Bigger Than Big Brother: The play of power relations in Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Clash 2010
Title: Bigger Than Big Brother: The Play of Power Relations in Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Clash 2010
ABSTRACT:
This study focuses on the power relations that existed between Big Brother and the teen boarders in the duration of Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Clash 2010.
Pinoy Big Brother (PBB) has become a phenomenon in modern Philippine television. This reality show isolates and houses a group of individuals. Their actions and conversations are recorded and they are supervised by Big Brother who is known to be the ‘owner’ of the house.
The paper explores the different notions of power that have been analysed by Robert Dahl and Michel Foucault. Guided by these notions, it examines the mechanisms of power employed inside the Big Brother House and their correlation to the power relations between Big Brother and his boarders.
This study examines the kind of strategies that arose in the show and how they were used as attempts to produce obedient and productive boarders. It also looks at how ‘free’ were the boarders in their decision making considering the fact that they had certain capacities for action but were also subjected to the power relations inside the house.
This study also investigates resistance, if any, coming from the boarders and Big Brother himself. By studying closely the activities of the boarders, I analyse the text inside the Big Brother house and describe the phenomena of power relation that existed in the said show.
Keywords: power relations, subjects of power, strategies, tactics, decision-making process, free, resistance
Subject Index : Interpersonal relations on television
Carbon, K. (2011). Bigger Than Big Brother: The Play of Power Relations in Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Clash 2011. Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.