Jade: The Reality Star Who Changed Britain

[BritishHobo]

Apologies if a thread already exists for this, three-part Channel 4 documentary that ended this week.

I thought it was a really fucking powerful watch. Paints a very contemptible picture of UK news and celebrity culture in the noughties. Things aren't exactly better now, but it's interesting (especially as someone who was a regular visitor to Digital Spy at the time, and whose opinion on the Goody saga was a fairly uninformed 'it's sad but she was thick and racist so why are we talking about it') to look back at just how fucking grubby it all is. There's always been talk of how exploitative Big Brother is, but it's the unrestrained nastiness of the tabloid press and its spiteful columnists that actually stoked the hatred against the poor fuckers. I can't believe how happily we accepted such appalling bile aimed at people prodded on TV for our entertainment. Chortling at their looks, at their weight, for daring to be uneducated. Giving these people the spotlight and then hating them for being in it.

Lots of mythologising from Big Brother staff that rings hollow. McCall and several producers giving all the right opinions about how brilliant Jade was and how bad the bad things were, giving no justification for the fact that they all stood by and let it happen. Some lovely moments of contrast where they cut from hand-wringing talking heads with Davina about all the abuse, to footage of Davina quite cheerily presenting the show in front of people waving hateful signs. It's basically unforgivable that Jade's mum was allowed onto that show in the first place, let alone being booted off it in such a cruel fashion. There was obviously no consideration for her as a human being or what the effect of such a show might be on her.

At the end of it all it's just a sad pre-Twitter story of a nation giving someone unprecedented fame and then making them a villain for being who they are with the life experiences they've had, under intense pressure.

What really struck me, thinking back especially, is how unanimous the disgust was for her racism. Everyone condemned her, all the papers, all the 'have your say' bores who contact phone-in shows. These days you'd have loads of people defending her, saying it's just a joke, saying it's PC gone mad that we're not allowed to say these things anymore in our own country. She would have found a lot of people in her corner.

[Shit Good Nose]

Haven't watched the show (have absolutely zero interest), never watched Big Brother, and all I ever knew about Jade was that she existed, had a rep for being a thick racist, and then died.  I never felt the need to investigate any further as the whole thing was (and still is) a part of British culture I actively avoid.

But, more specifically about the evils of Big Brother, someone on here (can't remember who as we're going back several years) knew someone who was involved in transferring it from Denmark (or wherever it originated).  From memory, whomever at Endemol (?) that was in charge of the transfer basically wanted to artificially create social wars amongst the contestants to make it better telly (by all accounts the original series was very basic and quite dull) and had a boardroom full of creatives coming up with ideas to make everyone hate each other, or at least compete in an unfriendly manner.

Wish I could remember more about that post (a Google search hasn't helped) as everything in it subsequently turned up in all the other reality shows that now plague our channels.

[Rolf Lundgren]

I've only seen the first two but did get a bit sick of the revisionism of how popular Jade was. If she was as universally loved as they claimed then she would have won the series of Big Brother that she was in. The "Changed Britain" part of the title is also one hell of an exaggeration. Apart from that, it was fairly even-handed.

Lots of mythologising from Big Brother staff that rings hollow. McCall and several producers giving all the right opinions about how brilliant Jade was and how bad the bad things were, giving no justification for the fact that they all stood by and let it happen. Some lovely moments of contrast where they cut from hand-wringing talking heads with Davina about all the abuse, to footage of Davina quite cheerily presenting the show in front of people waving hateful signs. It's basically unforgivable that Jade's mum was allowed onto that show in the first place, let alone being booted off it in such a cruel fashion. There was obviously no consideration for her as a human being or what the effect of such a show might be on her.

It really showed how the Big Brother team completely messed up with the racism issue. Instead of knocking the bullying on the head immediately, they let it play out for viewing figures. They absolved themselves of any responsibility by hiding behind the sanctity of the house and the premise of the show despite the real world ramifications. Looking back at how bad it got, it's shocking that they still didn't intervene.

