march of life. And by watching Reality TV we can perhaps fathom even more our own motivations for better or worse.
"It is a dark and opaque side to ourselves, one that we leave untreated at our own peril, but it is also a source of endless humour and amazement, so that we can also enjoy the subject as we suffer it." Robert Trivers
And thus gratifying to see grizzled Conor blubbing in the arms of Luke S. But, meanwhile, we tell ourselves that we were born to love and be loved, even Conor...
The enduring image for me last night was the blue towelling of a mountainous Sultan from Sinbad's days attempting to mimick another religion in the shape of a Buddha with the disarming drawback of speaking from Caroline's face.
----------------
Marion said: "She reminded me of that blue caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland!"
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way –"
My highlight was Scott reciting that in his articulate poshese from beneath his kippah of orange brain-hair.
Yes, the Shievonne jape is to turn seeeerious... Adam, watch out.
That is brilliant, Marion, your blue caterpillar Caroline.
My original conceit above was a merging of these two:
And this is the current Diary Room chair:
-----------------
Marion wrote: "Conor is a man of few words - so he just keeps repeating them."
Indeed. And when a love-circle was proposed he probably first thought of something else.
Seriously, I think BB stepped over the mark with the entrapment of Adam. Made it more into a voyeuristic hothouse psychological investigation into human behaviour when taken to extremes of personal interaction rather than a Reality TV game which often borders on that 'hothouse', true, but hopefully doesn't cross the line into deliberate manipulative cruelty.
-----------------
Marion wrote re Shievonne: "She flapped them at BB, threw them up in the air, then from side to side, even circled her own head with them - a magician making magic passes. She said she'll be carried out of the house on a stretcher and duly crossed her arms over her chest to symbolise a corpse."
In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!
Like Marion, I have no idea re the unseen backstory of Sara and Luke A.
I think Caroline at one point said that Scott would win this BB season. I'm beginning to think she's right.
----------------
Yes, I forgot Sara is an ultra-Royalist. Ashleigh looks like a frail flower of an innocent abroad, as you imply, Marion, but in nobody else has there been an innocence so subsumed by an inner archetypal Essexisation...and, meanwhile, even I knew that the Queen's dogs are corgis.
I still depend on your reports to set me straight, Marion. Until I read it this morning, I thought last night's show was confusing, mostly inaudible and boring, and I see I was right on the first two but not, retrocausally, on the third!
Conor to go tomorrow night!
CONTINUED HERE
(24 June) Marion wrote: and Lauren , although willing, not particularly impressed by his efforts to massage.
She seemed to go the extra mile, though, in her willingness!
A great report, Marion. Nothing else to add or subtract.
-------------
With all the excitement of England versus Italy last night, BB took a bit of a backseat. But I did note one birthday party versus another birthday party to become the Platonic Form of Birthday Party. The rude awakening regarding life's penalty shoot-off is that any Platonic Form is infiltrated by fallible humanity and Clockwork eye-decor. Even Fallibility itself is not what it was.
We go through life with eyes wide shut.
Thanks, again, Marion, for your infallible reports keeping me up to speed. (BTW I believe it's Conor not Connor)
--------------------
Marion wrote: "gender insults abounded [...] We're right, Des - this is not a likeable house."
The only feasible likeables are Deana and Luke A, I feel. And perhaps Sara. Otherwise, not a good crowd, and mostly boring people, too (other than Lydia). So I don't know what BB is going to do to make this a likeable season in the weeks ahead. My spirit drops.
Agree that Conor is not only short of something vital in the intelligence stakes but also showed a very ugly side yesterday and BB should have evicted him. However did he pass the original audition?
Only glad that race doesn't seem to have come into it. On the surface anyway, with this factor having been drummed into all HMs, no doubt, following the Shilpa Shetty matter. But endemic 'genderism' has come into it and BB should deal appropriately with all such attitudes.
-----------------
Well, another big beast is liable to go on Friday: Lydia; Dislikeable yet interesting. A future politician on the centre right.
Caroline listed out the city venues for her Romantic 'Grand Tour' of Europe when she eventually meets the man who wants to care and service her. A highlight of the season so far. Luke A suggested St Petersburg would be better than Moscow in her list. I agree.
------------------
Marion wrote: "hashing"
A new technical term for applying internet social media methods to real life situations, situations like Reality TV, even Reality itself!
Lydia was hashing hard last night in the diary room in a ploy to stay in the house. See the sparkle in her eye, see the metaphorical moustache of mischief being preened and then tagged?
