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The economic perspective on Big Brother!

2024-01-22 13:42:19Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA IRENA BEQIRAJ
The economic perspective on Big Brother!
Julian Deda/ Big Brother/ Roza Lati

The fact that Big Brother, or other reality show formats that are the most watched shows today, goes further than the reasoning that they are a projection of the social quagmire.

If we analyze the economic model that develops within them, they are a pure product of the free and unregulated market economy.

To make this analysis as tangible as possible, I am starting with commodification, a basic virtue of liberal capitalism.

Commodification is a combination of two words: the word "commodity", which is goods or services with an economic value, and the word modification, which is a change in function or form.

Commodification is the way in which the objective of accumulating capital or value is realized in liberal capitalism, through the transformation into form and function of every thing that can find an exchange value.

For example, work is the commodification of knowledge, skills, talent or even labor to perform certain processes, turning the latter into monetary values.

The professor shares his knowledge and gets paid for it. The writer writes a book and secures monetary benefits by commoditizing the rights to the work.

The inventor commodifies rights over the use of his invention. And so on. Even sex workers have commodified sexual relations, which in their first and primarily moral function are not for sale. While in a reality show, the contestants try to commodify their bodies, emotions, vices and even their private lives.

Economists associate Big Brother and similar formats with the market for attention. Although often discussed as a unique psycho-social genre, these formats provide a means of employment for people who want to get rich through attention. So, an actor, a journalist, a moderator once employed in a show or show with a script, turns into a "performer in a low-budget venture", with the aim of ensuring wider public attention.

All these "employees" have the hope that through social media, they will monetize the fame gained in the "most famous house in the world" in the near future. They dream of becoming "instagram marketing inspiration boards", or continue to be protagonists in other formats that are surrogates from content.

Therefore, it is not without reason that these formats are competitive, since competition is an excellent formula for increasing the audience and profits. Because the drama, victimization, and emotional narratives that are so necessary to secure attention are easily produced in competing formats.

While only smart audiences can understand that "reality" there bears no resemblance to reality. Roza Lati, for example, knows very well that she is employed, in a venture from which she can either make a profit or get away with it. Therefore, in order to win, she has to argue fiercely with whom she is in front of, walk around the house in thongs, show why she broke up with her boyfriend, and even threaten that she is a lady and square the roundness of human organs.

While any other that offers spectacle, tears into a real nostalgia drama, so that the story becomes sadder and more dramatic to attract the attention of the public.

Last year's winner, even though he invented a serious illness and went to the emergency room, he still won.

For all this rationally irritating supply, there is an emotionally acceptable demand. Human nature is fascinated by tragedy, extreme conflicts and violations of normality. They are hypnotic to watch, even more so when they happen on television.

Well, while a market has been allowed to flourish which can satisfy the weakest and darkest points of human nature, which rewards vulgarity, fraud and ignorance, but which provides the production and the winner with a lot of money and fame (even the latter even an interview on the prime minister's podcast!), what is the fault of Roza, Juli who changed her mind, or Romeo etc. who want to win at all costs?

The free and unregulated market does not care about moral norms, so even in the process of building liberal capitalism, looking after success which is measured through money, not caring at all about common social values, everything public was privatized and everything private is being sold in public.

So don't judge Roza or anyone inside Big Brother. This market has this product.


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