'Big Brother' bares all

I am 25-years-old, and so I grew up while the precursors to modern debates about sexuality were in full swing. Contrary to those on either side of the Big Brother debate, my experience is that much of my generation is neither for nor against more sex on television. Rather, I think that many of us feel a little confused, or rather bemused, about which side to choose. Maybe for us "the truth" is that we feel perpetually caught between the two sides. We are so familiar with the arguments, we could choose to side with either. So in the end we don't have a strong opinion at all.

That is, aren't we just a little bit bored with this whole thing? "Use your sexuality in order to be healthy"; "Don't use your sexuality in order to be moral"; "Watch Big Brother in order to know your true self"; "Don't watch Big Brother in order to know your true self".

Isn't this all just a little passé? Aren't we a bit agitated with the simple fact of being told who to be, by these voices chattering at us from our newspapers and televisions? Perhaps it is in this sense that "the television is to blame".

Taking a cue from Foucault, we need to wonder whether the liberationists and the conservatives are actually as far apart as they claim to be, or as our television screens and newspapers represent them as being. Don't they ultimately want the same thing: for us to continually talk about our sexuality, whether it is to regulate, or liberate it? More than this, if it is true that those who are being spoken of in the debate about Big Brother are themselves at a point of ambivalence about the debate, perhaps we have reached a point when we should stop talking about it at all.