Caroline - no doubt my favourite housemate from day one (even before she said anything) - who nevertheless goes up and down in my estimation day by day - is today's H. Rider Haggard 'She' or Mrs Bennett in the making (even Lady Catherine de Burgh) or an EM Forster heroine who yearns interechangeably for a room with a view and a passage to India. Travel by sedan chair or rickshaw (who's he) if not by motorised hash tag.
--------------
Marion wrote: "Oops! BB's nerve was struck and Caroline was summoned to the Diary Room and given a formal warning about what she had said. For a moment I thought BB was referring to her remark about his having no sanitation (her grammar is execrable) but no, he hinted tentatively about racism and then threatened her with removal from the house. Is she racist? I really don't know - there's no art to find the mind's construction in a word - but I find it odd that she can be threatened with removal for a single word while Conor can contemplate beating a woman and raping her with a hairbrush and only be gently chided."
Indeed, Marion.
And love Caroline or hate her, she certainly has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about her. A talking point so much more credible than Benedict.
Deana to go tonight, I say.
--------------------
Marion wrote: "So. The game is all over bar th shouting, isn't it. Luke S's group outnumber the outsider group by a wide margin. Next week, either Deana, Scott, Adam or Lauren goes...and the others will soon follow."
I think you and I should go in there as wild cards: Marion of Diamonds and Des of Spades.
Lydia was supposed to have a famous boy friend but when she got out, I didn't recognise him. Who is he? Who is he?
I agree with what you say about Ashleigh's behaviour. Being an Essex boy through and through, I assure you she is not typical. But Essex is getting infamous... When I was young, it was simply another county.
---------------
(1 July): Thanks for another excellent report, Marion.
Scott is actually quite shrewd, amid his posh accentuation of vowels and consonants, describing the 'presence' or lack of it with the then potential of Lydia or Deana going. He is pontifical, strangely with his hair (that Marion once described as his brain bursting through the top of his skull) now shaped into a kippah-like eruption of orange-knitted lava. Also his kamikaze belittling of the Conor-'purchased' table (almost its phenomenological conception as the essence of Table) was like watching the Martyrdom of St Sebastian...stuck all over with toy-footballers on spinning stakes.
Becky's internal thigh slapping - after Deana describing her as possessiing the Wonder of being comfortable in her own skin - was something that martyred us viewers...
----------------
I agree Deana was the star in 'calling' the Luke S and Ashleigh fauxmance. But she, too, is perhaps operating her own moral sting... A fauxmance between two chancers (or one chancer and one gullible individual) and a crusade (such as Deana's) on an unprovable point are both game-ploys that have grown up with BB over the years.
I think I'd keep a cool ployless, plotless head ... like Caroline?
---------------
I'm glad you didn't divulge tonight's nominations here ahead of time, Marion. BB's Reality should not become real-time! I look forward to their gradual 'evolution' tonight.
Caroline's stony-faced assurance about who had not talked to her in the last three days begs the question of why she had not talked to them. Ever the mirror reflected back, that lady.
Although I think Deana is playing a game, I'm glad Luke S is rattled. Don't like him.
The Shievonne task was indeed brilliant and natuarlly flowed from her earlier Clownophobia (is there a more psychologically technical expression for that? Like the Stephen King Red Nose and Custard Pie Syndrome?)
------------
Coulrophobia, apparently!
------------
(4 July) Scott Gyrning
I continue to find Marion's reports invaluable for many reasons, e.g. because of the way the Housemates' gyrning and making Pinteresque absurdisms, rolling their eyes up into whites (particularly Caroline) and generally blocking sense with veils of misgotten telepathy-with-grunts-grins-and-gawps. But Marion miraculously seems to be able to transcend all this with her TTA Forum reports. The masque that rolls beneath the Geordie chanting of the Marcus over-voice that seems merely to achieve punctuating further diversions of sense.
An interesting foursome up for grabs this week. I hope Conor goes (he must have conned the auditioners for BB about his true nature). But I fear that Marion may be right about the fulsome current of the Beck flowing ineluctably back to source upon a wave of the TV audience's tactile voting.
Today is Higgs boson day - finding the dirty Diamond in the Cern Zoo. Seems somehow to be running parallel with BB.
----------------------
Marion wrote: "Is the world ready for yet another fauxmance?"
Or grosmance (pronounced growmance) where a fauxmance becomes real and/or gross with mass or dark matter -- or grows or morphs into something other than faux, if only in the self-deceived minds of the participants of whatever 'mance' it is.
