The hottest topic right now in Brasil is BBB, short of Big Brother Brasil. Rich and poor, educated and uneducated: everyone has some idea of what's happening with the 17 strangers locked up in a house. And everyone has something to say about it. Some restrain to superficial
comments about which participant seems more friendly, while others have informed opinions on who's who in the house and the complicated dynamics among the participants. Funny enough, this seems to be the same approach Brazilian people have towards politics.
No one can follow every detail of 17 people's lives for 24 hours a day, it's humanly impossible. That's why most people depend on the daily or weekly summaries aired at night to keep track of what's happening in the BBB house. If someone is really interested, they can even buy the pay per view channels, but they won't be able to watch all the cameras all the time. Maybe they can try focusing on something, maybe a few participants, or maybe on what they eat, on who's sleeping with who. But no one spectator can really know completely everything that's happening, ever.
Isn't this how we deal with politics? We form our opinions based on the chewed up bits delivered by the media, just to have what to say in a conversation. Those who are really concerned focus on some aspect of it and research it throughly. But no one really gets all the details, there are too many variables involved, many of which are not accessible to most of us. And really understanding what's going on is fundamental in deciding who to vote for. Which brings me to the second parallel between BBB and politics...
The illusion of true participation, the feeling that you can make your opinion count. After all, every week you can vote on who you'd like to stay in the game. However, in both games, we're not free to vote on anyone we want. We gotta choose between a few candidates who were put there by forces which are out of our reach. Well well, still, we feel like we are truly part of the show, don't we?
No one can keep track of what is happening in politics, and the little we know has been delivered to us after a filtering by people with their own interests. And while we try to grasp what's going on in order to have an educated opinion about things, we don't realize that
we live inside a reality governed by factors above us. We are locked up in our country, our job, our family, our religion, our TV shows, our schools, our bars, our kiosks, our beaches, our cars, our friends, our games... And while most of us are just trying to enjoy the ride, others are making an effort to play dirty.
For Brazilian people, politics are not more than something to talk about over some beers. Because we all got a living to make, and can't dedicate much of our time to these reality shows...
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