Why the monarchy must go
Support for the monarchy is the result of brainwashing on an Orwellian scale, argues novelist Will Self
Prospect Blog
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Smallscreen
Channel 4 has had some hits and misses this season as it tries to find replacements for the phenomenon that was Big Brother -
Cultural notebook: the disadvantages of privacy
A century or two from now, human beings may no longer have inner lives—and it will all be the fault of BT customer services -
How we got the Soviets wrong
Cold warriors like myself badly overestimated the attractiveness of Marxism -
Smallscreen
Big Brother may be on its last legs but that doesn’t mean reality television is in trouble. The genre is still producing real excellence -
Bye bye Big Brother
And so farewell then, Big Brother. Come the end of series eleven next year, Channel 4 has announced its intention to axe the ailing flagship of reality television, with the other major channels apparently also deciding they’d rather not step too close to its twitching corpse. The end of an... -
Down with people power
Direct democracy is back in fashion, seen as a way of restoring trust in politics. But more referendums, and even votes to sack MPs, are a bad idea—just look at what has happened in California -
Big Brother 2010—Brown v Cameron?
As our television screens are swamped with this year’s deluge of vacuous, talentless, fame-hungry nobodies (ie Big Brother contestants), take comfort in the thought that reality TV does not, as yet, decide our national elections. For this, writes William Gill in a free to read web exclusive for Prospect, is... -
The death of do-nothing celebrity
Everyone knows you can be famous just for being famous. But, with a new kind of reality show on the rise, is celebrity-land witnessing a flight towards authority? -
Arts in Prospect this month: reality TV and the global war for souls
This month’s arts and books section features two lead articles on, first, the changing nature of global religion and, second, some more local shifts in the minor faith that is British reality television. In the first piece, Eric Kaufmann, a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Centre, looks at John Micklethwait...
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