Becky in trousers; I had to laugh at Big Brother saying he couldn't see her legs as they were in army camouflage trousers.
There is a lot of physical and mental gurning going on: even the furniture going green and blue with its own camouflage of 'genius loci'. (Sorry I mispelt gurning as gyrning yesterday: it was almost as if the word itself had started gurning: a vexed texture of text).
The world may have discovered the Higgs boson (or at least its lookalike) and Reality itself (as an extrapolation of Reality TV) has effectively started its gurning process: almost the opening of a Pandora's Box by the discovery of the 'God particle'; the next step will be Avian Flu passing human to human, I fear.
The Big Brother House: the ultimate CERN Zoo.
Meanwhile, I pray (not too strong a word) that Conor is gurnt off on Friday, the scorched earth of his designer stubble on his extended chin and all.
(From Wikipedia: "A typical gurn might involve projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible, and covering the upper lip with the lower lip, though there are other possibilities.")
--------------------
Marion wrote: "It's coming to something when a man who has spent time in one of America's prisons can be shocked by the behaviour of Britain's youth."
Proof that BB isn't just silly games but a Morailty Tale, too.
But the HMs' heads acting as green or blue loo-brushes was a real 'Happening'! A bit too bitty last night, though. We all know who we hope is going tonight. Becky is shaping up better, so I hope it's not her at least.
----------------
Marion wrote: "A lesson must surely have been learned here - you cannot make people see things your way; there is such a thing as objective reality. He tried to drown out their protests by talking over them (he's what my Gran used to refer to as a wee yap o' hell)..."
A lesson for us all, indeed, as this Morality Tale - with Classical Horror's Hubris and Nemesis - Shakesperean even - perspicaciously rolls on. During the live streaming on 5* between cup and interview's lip, it became Continental Art Cinema of the Sixties with close-ups dwelling on faces, almost in dreamy slow-motion as emotions flickered between expressions that escaped involuntarily or were poised deliberately before slipping away again: a true revelation, brilliant TV as only Reality TV of this nature can achieve.
Marion is spot on with her epithet about the interviewee: "prize prat". And about everything else she says above. It turned out perfectly for justice, leaving Conor marooned in his own Sophoclean Tragedy, with Marion and I -- and other members of the audience with whom I'm in touch osmotically -- the Greek Chorus.
------------------
(8 July) Marion wrote: "On this board, we talk a great deal about how HMs true characters are revealed in the house but so, it must be said, are the characters of commentators."
We reflect back from the stagings of others in the march of life. And by watching Reality TV we can perhaps fathom even more our own motivations for better or worse.
"It is a dark and opaque side to ourselves, one that we leave untreated at our own peril, but it is also a source of endless humour and amazement, so that we can also enjoy the subject as we suffer it." Robert Trivers
And thus gratifying to see grizzled Conor blubbing in the arms of Luke S. But, meanwhile, we tell ourselves that we were born to love and be loved, even Conor...
The enduring image for me last night was the blue towelling of a mountainous Sultan from Sinbad's days attempting to mimick another religion in the shape of a Buddha with the disarming drawback of speaking from Caroline's face.
----------------
Marion said: "She reminded me of that blue caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland!"
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way –"
My highlight was Scott reciting that in his articulate poshese from beneath his kippah of orange brain-hair.
Yes, the Shievonne jape is to turn seeeerious... Adam, watch out.
That is brilliant, Marion, your blue caterpillar Caroline.
My original conceit above was a merging of these two:
Marion wrote: "Conor is a man of few words - so he just keeps repeating them."
Indeed. And when a love-circle was proposed he probably first thought of something else.
Seriously, I think BB stepped over the mark with the entrapment of Adam. Made it more into a voyeuristic hothouse psychological investigation into human behaviour when taken to extremes of personal interaction rather than a Reality TV game which often borders on that 'hothouse', true, but hopefully doesn't cross the line into deliberate manipulative cruelty.
-----------------
Marion wrote re Shievonne: "She flapped them at BB, threw them up in the air, then from side to side, even circled her own head with them - a magician making magic passes. She said she'll be carried out of the house on a stretcher and duly crossed her arms over her chest to symbolise a corpse."
In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!
Like Marion, I have no idea re the unseen backstory of Sara and Luke A.
I think Caroline at one point said that Scott would win this BB season. I'm beginning to think she's right.
----------------
Yes, I forgot Sara is an ultra-Royalist. Ashleigh looks like a frail flower of an innocent abroad, as you imply, Marion, but in nobody else has there been an innocence so subsumed by an inner archetypal Essexisation...and, meanwhile, even I knew that the Queen's dogs are corgis.
