Big Brother on Channel 4 went “evil” this year. It reached new depths of depravity and violence, all in the name of entertainment, as the hapless wannabees flailed around in the mud that was being thrown at them, each climbing over each other to escape the quagmire, to get their fix of the poisonous drug called celebrity. Everyone’s favourite Big Momma, Davina, abandoned all scruples to salaciously reveal to the mauled exiting competitors that Nadia was – get this – a man before. Watch those guys squirm!

Reality TV is, increasingly, coming out as overtly sadistic. From I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, with the astonishingly perverse Ant and Dec (in hushed, awed tones, breathless with cruelty: “...and there’s another crocodile in the water now, mate”) to Changing Rooms, with participants wracked with guilt as they slavishly follow a despotic designer’s plans to ruin their friends’ homes. Simon Cowell on Pop Idol or X Factor relishes every opportunity to demolish people’s fantasies about themselves. Trinny and Susannah are cruel to be kind to their victims, of course. Queen of mean, Anne Robinson on Weakest Link; Frank Skinner’s malicious humour, or the half-time moment in every episode of Wife Swap when the wives get to impose their vengeful will on their new family. And of course, Jerry Springer. We lick our lips and salivate at the hunters going in for the kill. And we don’t have to get off our fat asses to do it.
But when we sit down and watch these people on our screens, we unconsciously take ownership over them. The press exploits this ruthlessly, gleefully exposing every human flaw in the personalities of those who place themselves in front of a camera. They’re all “fair game”. We punish those who entertain us, we do not forgive them – because they have surrendered their privacy for us, and offered themselves up for inspection, presented their pretty arses to us in submission, and we can take grisly satisfaction in shafting them in the comfort of our own lonely homes.
The relationship between the inspector and the inspected is a powerfully charged one, one which the Marquis de Sade made explicit in his writing. He of course had no concept of television, nor could he have imagined its constant companions, the baying hounds of the tabloids, ripping into the flesh of its denizens, but were he around today he’d have no problem recognising that what goes on in every living room is exactly the stuff of his tortured imagination.
Inspection – the objectifying gaze, the act of turning people with hearts, minds and souls into visual and imaginal objects, things for our own pleasure, is part of human nature. The interplay between those who offer themselves up for inspection and those who observe and objectify is powerfully charged. In every sexual relationship, there are degrees of this dynamic at work, for without a degree of separation, of objectification, the erotic takes a walk; but without a degree of compassion and warmth, of seeing the other as a person rather than an object, love takes a walk. TV is a loveless medium, masturbatory, manipulative and isolating. We are impotent and silent, passive and controlled, slaves to scheduling and advertising. In our bondage, we get our kicks from a misguided sense of revenge. But if the TV or computer screen were to change suddenly into a mirror, we’d see our slack-jawed inertia and dead eyes, and, with a shock, might be propelled to start living instead. The best revenge is not to get off on sadism; the best revenge is to live well.
There are exceptions on TV that prove the rule, of course. In watching the recent final of Musicality on Channel 4, I was touched on a deep level by the stories of the participants trying to win, each one overcoming a lack of experience with impressive amounts of bravery, talent and hard work. It was a compassionate programme because everyone involved was supportive and encouraging, the judges’ unfavourable criticisms were regretfully delivered, standards were high but fair. It is not only because I am a former actor that I recognise this to be characteristic of theatre folk in general. Actors know some of life’s home truths that can elude many others: life is difficult, unfair, unpredictable, and unstable. The fickle finger of fate is a reality that has to be dealt with without rancour. Life is better with teamwork. And dreams can come true, if you work at them.
But theatre also serves another purpose, which television cannot reproduce. I do not propose that all TV should abandon cruelty, and adopt the comfy huggy tones of Musicality or, my other favourite, Faking It. Life isn’t like that. We need our shallow reality exposed, dissected, examined; we need to look at our own greed and emptiness and hunger for fame, we need our soap star scoops and tales of murder and pettiness, our farcical competitions and our meretricious exhibitionists. Otherwise we cannot know that this is what we have become.
But theatre is a collective, ritual experience, a participatory one. Its origins were sacred. As television and the internet dominate our lives with pap, are we becoming increasingly isolated, disconnected from a sense of participation, of community? Are we capable of greater cruelty when we are sitting on our sofas at home? For every time we sit down and watch a sadistic reality TV show, we are encouraging more of its ilk to come.
Seeing Marina Carr’s magnificent reworking of the Medea story in By The Bog Of Cats in the West End recently, witnessing a tragedy unfold in a way that had myself and everyone around me wet-faced with grief at the end, I felt shattered, sore, and ultimately uplifted. We had watched together an extraordinary tale of sadism and masochism, love and hate, murder and despair, and in our rapturous applause at the end, we came through the darkness and into a shared sense of joy. It touched a place, deep down in our guts, that television never could.
Cruelty is part of life. But we need to know when we’re being cruel, we need to see its effects, we need to feel for those who suffer. We need to think about it, talk about it, come into relationship with it. But unconscious cruelty, when we slip into the amoral world that is SM TV, is the stuff of nightmares.
It’s time to wake up.