After ten years of Big Brother on Channel 4, the reality show became a smash hit because of its raw, human, yet dramatized portrayal of a social experiment: placing sixteen people living in the UK, from all walks of life, into one house. Throughout the show they are given tasks and spoken to by the omnipotent voice of ‘Big Brother’, whose namesake of course comes from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, in which a totalitarian government enforce their regime through the tagline ‘Big Brother is watching you’. It is a novel fascinated by the consequences of technological surveillance, which is also reflected in its 21st century reality show adaptation. What happens when sixteen radically different people are forced to live and work together, and their every move is televised to the general public?
Turns out, some of their actions are not live TV appropriate.
In October 2023, after approximately thirteen years off the air, Big Brother made its comeback on ITV, to immense excitement and anticipation. This year is the second season of ITV’s iteration of the show, but it hasn’t been making headlines for its positive reception. Rather, this year the show has come under fire for its passive attitudes towards the problematic behaviour of certain housemates, and most recently, the censoring of a T-shirt worn by one of the contestants.
In last Tuesday’s episode of the show, housemate Ali Bromley was seen sat in the Big Brother garden wearing a black T-shirt with a watermelon in the shape of Israel, referencing the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Since this conflict, the symbol of the watermelon, which shares its colours with the flag of Palestine, has been a symbol of solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian people under consistent attack from Isreal, almost 42000 of whom the Palestinian Health Authority report have been killed as of Sept. 29. Ali’s t-shirt is a symbol of peace, communicating a desire for the end of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
After the episode aired, it was taken down from ITVX (ITV’s on demand streaming service) along with the Big Brother Late & Live episode which aired after the main show, and later put back up with Ali’s t-shirt blacked out. This came after ITV reported there had been Ofcom complaints about the symbol being offensive to certain viewers, which was confirmed by a post on X from the group ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’, in which they claimed they had submitted a complaint to Ofcom because the t-shirt was a ‘serious violation of broadcasting standards’ which had ‘caused significant distress amongst the British Jewish community, who regard it as a genocidal message’.
After fans noted this change to the episode, they took to X in an outrage, coining the hashtag ‘BoycottBigBrother’ and claiming the show was censoring a pro-Palestinian message, which does not call for the genocide of the Jewish state of Israel but instead for a ceasefire in the conflict that has seen so many innocent lives lost. In response to the backlash, ITV issued a statement that apologised for any offense caused by the t-shirt and stated that ‘Big Brother was unaware of the implications of the image’. ITV further explained that the ‘item of clothing has been removed from the house’ and the ‘offensive messaging associated with the image does not reflect the values or beliefs of Big Brother’. This statement led to further criticism of ITV, as it appears to position the broadcasting service as supportive of Israel’s actions in Gaza, seeing as the only ‘messaging’ implicit from the t-shirt’s image is the solidarity with innocent Palestinians losing their homes, families and lives because of the conflict.
The irony of a reality TV show that takes its inspiration from a dystopian novel inherently criticising censorship and the prohibition of free speech and individual opinion, also censoring a politically charged image, is very telling of the organisation in control of the show. In choosing to avoid any kind of nuanced discussion and censor political statements condemning genocide in favour of rejecting anything that may be perceived controversial, ITV have placed themselves under more fire from the viewing public than if they had kept the t-shirt in the episode.
It is contemptible and hypocritical that a t-shirt supporting the human rights of a group of people should be considered unsuitable for British television, yet other housemates are able to endorse political figures such as Nigel Farage, whose racist and anti-immigrant vitriol fuelled the Reform party in the most recent general election. Nathan, another of this year’s housemates and ex-butler to the King, has made his support for Farage and the Conservative party clear, claiming in some episodes that the British public all inherently want to vote Conservative, and that in the future Nigel Farage will definitely be prime minister. Why are these political statements appropriate for live TV, and why has Nathan not been made to apologise because of any offense he may have caused?
Big Brother has also been criticised this year because of another housemate’s behaviour: 34-year-old Marcello, who has sparked Ofcom complaints because of his casual misogyny in the house. In the first few weeks of the show, Marcello used the same vape as a female contestant in the smoking area, and after they had left the smoking area he told the other housemates that they had kissed. The other housemate is openly lesbian, and has a partner outside the house, which Marcello disregarded when making what he claimed was a ‘joke’ about what had happened. This altercation forced ITV to air the conversation in the smoking area, which usually does not appear in the show, so as to clarify to viewers that nothing had occurred between them. His behaviour towards the women in the house continues to become uncomfortable to watch – for example last week on one of the show’s live streams, he was seen grabbing fellow contestant Lily by the wrist with one hand and briefly by the neck with the other after she stuck her fingers up at him as she walked past. Earlier in the week, he also told a different female housemate that she ‘smelled like period’ and asked whether she was menstruating when she was in a bad mood. These misogynistic and potentially worrying interactions have been disregarded by ITV and have had seemingly no consequences for Marcello. Quite the opposite in fact, as the show’s hosts continue to praise Marcello as a housemate, professing that they continue to warm to him as the weeks go on.
I find it troubling that such problematic behaviour in the show falls by the wayside and is not an outrage to the general public, or demanded to be addressed by ITV, yet a pro-Palestinian t-shirt must be removed.
The conclusion? #BoycottBigBrother.