I still depend on your reports to set me straight, Marion. Until I read it this morning, I thought last night's show was confusing, mostly inaudible and boring, and I see I was right on the first two but not, retrocausally, on the third!
Conor to go tomorrow night!
CONTINUED HERE
Thursday, June 07, 2012
Big Brother - Summer 2012
Continued from HERE
Copied and pasted from the discussion with Marion HERE
[Adam Kelly, Arron Lowe, Ashleigh Hughes, Benedict Garret, CarolineWharram, Chris James, Conor McIntyre, Deana Uppal, Lauren Carre, Luke Anderson, Luke Scrase, Lydia Louisa, Sara McLean, Scott Mason, Shievonne Robinson, Victoria Eisermann] [Later: Becky Hannon]
Hey, I've just realised it's started tonight!!! I'll have to catch up - hoping that Marion does her usual aide memoire. Seriously, I may not have much time this season to watch it regularly.
I've just had a quick look. They all seem like model men and women of a similar age (all good looking) out to get a career in show business. A bit of a talent show rather than the old-fashioned Big Brother...
-----------
I saw some of last night. A crowd of people growing on me. Some interesting individuals. I hope we're not going to have Shilpa Shetty type trouble surrounding Deana! A charming woman. Not sure about my fellow Essex-mate, though (Ashleigh?). Quite like Lydia's eventual attitude to her nomination. Hopes she doesn't go.
The usual sex talk gets a bit boring, though. And was that someone with a sock tattooed to his foot and calf? i.e a real tattoo looking as if it is a sock!? Seems a symbol for our times.
----------------------
I got fed up with the Luke A's 'backstory'. Loved the way Chris brought his chipmunk voice into the sexual spectrum vis a vis this backstory. I couldn't concentrate at all well last night, because I think there are too many people and I get confused. I shall hopefully come into my own once the population has reached ten.
Who is the one with the tattooed sock? I've forgotten. I really think this 'sock' is a symbol for our times and for this population of shuttling counters on the ludo board of mock-celebrity amid theatrically projected intention and misintention.
---------------------
There was a storm outside making the eviction's process within the studio. Later there was another storm - a sudden squawking tornado - now inside the House itself. Becky Hannon. Only 19 but looks like an unwrinkled middle-ager. The hot tub overflowed when her first action was getting into it. But that fulsome gushing was caused by the tornado's lamina flows rather than the water's meniscus displacement. Mustn't be ungallant.
Victoria was rather engaging in her interview. A sad loss.
Lauren is developing as a character....an interesting face.
Must take a closer look at Caroline...I hadn't really noticed her before her tub-side chat with the Becky-in-eruption-eructation.
-----------------
Yes, Chris entered my radar with an accreting splurge like (the title is an ink blot) by Gahan Wilson - for all the reasons Marion gives HERE. This show is shaping up with grotesque promise. Not sure I can stand the pace!
(I'm not sure why - but I think Caroline is one for my radar to watch out for.)
------------------
(11 June) I've been spending all day wondering what to add to Marion's wonderful report of last night's programme. The housemates are promising a classic BB season, and my worst fears on day one are not being borne out. Worst fears about humanity however are being borne out by this series, but in the interests of a case study constructively derived from Reality TV. Best hopes don't always give us best food for thought ... about life, the universe, everything.
LATER: Well, tonight's episode provides an interesting psychological dilemma or conundrum regarding Becky's special mission via-a-vis Deana, and her reaction, and then Becky's counter-reaction. The ladies here are quite complex, as is Sara (with her Royalism and her under-the blanket chat with Becky, although this has vibes of the school playground) and Lydia claiming she is "being fed to a pack of wolves like a slab of meat". I'm sure there are hidden depths to Caroline, too - but we are never allowed see her to test this theory out. And Lauren is interesting, too, with a vague pouting 'clown' face that resonates with Caroline's.
----------------------
Marion wrote HERE: ... His stiff gelled hair looks as if his brains are seeping through his skull - Thanks for the apt description of Scott, Marion.
Day by day, we are ever being entrammelled by the collective guile and naivety of this whole group. I can't believe Becky is only 19. That bit about the moon, wasn't she talking about mooning rather than being a moon.
Benedict: his talk of 'pleasuring' in the bath and the way he said it to camera plus his whole persona and backstory - he is the only real sore thumb. The sooner he goes the better.
But of the two up for nomination, I prefer Arron to go.
