Archbishop of Sydney

His Eminence,
Cardinal George Pell
Cardinal Priest of the Title of S. Maria Domenica Mazzarello

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Home > Our Archbishop > Sunday Telegraph Column 2002 > Article	Printable Version

Big Brother

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
21 April 2002

A Greek myth tells us about Diana, the goddess of hunting, who stopped at a forest stream to bathe with her companions. A young hunter called Acteon came upon the group of naked women by accident, and was having a look when he was discovered. The furious goddess turned him into a stag, whereupon he was attacked and torn to pieces by his own hunting dogs.

a was put in mind of this story during the week after viewing the latest series of "Big Brother." It seems that nothing could be further away from the story of Diana and Acteon and the value it places on the inviolability of privacy than the world of "Big Brother," where losing your privacy might win you $250,000.

Acteon was probably like the typical young Aussie bloke who thinks there is no harm in having "a bit of a perv". Channel 10 seems to have made a cynical calculation that a lot of young television viewers think the same way. The steady fall in the show's ratings, however, is a good sign to the contrary. A am not sure the show will last.

Even from its early days there were critics of this type of television. Television news, the argument goes, makes us all like those sad creatures drawn to accident scenes to feast their eyes on blood and disaster.

Most of us still have contempt for these ghouls in real life, and in the same way a am sure that most young people watching "Big Brother" would react more like Diana than one of the housemates if someone actually burst in on them with a camera.

Some people have had good things to say about "Big Brother", pointing out that in the first series voters chose the nice guy as the winner. Others talk about the community the show has created, with people ringing each other up after each episode to discuss the latest developments.

This is good as far as it goes but it is also a bit sad, suggesting that for some being happy together, being a family, is only on television. In any case whatever good might flow from this, it does not offset the way "Big Brother" coarsens public expectations and dialogue.

It is really not that difficult to slide far beyond "no harm in looking" to many other excesses. This is a road travelled not only by sexual predators. The rise in sexual harassment in the workplace is just one example of how difficult it can be for ordinary people to resist the shift from looking to doing.

The greatest example is pornography. Who gets hurt here? Quite aside from the coercion and self-destruction that characterise the porn industry itself, doctors and therapists are increasingly talking about "sexual addiction," where people become pornography junkies, and like drug addicts, need harder and harder "stuff" to get their hit.

Acteon's fate should remind us that too much of the "harmless" watching can lead to real hurt for ourselves and others. Many things are fun to begin with. Whether they are really going to help us be happier and better people in the long run is another question.