What really struck me, thinking back especially, is how unanimous the disgust was for her racism. Everyone condemned her, all the papers, all the 'have your say' bores who contact phone-in shows. These days you'd have loads of people defending her, saying it's just a joke, saying it's PC gone mad that we're not allowed to say these things anymore in our own country. She would have found a lot of people in her corner.

Good point, it's easy to imagine there would be loads who would back her making the comments she did. I don't know if she'd still have been able to find work in the mainstream media if it happened today but yeah some people would be a lot more sympathetic.

[Jockice]

I went to a wedding on the day of her funeral. Not just out of spite or anything. I was invited. The bride (who is Asian. It was THAT wedding) was a bit pissed off about the funeral of someone best known for racist comments being on her special day, but I don't think it was done just to annoy her.

[BritishHobo]

It really showed how the Big Brother team completely messed up with the racism issue. Instead of knocking the bullying on the head immediately, they let it play out for viewing figures. They absolved themselves of any responsibility by hiding behind the sanctity of the house and the premise of the show despite the real world ramifications. Looking back at how bad it got, it's shocking that they still didn't intervene.

At the time my opinion (uninformed, as I didn't watch Big Brother) was that I didn't see why the Big Brother crew should be to blame - the premise of the show was bringing people into this house and watching them be themselves, so why should they be responsible for the opinions those people hold - but this documentary was a real eye-opener on that front. I hadn't realised how many tasks and things they did to deliberately stoke up anger. It baffles me how so many people could have stood by on that crew and thought 'yeah this is all fine, let's just let this continue'. I suppose it brought in the ratings so it made no fucking odds to them. If there'd been no public backlash against them, they probably would never have said anything.

Also did anyone else get the idea that Max 'died in prison' Clifford knew full well when Jade went on Indian Big Brother that it was going to coincide with some fucking major news? It seemed to be assumed it was the hospital on the phone, but I'm sure at one point Jade references Max as having been the one who gave her the news.

[Ambient Sheep]

DISCLAIMER: Not seen this yet, but heard good things about it.

What really struck me, thinking back especially, is how unanimous the disgust was for her racism. Everyone condemned her, all the papers, all the 'have your say' bores who contact phone-in shows.

To be honest, that surprised me back at the time.  I was baffled as to whether it was a genuine thing (very pleasing if so), or Shilpa being considered too nice / elegant / "fit" etc. to be slagged off by Jade, or people just putting their racism aside because they hated Jade more.

It's probably also because the stuff in the screaming match was so unequivocally racist (IIRC), that it allowed those low-grade racist people -- you know the ones, the types who would never say anything to anyone's face, but might make elliptic comments behind their back -- to vindicate themselves by effectively saying "Look, now that's racist, not the stuff I do."

These days you'd have loads of people defending her, saying it's just a joke, saying it's PC gone mad that we're not allowed to say these things anymore in our own country. She would have found a lot of people in her corner.

Sadly I think this is probably true.  Social media's filter bubbles have enabled such people to see that many others think like them, and it's empowered the buggers.

[Kelvin]

I think it's safe to say that people would have been downplaying her racism and thinking it was "PC gone mad" at the time; that's been a right wing refrain since the 90's. It's just that back then you didn't have the same degree of social media to spotlight it in the same way. I think Amby hits the nail on the head in his post above; the most explicit stuff Jade said was simply too obviously racist for the media to defend, coupled with the fact that Jade was a working class "chav" they hated more than the polite, reserved, rather posh Shilpa Shetty.     

[Ambient Sheep]

Thanks, Kelvin.

Oh and if anyone's interested, the original Celebrity Big Brother 2007 thread featuring Jade & Shilpa is here.

Disclaimer (again): not read it, God knows how many ghosts and hostages to fortune it might contain, but there it is for those who are interested in examining the reactions back then.

The original series with Jade in it predated The Great Board Crash so isn't accessible.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Haven't watched the show (have absolutely zero interest), never watched Big Brother, and all I ever knew about Jade was that she existed, had a rep for being a thick racist, and then died.  I never felt the need to investigate any further as the whole thing was (and still is) a part of British culture I actively avoid.