And we got a better view of Caroline last night. She is a half-garbled throwaway line in the collectivity but often throwaway lines are important.
-------------------
One of the best BB tasks ever - the prevent-yourself-laughing-or-grinning task in the face of clowns (both funny and Shievonnesque) - stilted and pie-chucking ... and in face of the natural tendency for mankind to laugh or grin when amused, emabrrassed, scared and simply 'at sea' in life's interactions. They even had the real Keith Harris and Orville turn up to ignite laughter.
The HMs were like Frankenstein's monsters trying (and often failing) to mould their faces by gyrning or gawping or yawning towards a serious expression without their fragile humanity also cracking - cracking in mirth and/or the general entrropy of self-made monsters. Arron's costumes he was made to wear by BB were just one ingredient in this thought-provoking as well as hilarious task. And Caroline's and Benedict's imperviously straight faces.
If one takes Chris at face value, he is out of his depth on the show - cracking up in a way that is painful to watch - and he should go tomorrow for his own sake.
-----------------------------
(15 June) Marion wrote: In the end, he came across as a multifaith atheist.
Well, however much we dislike the persona presented on BB by Benedict, he has created a new term in the Philosophy of Religion! Breaking new ground even on Google! Thanks, Marion.
Chris and Caroline are interesting characters, and I agree that the latter showed her dark side yesterday, but there is something attractively intractable or inscrutable about her - and her hair.
Isn't Sara tall? Ostensibly, the younger man's eye candy of this BB season. I can't talk for old men yet! But her slavish Monarchism of the UK kind seems both complex and simple-minded. Which goes back to my idea of this BB Collectivity of Guile and Naivety, not something simply cross-sectioning at times the group piecemeal (i.e. individual 1 (being guileful), individual 2 (being naive)) but often cross-sectioning each discrete individual within the group.
------------------
To add to Marion's report - we saw Benedict struggling against himself naturally defaulting towards being the group's 'Daddy' or alpha male.
In many ways, sorry to see Chris go. He had so much more to give. A self-proclaimed alpha male, but within an imaginary alphabet with only one letter: not omega, but helium.
--------------------
Marion wrote: The other day, Benedict established himself as a multi-faith atheist. Tonight he has declared himself a multi-sexual heterosexual. [...]Talk about trying to please all of the people all of the time...
Indeed!
I am grateful for your reports, Marion, not only for their scintillating shafts of wisdom, wit and sharp observation (I mean that genuinely), but also because I often can't hear what the HMs are saying to each other. It may be my TV's sound or my aging ears, but whatver the case, you clear up many mysteries for me, Marion.
I said to watch Caroline even before she said anything on our screens, I think the records will show. Her blood is acid. Her hair an unruly hedge.
----------------------
Marion wrote: And it is surely better to aspire to Mr Darcy than Mr Casaubon!
Better Tom Jones than Joseph Andrews? In fact, with my real-time reviewing, I myself have, I fear, the Casaubon Delusion.
Big Brother is today's Gulliver's Travels or Modest Proposal or Rape of the Lock, today's Alexander Pope masquerading as Jonathan Swift and vice versa. We learn so much from BB.
-----------------------
Hilarious, tonight. Benedict's Cult of Onanism. The expression "getting his point across" was used by the Announcer. And Benedict (with his deadpan face) mentioned to Caroline about trying to get her to see "where he was coming from." Straight up.
Lydia worrying about the group now being seen as part of Benedict's sexual safety-valve evangelism was spot on.
Caroline attempting to eat a fish-eye was another highlight!
----------------------
As I said earlier, I agree with Lydia's point of view on Benedict's sexual evangelism. Marion's view, too, spoken later.
Benedict is serious (hilarious in his deadpan seriousness) in trying to acclimatise anyone (who thinks otherwise) that onanism should be a socially acceptable safety-valve ("just like brushing one's teeth," he said) to prevent possible repercussions of forced/unwise actions beyond one's self....and sincerely believes his blatant showiness in the shower will reduce the ostensible self-shame or stigma of such an act. I don't think his theory-in-practice (a theory taken for argument's sake on its own terms) has worked in the context of BB.
-----------------------
Benedict is indeed a strange cove. His mouth expresses the ultimate passive/aggressive knowingness - with a Chinese Wall beyond which we can only guess at his inner emotions, emotions pulling the strings of his clinical, socially-minded, hard-faced, hard-core porn underpinned by his multi-tentacled heterosexuality and his multifaith atheism and his schoolteacherly postures.
