Essay Proposition

Essay Title

Big Brother, The Form Of Panopticism For All The Family To Enjoy. 

Main Issues 

. Explanation of Foucault’s Panopticism

. Referring also to theory’s of the gaze

. Describe how Big Brother is a panoptic model

. Touching on the subject of how the panoptic model has an impact upon contestants behaviour

. Also looking at the different aspects to Gaze theory, as contestants behave to several audiences. 

Visual Matter

. In terms of graphic design, i will look at the different logo designs of the ‘all seeing eye’

. I will also look and analyze footage from the show, taken from Youtube, 4OD, the present series on at this moment in time, both live footage and highlights. 

An example of the footage i can analyze, taking one particular interesting part of the housemates behaviour, Relationships, whether they are real or for the cameras. 

Theory

. Panopticism 

. Gaze Theory 

Theorists /// Writers

. Foucault 

. D. Chandler

Resources 

.www.wikipedia.com

. Daniel Chandler, Notes on ‘The Gaze’ 

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze02.html

25/01/10

.www.jstor.org

. Foucaults book on panopticism 

. articles on big bro

Adorno and his beef with popular music

In the article Adorno first divides music into two parts, Popular music and serious music. Popular music for Adorno is a commodity within popular culture, he believes it to be standardized in a way in which all ‘pop’ songs are essentially the same. They are restricted to rules and have certain limitations, this leading him to believe that whatever song is listened to the experience of doing so is a familiar one, therefore nothing new is gained from listening to one pop song to another. This reasoning leads popular music to be pre-digested, in the sense that if you have heard one you’ve heard it all, there is nothing more to gain or experience. 

This standardization is what Adorno refers to as being Pseudo- individualization, covering up everything in popular culture as being this society where everyone has a choice or freedom to like what they want and have what they like when really its all the same kind of stuff, you’ve seen/had/heard it all before. 

Adorno goes on in the article to state that any song can become successful from endless repetition or ‘plugging’, as once it is recognized by a listener it has become accepted and therefore a popular song. The article then leads on to divide popular music into two categories of listener, the rhythmically obedient type and the emotional type. Both essentially leading, in Adorno’s opinion, to the fact that neither shall have any part in happiness. Lovely.  

This video for Jay-Z's new single forever young which samples a song i believe from the 80's. This backs up Adorno's view on popular music being pre-digested and standardized as a fair amount of this song has already been released in the past and was a popular song back then. This in hand helps make this song successful and popular as it already is in a sense. The song that is sampled is also played in the film Napolean Dynamite, which shows that the song isnt only plugged on radio and what not but also on other big forms of popular mass culture.  

This kind of song represents a large amount of songs that are released in the modern charts. Ones that sample songs from the past, typically being the 80's and also more recent songs. One recent number one song, Wathcya' say- Jazon Derulo sampled a song which was released earlier on in the year!  

Big Brother you Panoptic swine.

An obvious example of something in contemporary culture that is panoptic is the reality television series, Big Brother. 

The basis for the program being, to put random people into a house for 3 months under 24 hour surveillance in which it is broadcasted nearly every minute of the day to the public on national television, as each week goes by someone is booted out of the house prior to nominations and then a public vote.

This making it overwhelmingly clear to the housemates that they are always being watched. Not only by the people behind the scenes but by a large amount of the public. 

As the house is covered in cameras there are no nooks or crannys in which the housemates can escape from the watching viewers.(insert quote about open plan layouts)   

This creates housemates to self regulate themselves and their personalities. However due to  the nature of the show and the media today, this can cause for the housemates to act up to the cameras, as they know they are being watched all the time, they must act all the time. 

Referring this to Graphic Design, big brother has a very recognised brand image, the 'all-seeing' eye that has a slightly different design each season.