But, more specifically about the evils of Big Brother, someone on here (can't remember who as we're going back several years) knew someone who was involved in transferring it from Denmark (or wherever it originated).  From memory, whomever at Endemol (?) that was in charge of the transfer basically wanted to artificially create social wars amongst the contestants to make it better telly (by all accounts the original series was very basic and quite dull) and had a boardroom full of creatives coming up with ideas to make everyone hate each other, or at least compete in an unfriendly manner.

Wish I could remember more about that post (a Google search hasn't helped) as everything in it subsequently turned up in all the other reality shows that now plague our channels.

I worked on the first two series as a lowly logger / online vision mixer and that wasn't my experience of the show. I wasn't involved until a couple of weeks before it started though so may have missed out on that aspect, but it could only have related to the choice of housemates as the tasks didn't set people against each other, and on a day to day basis we were reacting to what was going on and trying to catch up with the madness, rather than in any way influencing events.

On the second series the producers did start being a little manipulative, but only when it came to the romance aspect (ie setting people up on dates who clearly fancied each other) but otherwise I don't think they had much input in to how the housemates treated each other, that to me started after I'd left the show.

[Shit Good Nose]

I worked on the first two series as a lowly logger / online vision mixer and that wasn't my experience of the show. I wasn't involved until a couple of weeks before it started though so may have missed out on that aspect, but it could only have related to the choice of housemates as the tasks didn't set people against each other, and on a day to day basis we were reacting to what was going on and trying to catch up with the madness, rather than in any way influencing events.

On the second series the producers did start being a little manipulative, but only when it came to the romance aspect (ie setting people up on dates who clearly fancied each other) but otherwise I don't think they had much input in to how the housemates treated each other, that to me started after I'd left the show.

It might well be I'm conflating your posts about that in the past (you HAVE mentioned it on CaB before, right?), with someone else's posts about a different (but similar) show/later series of Big Brother, which would explain why Google drew a blank.

[Small Man Big Horse]

It might well be I'm conflating your posts about that in the past (you HAVE mentioned it on CaB before, right?), with someone else's posts about a different (but similar) show/later series of Big Brother, which would explain why Google drew a blank.

Yeah, a good few times, and I do remember someone else mentioning that they'd worked on it after I'd left as well so you may well be right.

[Sebastian Cobb]

She was like a commoner Diana, the press made her a villain then went full CANDLE IN THE Wind when she carked it.

Also my memory's hazy, I didn't watch it at the time, but although jade was getting branded with racism, wasn't a lot of it just beefing with Shilpa Shetty, and some of the other celebrities (Danielle Lloyd in particular) were actually far worse?

[Twed]

I watched it at the time. Shilpa was bad at not using her higher-class princess tone of voice towards Jade & co, and Jade's responses were what you'd expect from somebody from working-class East London in that era. She didn't really have any reference to tell her that it wasn't okay to call her Shilpa Poppadom (arguably a joke at her own expense for not having the capacity to remember foreign names accurately, but still REALLY ILL ADVISED), and that you had to be careful not to 'other' somebody in that environment by calling them "The Indian". Jade's reactions were mainly confrontational, about Shilpa's learned snobbishness.

I think that was the extent of Goody's issues though, and it was Danielle Lloyd who really stuck out as the "fuck off home" kind of overt racist.

[Gurke and Hare]

it was Danielle Lloyd who really stuck out as the "fuck off home" kind of overt racist.

This, and S Club 7 was the main cheerleader for the racism - proper stuff that she was too scared to say but obviously agreed with.

[bgmnts]

Basically, she was the least racist but the most working class and gobby. So just another victim of classism really.

[imitationleather]

It's pretty nuts that there were only seven years between her first Big Brother appearance and death. It felt like a lot, lot longer.

I guess that celebrity culture is still around but it's a lot easier to ignore now it's mainly on social media platforms I don't use.

[madhair60]

RIP the racist moron of hearts

[imitationleather]

I'm not dead yet!