I am at a loss about Lauren's nomination. She seems to be the group's collective-unconscious offering of a sacrificial lamb towards some vaguely disinterested God who has created Benedict almost as a hobby or experiment to while away Eternity.
And, yes, Marion, I prefer BB when the HMs are not allowed to discuss nominations...as was mostly the case in the past.
------------------------------------
(21 June) I have to disagree with Marion. I found the lab-rats task quite boring, especially when compared to the 'non-laughter' task last week. Some good moments that Marion draws out above, though. I go through a phase - at least once in every series - where I think all the HMs are chancers and unreal. But that's life I suppose.
I'm coming round to wanting Lauren to leave this week and the 'interesting' Benedict to stay.
-------------------------------------------
Marion wrote: Hooray! Nomination talk has been banned!
Fresh from my increasing success with Portugal on the TTA Forum Euro Football thread/sweepstake, I am also pleased that the BB Authorities seem to have read our comments here, Marion, about the HMs' boring nomination-natter.
Lydia is quite a gal. Her weaselly elfin face is sleek and hints at whisker preening as ploys and steely stances fleet through her over-active Machiavellian brain. One to watch. So different from the bushy-tailed Caroline...who seems to be infected by Lauren's understated bird-flu of the spirit.
Becky's inner robot coming to the surface of the puppy-stuffing in prone, frozen moon-walking was another highlight.
Meanwhile, Benedict is shaping up to be the ultimate conspirator, conniver, with that down-turned trapezium mouth in mock passive/aggressivenes to conceal the power of the intellect suppling up its muscles within, emerging now and again like a series of verbal-materialized orcs to defend him against any imaginary inner-robots peeling off sporadically from communal psycho-cages or temporary alliances of other HMs' simple minds and machinations, paradoxically more important now that nomination-natter has been still-birthed in its tracks.
-------------------
Re Benedict, I mean all those things, Marion. Obnoxious behaviour. I am sorry I supported him at any stage. I bet the BB/ch.5 were also worried when he took that heavy chair up to the top of the stairs leading out, ready to throw it into the crowd in a violent tantrum...?
I think they should make a film called Caroline's hair...
Her obsequious reaction to Benedict following his diatribe... well, she hasn't got acid in her veins as I thought...or maybe it was some sort of 'scorched earth' strategy with as yet mysterious outcome........building on a new 'tabula rasa' of self??
I'm finding myself rethinking the whole set of people. I don't think I like any of them. Maybe Adam and Deana are OK.
-----------------------
CONTINUED HERE
Copied and pasted from the discussion with Marion HERE
[Adam Kelly, Arron Lowe, Ashleigh Hughes, Benedict Garret, CarolineWharram, Chris James, Conor McIntyre, Deana Uppal, Lauren Carre, Luke Anderson, Luke Scrase, Lydia Louisa, Sara McLean, Scott Mason, Shievonne Robinson, Victoria Eisermann] [Later: Becky Hannon]
Hey, I've just realised it's started tonight!!! I'll have to catch up - hoping that Marion does her usual aide memoire. Seriously, I may not have much time this season to watch it regularly.
I've just had a quick look. They all seem like model men and women of a similar age (all good looking) out to get a career in show business. A bit of a talent show rather than the old-fashioned Big Brother...
-----------
I saw some of last night. A crowd of people growing on me. Some interesting individuals. I hope we're not going to have Shilpa Shetty type trouble surrounding Deana! A charming woman. Not sure about my fellow Essex-mate, though (Ashleigh?). Quite like Lydia's eventual attitude to her nomination. Hopes she doesn't go.
The usual sex talk gets a bit boring, though. And was that someone with a sock tattooed to his foot and calf? i.e a real tattoo looking as if it is a sock!? Seems a symbol for our times.
----------------------
I got fed up with the Luke A's 'backstory'. Loved the way Chris brought his chipmunk voice into the sexual spectrum vis a vis this backstory. I couldn't concentrate at all well last night, because I think there are too many people and I get confused. I shall hopefully come into my own once the population has reached ten.
Who is the one with the tattooed sock? I've forgotten. I really think this 'sock' is a symbol for our times and for this population of shuttling counters on the ludo board of mock-celebrity amid theatrically projected intention and misintention.
---------------------
There was a storm outside making the eviction's process within the studio. Later there was another storm - a sudden squawking tornado - now inside the House itself. Becky Hannon. Only 19 but looks like an unwrinkled middle-ager. The hot tub overflowed when her first action was getting into it. But that fulsome gushing was caused by the tornado's lamina flows rather than the water's meniscus displacement. Mustn't be ungallant.
