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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: 'Why does everyone hate me?' 'Why does everyone hate me?' Thousands of viewers have complained about the racist bullying of Shilpa Shetty on Big Brother. But we should not be surprised by the housemates' behaviour - it reflects the widespread bigotry of British society, says Germaine Greer. Wednesday January 17, 2007 There are no good reasons for watching Celebrity Big Brother and very good reasons for not. Not watching will spare you the nerve-fraying annoyingness that is Shilpa Shetty. Everything about her is infuriating: her haughty way of stalking about, her indomitable self-confidence, her chandelier earrings, her leaping eyebrows, her mirthless smile, her putty nose and her eternal bray, "Why does everyone hate me?" Not to mention the crying jags. What no one seems to have quite understood is that Shilpa is a very good actress. Everyone hates her because she wants them to. She also knows that if she infuriates people enough, their innate racism will spew forth. As a Tamil, Shetty has certainly had to deal with discrimination at home in suburban Mumbai. Her only motive for parading in front of the other women in the house with whitener on her face was to show what utter hicks they are, how little they understand of her complex reality or of a billion people in the subcontinent who all want to have wheat-coloured skin. I bet thousands of brown-skinned girls in Southall fell off the sofa laughing when she did that. Bollywood is no picnic; anyone who makes 51 Bollywood movies in 13 years has to be tough. Shilpa has a black belt in karate. She is just the girl to raise the pit bull in a dizzy little drip like Danielle and keep her frothing at the mouth long enough for her nascent career as a sweet little Wag to disappear down the drain. When Shilpa is finished with Danielle even Teddy Sheringham will know what a small, dark heart beats within her fetching chest. This explains the slightly cannibal air of self-satisfaction that never abandons Shilpa. She knows what she is doing. She will shred the nerves of all the other women in that house until even Cleo pulls back her frozen lips and shows the fangs behind her witless Mona Lisa smile. I can switch Shilpa off. The people in the house with her haven't got that option. The problem is that most of the housemates are too dim to convey what a pain in the ass Shilpa is without appearing to persecute her. So Danielle, beside herself with rage because Shilpa cooks with onions, calls her a dog. Jack Tweed calls her a cunt. The word was bleeped out, leading many viewers to speculate that she had been racially abused. That is not surprising. This is a racist country; to the vast majority of couch potatoes out there, Shilpa is a "Paki bird". Jackiey's inability to pronounce Shilpa's name had less to do with failure to conceal her own racism than the fact that she has no idea how to spell anything. Shilpa is not allowed to write anything in the house, so she can't show them how the name is spelled, and even if she did, they would still flounder, just as she did when she pronounced Dirk as Duck. It should be possible for both sides to make fun of each other's accents, without pushing the racism button. Shilpa has tried, a weeny bit, but her only real subject is herself. The cockney glottal stop means that the likes of Jade Goody are incapable of pronouncing an L before a P. They have never seen a Hindi movie and never heard of Shilpa Shetty, or even Sharukh Khan, and they probably don't have any Indian friends. In that, they are like most of the Caucasians who live in this country. Separation breeds division, as we are always told when the subject is religious schools in Ulster, but there is almost no inter-penetration of English and Indian cultures in Britain. Even people who go out once a week for "an Indian" don't realise and don't care that they are almost certain to be in a Sylheti restaurant. (Sylhet is part of Bangladesh.) Shilpa likes to be seen cooking. She looks utterly virtuous while she is doing it, she doesn't have to try to converse with the women in the house, she gets to eat food she likes, spice it any way she chooses and time it to please herself. It is a perfect ploy to drive everyone else crazy. Jermaine and Dirk are wise to her little game and quite amused to see how the cat-fights are developing. Jo, Jade and Danielle are miles behind the eight-ball; only Jack is further out of it. Endemol must be over the moon because racism has raised its ugly head. Every time someone sends in a complaint to Ofcom about racism in the Big Brother house, the profile of the show is raised and Shilpa earns a bit more of her huge fee. But it's a funny old world, to be sure. You can call her a "dog". Sexism is fine. What you mustn't do is call her a "Paki". As if to be Pakistani was to be worse than being a dog. Our very tenderness on this issue is the flip side of racism, and still part of the same coin. If you call me an Aussie you don't insult me because Aussieness is OK. Pakiness is evidently not OK. The brouhaha about racism in the Big Brother house is a smoke screen that conceals what is really vicious and corrupting about CBB. Plain, everyday, common or garden bullying supplies the motive force for everything that happens in the Big Brother house. Big Brother disorients the housemates and disrupts their perceptions so that they become literally unbalanced. They have nothing to gain but their fee for enduring this destructive process, and so far three housemates have decided that if they remained in the house they stood to lose more than they had to gain. Although their behaviour seemed irrational at the time, because they were forced "greatly to find quarrel in a straw", it was actually supremely rational. So far none of the women has been that smart. Except for Shilpa. Shilpa's enjoying herself. Ladbroke's are quoting her 10/3 favourite.
Poster Comment: Everything about her is infuriating: her haughty way of stalking about, her indomitable self-confidence, her chandelier earrings, her leaping eyebrows, her mirthless smile, her putty nose and her eternal bray, "Why does everyone hate me?" Not to mention the crying jags... Everyone hates her because she wants them to. Generic indeed, Mr. Sowell.
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#1. To: Tauzero (#0)
My heart bleeds.
Accepting used LP accounts and donations in cash.
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