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Popular Culture Review
Sometimes, a particular character in the house produces conflict and the
house members lash out at each other. The action peaks when the crisis
heightens. At the close of each week, the contestants are asked to resolve the
problem by voting to send someone out of the house. Once the decision is
made and the contestant is banished, the remaining members discuss the
issue and seem to develop from the experience.
In comparison, George Orwell’s 1984 presents a totalitarian society in
which Big Brother censors all behavior. The reahty TV show allows the
audience {Big Brother) to view every move the participants in the house
make. All of the conflicts, arguments and tension within the house become a
matter of public record. Essentially, the viewers have access to the participants’
innermost thoughts. Nothing is reserved. The house becomes a fishbowl
society where the final decisions are made by Big Brother.
Orwell presents a society where everyone becomes slaves of the
government to achieve a more orderly society. Similarly, house members
give up their right to freedom, to estabhsh some form of order within their
confines to attain their ultimate goal—wealth. Those who refuse to cooperate
are banished.
Joseph chose the reality show Survivor, comparing it to Agatha Christie’s
classic, And Then There Were None:
The main comparison appears as each contestant/character is
systematically taken out of the action. The contestants on Survivor are
like characters in Christie’s novel: all come from different backgrounds
and classes of society. There are sixteen contestants in Survivor and ten in
Christie’s drama, but they each face the same outcome, albeit in Christie’s,
more horrifically. Survivor contestants are made to face certain challenges
that lead to the result of one being voted off the island. In the drama, ten
people are tricked into coming to an old house only to be killed, one by
one, according to a macabre poem that hangs on the wall.
Each week in the reality show, a survivor is voted off after a series of
competitions until only one wins, and claims a milhon dollar prize. In the
drama. And Then There Were None, ten people are summoned to a deserted
house, where one by one they are murdered until only one remains alive.
Though the means are certainly different, the end is the same: individuals
leave the story, slowly but surely, one at a time.
Danny viewed Freytag’s Triangle as a way to compare the reahty show Big