Victoria was rather engaging in her interview. A sad loss.
Lauren is developing as a character....an interesting face.
Must take a closer look at Caroline...I hadn't really noticed her before her tub-side chat with the Becky-in-eruption-eructation.
-----------------
Yes, Chris entered my radar with an accreting splurge like (the title is an ink blot) by Gahan Wilson - for all the reasons Marion gives HERE. This show is shaping up with grotesque promise. Not sure I can stand the pace!
(I'm not sure why - but I think Caroline is one for my radar to watch out for.)
------------------
(11 June) I've been spending all day wondering what to add to Marion's wonderful report of last night's programme. The housemates are promising a classic BB season, and my worst fears on day one are not being borne out. Worst fears about humanity however are being borne out by this series, but in the interests of a case study constructively derived from Reality TV. Best hopes don't always give us best food for thought ... about life, the universe, everything.
LATER: Well, tonight's episode provides an interesting psychological dilemma or conundrum regarding Becky's special mission via-a-vis Deana, and her reaction, and then Becky's counter-reaction. The ladies here are quite complex, as is Sara (with her Royalism and her under-the blanket chat with Becky, although this has vibes of the school playground) and Lydia claiming she is "being fed to a pack of wolves like a slab of meat". I'm sure there are hidden depths to Caroline, too - but we are never allowed see her to test this theory out. And Lauren is interesting, too, with a vague pouting 'clown' face that resonates with Caroline's.
----------------------
Marion wrote HERE: ... His stiff gelled hair looks as if his brains are seeping through his skull - Thanks for the apt description of Scott, Marion.
Day by day, we are ever being entrammelled by the collective guile and naivety of this whole group. I can't believe Becky is only 19. That bit about the moon, wasn't she talking about mooning rather than being a moon.
Benedict: his talk of 'pleasuring' in the bath and the way he said it to camera plus his whole persona and backstory - he is the only real sore thumb. The sooner he goes the better.
But of the two up for nomination, I prefer Arron to go.
And we got a better view of Caroline last night. She is a half-garbled throwaway line in the collectivity but often throwaway lines are important.
-------------------
One of the best BB tasks ever - the prevent-yourself-laughing-or-grinning task in the face of clowns (both funny and Shievonnesque) - stilted and pie-chucking ... and in face of the natural tendency for mankind to laugh or grin when amused, emabrrassed, scared and simply 'at sea' in life's interactions. They even had the real Keith Harris and Orville turn up to ignite laughter.
The HMs were like Frankenstein's monsters trying (and often failing) to mould their faces by gyrning or gawping or yawning towards a serious expression without their fragile humanity also cracking - cracking in mirth and/or the general entrropy of self-made monsters. Arron's costumes he was made to wear by BB were just one ingredient in this thought-provoking as well as hilarious task. And Caroline's and Benedict's imperviously straight faces.
If one takes Chris at face value, he is out of his depth on the show - cracking up in a way that is painful to watch - and he should go tomorrow for his own sake.
-----------------------------
(15 June) Marion wrote: In the end, he came across as a multifaith atheist.
Well, however much we dislike the persona presented on BB by Benedict, he has created a new term in the Philosophy of Religion! Breaking new ground even on Google! Thanks, Marion.
Chris and Caroline are interesting characters, and I agree that the latter showed her dark side yesterday, but there is something attractively intractable or inscrutable about her - and her hair.
Isn't Sara tall? Ostensibly, the younger man's eye candy of this BB season. I can't talk for old men yet! But her slavish Monarchism of the UK kind seems both complex and simple-minded. Which goes back to my idea of this BB Collectivity of Guile and Naivety, not something simply cross-sectioning at times the group piecemeal (i.e. individual 1 (being guileful), individual 2 (being naive)) but often cross-sectioning each discrete individual within the group.
------------------
To add to Marion's report - we saw Benedict struggling against himself naturally defaulting towards being the group's 'Daddy' or alpha male.
In many ways, sorry to see Chris go. He had so much more to give. A self-proclaimed alpha male, but within an imaginary alphabet with only one letter: not omega, but helium.
--------------------
Marion wrote: The other day, Benedict established himself as a multi-faith atheist. Tonight he has declared himself a multi-sexual heterosexual. [...]Talk about trying to please all of the people all of the time...
Indeed!
I am grateful for your reports, Marion, not only for their scintillating shafts of wisdom, wit and sharp observation (I mean that genuinely), but also because I often can't hear what the HMs are saying to each other. It may be my TV's sound or my aging ears, but whatver the case, you clear up many mysteries for me, Marion.
