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During
the week of June 5, the new CBS television series Survivor
came in number one in the ratings, beating out ABC's Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire? King
Regis took second place to a show about sixteen
people struggling to "survive" on a desert island long enough to win $1
million.
It's
like the old Candid Camera idea. On Candid Camera,
viewers can watch as practical jokes are played on unsuspecting individuals,
but what happens to the participants on Survivor is no joke.
The
show pits sixteen people against one another in competition for the million
bucks. Interactions among the participants, who are constantly monitored
by TV cameras as they try to get the upper hand over one another, are
intense and humiliating. It seems these people will do anything, including
eating live insects and cooked rats, to get that $1 million. At the end
of each show, one contestant suffers the ignominy of being voted off the
island by the others. And we at home get to see it all.
The
program is the latest in a growing trend that is being labeled "voyeur
television." It's Candid Camera run amok.
Les
Moonves, president of CBS television, said in a recent interview that
people today want something different. "There's more of a voyeuristic
nature to our watching habits," he told the Associated Press.
Robert
Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at
Syracuse University in New York, regrettably agrees. "Voyeurism and television
were destined to embrace," he said in the same Associated Press article.
Survivor
is a hit, and CBS is planning more of the same. Can astrology explain
this new trend in TV entertainment?
Outer
Planets and Social Trends
To
understand social trends through astrology, one needs to study the slower
moving outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Each of these planets
moves very slowly, and they create the flavor of the times we live in.
All three of these planets have been interacting lately and may provide
an explanation of what is going on these days in the area of television
entertainment.
Pluto
and Uranus have been working in cahoots for the last five years. Pluto,
among other things, is associated with the urge to probe, investigate
and, let's face it, spy on others. Uranus is the planet of television,
computers and technology. In 1995, Pluto entered Sagittarius and Uranus
transited into its own sign of Aquarius, beginning a five-year period
of friendly contact between the two planets, linking the urge to observe
others with new technological developments in TV and the Internet.
These
two planets seemed to have been put into hyperdrive by the energy of their
respective signs. In Sagittarius, the energy that likes to "take it to
the max," Pluto's curiosity seems to have become insatiable. The public
is binging on the desire to know more about the private lives of everyone,
including politicians, movie stars and even the guy next door. In Aquarius,
the energy of technology and the media, Uranus has produced innovations
in TV and the Internet that have facilitated Pluto's snoop complex.
One
of the first manifestations of the Pluto-Uranus collaboration appeared
on cable television. MTV's Real World, a program that uses
TV to constantly monitor a group of young people living together, became
a smash hit. Simultaneously, the first voyeuristic web sites began showing
up on the Internet. For a fee, users can click and watch people in their
homes doing just about anything imaginable.
This
trend went on relatively quietly until 1997, when Neptune, the planet
associated with entertainment fads, joined Uranus in Aquarius. Voyeur
web sites began mushrooming up by the score, and the Real World
concept started to appear in shows on European television. Survivor
is actually the American version of a program that first aired in Sweden.
Now, in typical Neptunian fashion, a trend is starting to turn into a
new
wave in the entertainment world.
Mega-mergers,
another Plutonian phenomenon, in the technology (Uranus) and entertainment
(Neptune) fields are helping enforce the new trend. The largest such merger
was finally completed May 5, 2000, when Viacom, owner of MTV, merged with
CBS. No surprise, then, that a Real World clone should show
up on CBS.
More
to Come
Before
the ratings were even in on Survivor, CBS had already planned
to bring out another program in the same vein in July— Big Brother.
This program, which takes its title from George Orwell's prophetic novel,
1984, will have ten participants who will spend weeks together
in a house, totally cut off from contact with the outside world. They
will have no TV, radio or newspapers, but they will be monitored by 28
cameras and 60 microphones. There will even be a camera in the bathroom
(though none of the shower-cam footage will be shown on TV). The program
will use a half hour of edited footage, four nights a week, but Internet
users will be able to watch 24 hours a day.
Big
Brother is the U.S. version of a program that aired last year
on German TV. The show gave its network all-time high ratings, despite
calls from government officials for a code of ethics for electronic media.
The Swedish version of Survivor provoked similar ambivalent
feelings in that country, especially following the suicide of one of the
show's participants.
Success
Likely to be Imitated
This
July, transiting Jupiter, the planet that rules growth, hype and expansion,
enters Gemini, a sign that will encourage the activities of Uranus and
Neptune in Aquarius. We can expect a proliferation of such shows as other
networks vie to compete with CBS's certain ratings successes.
In
October, 2000, and again in July, 2001, Jupiter, which on a higher level
is linked to ethics and morality, will oppose Pluto in Sagittarius. We
may possibly see government scrutiny of these programs accompanied by
calls for ethical responsibility on the part of broadcasters and producers
at that time. But if the European experience is any guide, ratings will
outvote morality, and the trend will continue for some time to come. Neptune
moves very slowly.
In
1984, Orwell painted the picture of a society where individual
privacy no longer exists. Everyone is under the watchful eye of Big Brother,
constantly monitored by TV cameras. Orwell's vision was in one way uncannily
accurate. But he got the most important part of it wrong. It’s not the
government behind those TV cameras. Big Brother, it turns out, is us.
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