I said to watch Caroline even before she said anything on our screens, I think the records will show. Her blood is acid. Her hair an unruly hedge.
----------------------
Marion wrote: And it is surely better to aspire to Mr Darcy than Mr Casaubon!
Better Tom Jones than Joseph Andrews? In fact, with my real-time reviewing, I myself have, I fear, the Casaubon Delusion.
Big Brother is today's Gulliver's Travels or Modest Proposal or Rape of the Lock, today's Alexander Pope masquerading as Jonathan Swift and vice versa. We learn so much from BB.
-----------------------
Hilarious, tonight. Benedict's Cult of Onanism. The expression "getting his point across" was used by the Announcer. And Benedict (with his deadpan face) mentioned to Caroline about trying to get her to see "where he was coming from." Straight up.
Lydia worrying about the group now being seen as part of Benedict's sexual safety-valve evangelism was spot on.
Caroline attempting to eat a fish-eye was another highlight!
----------------------
As I said earlier, I agree with Lydia's point of view on Benedict's sexual evangelism. Marion's view, too, spoken later.
Benedict is serious (hilarious in his deadpan seriousness) in trying to acclimatise anyone (who thinks otherwise) that onanism should be a socially acceptable safety-valve ("just like brushing one's teeth," he said) to prevent possible repercussions of forced/unwise actions beyond one's self....and sincerely believes his blatant showiness in the shower will reduce the ostensible self-shame or stigma of such an act. I don't think his theory-in-practice (a theory taken for argument's sake on its own terms) has worked in the context of BB.
-----------------------
Benedict is indeed a strange cove. His mouth expresses the ultimate passive/aggressive knowingness - with a Chinese Wall beyond which we can only guess at his inner emotions, emotions pulling the strings of his clinical, socially-minded, hard-faced, hard-core porn underpinned by his multi-tentacled heterosexuality and his multifaith atheism and his schoolteacherly postures.
I am at a loss about Lauren's nomination. She seems to be the group's collective-unconscious offering of a sacrificial lamb towards some vaguely disinterested God who has created Benedict almost as a hobby or experiment to while away Eternity.
And, yes, Marion, I prefer BB when the HMs are not allowed to discuss nominations...as was mostly the case in the past.
------------------------------------
(21 June) I have to disagree with Marion. I found the lab-rats task quite boring, especially when compared to the 'non-laughter' task last week. Some good moments that Marion draws out above, though. I go through a phase - at least once in every series - where I think all the HMs are chancers and unreal. But that's life I suppose.
I'm coming round to wanting Lauren to leave this week and the 'interesting' Benedict to stay.
-------------------------------------------
Marion wrote: Hooray! Nomination talk has been banned!
Fresh from my increasing success with Portugal on the TTA Forum Euro Football thread/sweepstake, I am also pleased that the BB Authorities seem to have read our comments here, Marion, about the HMs' boring nomination-natter.
Lydia is quite a gal. Her weaselly elfin face is sleek and hints at whisker preening as ploys and steely stances fleet through her over-active Machiavellian brain. One to watch. So different from the bushy-tailed Caroline...who seems to be infected by Lauren's understated bird-flu of the spirit.
Becky's inner robot coming to the surface of the puppy-stuffing in prone, frozen moon-walking was another highlight.
Meanwhile, Benedict is shaping up to be the ultimate conspirator, conniver, with that down-turned trapezium mouth in mock passive/aggressivenes to conceal the power of the intellect suppling up its muscles within, emerging now and again like a series of verbal-materialized orcs to defend him against any imaginary inner-robots peeling off sporadically from communal psycho-cages or temporary alliances of other HMs' simple minds and machinations, paradoxically more important now that nomination-natter has been still-birthed in its tracks.
-------------------
Re Benedict, I mean all those things, Marion. Obnoxious behaviour. I am sorry I supported him at any stage. I bet the BB/ch.5 were also worried when he took that heavy chair up to the top of the stairs leading out, ready to throw it into the crowd in a violent tantrum...?
I think they should make a film called Caroline's hair...
Her obsequious reaction to Benedict following his diatribe... well, she hasn't got acid in her veins as I thought...or maybe it was some sort of 'scorched earth' strategy with as yet mysterious outcome........building on a new 'tabula rasa' of self??
I'm finding myself rethinking the whole set of people. I don't think I like any of them. Maybe Adam and Deana are OK.
-----------------------
CONTINUED HERE
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