Ever since his entry into the Big Brother house, I have been a huge fan of Gerry. In fact, he's probably my favourite housemate. On the one hand he is erudite, witty, polite and sensitive, but on the other he's silly, emotive, prone to boring the tits off his housemates and camp as a row of pink tents with sparkly bits on them.
However, this weekend Gerry made two mistakes that intelligent people are unfortunately prone to making. Firstly, he assumed that logic is the same thing as rhetoric and secondly, he assumed that taking the moral high-ground would gain him the support of his friends. In truth, neither held true this weekend.
It all started quite a while ago. After the initial weeks when Charley systematically picked on and wore down anyone that dared look at her funny (or, in the case of Nicky, have the audacity to repeat to someone else what Charley had just said to her) the other housemates took on the role that will be familiar to anyone that has been in an abusive relationship; they learned to seek an even keel. The housemates quickly learned that the best way to deal with Charley was to walk around on egg shells whenever she was near and to just back off or placate her whenever she started to work herself up. They all took turns at standing up to her, of course, but in the end they all gave up because, as Chris Morris so wisely pointed out, thick people don't realise when they've lost an argument.
Gerry tried this but after a while, he decided not to take this any more. He was an educated, 29 year old man and he was not going to let Charley bully him into submission. This is what prompted the water fight that resulted in Charley being formally warned that if she continued being aggressive and threatening (which she did) then Big Brother would be forced to take action (which he didn't). However, since then Charley spent a while being well behaved so as to avoid nomination and eviction. However, when Charley saw that Gerry had put her up for eviction she immediately nominated him straight back out of spite, prompting Gerry being up for eviction. Once Nicky was safely punted out of the house, Charley realised that not only was there one less person to defend her and not vote for her but one of her most vocal critics had remained in. As is usual, this prompted Charley to move into her usual pattern of displacing her own anxiety about being kicked out onto another housemate and grinding them into the dust by bellowing at them like a demented fog horn. This week, the target turned out to be Gerry, who was clearly elated that the public had chosen him to stay in over Charley's ally Nicky.
There then ensued one of the most ugly and bitter arguments yet to appear in this year's Big Brother.
Drawing upon his education and undeniable articulacy, gerry proceeded to tear Charley to ribbons. Every one of Charley's attempts to go for a weak spot was batted aside with a laugh or a cutting remark, every piece of shifted ground was pounced upon and every single one of Charley's numerous hateful personality traits was drawn out into the open as someone with very little brain and very little education was destroyed by someone with the intelligence, the verbal dexterity and the venomous desire to humiliate and ridicule a woman who has effectively bullied all the other housemates into giving her a free ride no matter how badly she behaves.
Backed into one corner too many, Charley responded by accusing Gerry of having sex with fifteen year old boys. Not a slip of the tongue or ignorance about the age of consent, this was a typical example of Charley going for her opponent's weak point and in this case it was accusing a gay man of having sex with people who were legally children. Charley knows perfectly well what the age of consent is in this country and she also knows full well that one of the oldest of slanders spoken against the gay community is that they prey on children. Charley chose her words to hurt as much as possible and in the street or a club that decision might well have been the right one but Gerry immediately seized on the opportunity... Charley is a bully who will resort to hateful homophobia if it means silencing her critics.
However, while this is not the street or the night club, it is not the seminar or the class room either.
Gerry perfectly demonstrated how unrepentantly dishonest, vile and ugly a person Charley is. All of her little verbal tactics and tricks were as nothing before his refusal to give up and the act was complete when Charley was forced into making the kind of comment that most people would agree is homophobic. In fact, this is the series of Big Brother when casual and friendly inadvertent use of racist language forced one housemate to be expelled. Gerry had every right to expect both the housemates and Big Brother to back him up. In truth, neither did.
Already bending over backwards in its attempts to keep Charley in the house, Big Brother did little more than give Charley a slap on the wrist, effectively demonstrating that while Big Brother will not tolerate racism in any form, it's not too bothered about people being rude to gay people (lest we forget, both Laura and Brian have been warned about homophobic language in the past).
However, Gerry's real miscalculation lay in the other housemates' willingness to enable Charley's bullying, even going so far as to defend her against people that stand up to her purely for the sake of a quiet life as both Carole and Ziggy did after the argument. In fact, the housemates could not fall over themselves fast enough to console Charley after she was so ineffectually "warned" by Big Brother.
Gerry was right to stand up to Charley. He was right that she accused him of being a paedophile but in the process he also handed Charley a PR victory because if there's one thing people hate more than a bully and homophobe, it's someone intelligent who is willing to put someone ignorant in their place.
I like Gerry too, and I think Big Brother has demonstrated some disturbing double-standards when it comes to dealing with the homophobia in the house. However…
“…this is the series of Big Brother when casual and friendly inadvertent use of racist language forced one housemate to be expelled…”
Although I don’t want to return to the issue of Emily, the more I think about what she said, the less I believe it was casual. If she had been saying n***** in the hip-hop sense, she would have said to Charley “you’re pushing it out, N*****” or “you’re pushing it out, my n*****.” She did not. She said “you’re pushing it out, YOU n*****.” That use of the word “you” means that n***** could not be substituted with the word “mate” or “friend” or “brother”, as it could have been in the first two examples, and as it should have been if she intended it in a friendly way. The way she chose to phrase it, n***** could have easily been substituted with the word “bitch” or “cow.” In my opinion, she meant it to be an insult. It slipped out, and then she tried to dismiss it by claiming she’s hears such language on MTV, or whatever she said. I defy her to find the phrase “you n*****” in any context where it’s not meant to be insulting.
Also, given what they were discussing – Charley is much thinner than Emily and yet she was complaining about the size of her stomach – Emily must have been irritated.
Anyway, yes, unfortunately the public seem to believe that anyone with a reasonable vocabulary or a decent education must be stuck up, and people hate being looked down on more than anything, it seems. I think Gerry can sometimes be a bit pompous, but I don’t blame him – he’s stuck in the house with a bunch of imbeciles! He’s probably worried his brain will turn to jelly if he doesn’t exercise it…
Posted by: mhayinde | July 24, 2007 at 01:04 PM
I agree with you on the question of tone. I think you're right that she used it interchangeably with the term "twat" or "bitch".
I also agree that it clearly wasn't Emily trying to be Fifty Cent.
However, I think that there's a degree of difference between the word as Emily used it and the word as it might appear on a sign refusing service or spat out of the mouth of someone trying to prevent a black person from voting.
I think she used the word much as one might use the word "cunt". It's insulting but it can be used without any real venom or bigotry behind it. However, there's a world of difference between calling a friend a cunt and calling someone you barely know a cunt in front of a TV camera.
I think that Charley's accusation that Gerry slept with 15 year old boys carried considerably more venom and intolerance than Emily's misjudged insult.
Posted by: Jonathan McCalmont | July 24, 2007 at 04:14 PM
Charley is venom through-and-through!
Posted by: mhayinde | July 24, 2007 at 05:46 PM
Charley is undoubtedly one of the most hateful and unpleasant BB contestants ever.
You're absolutely right about the "curse of the intellectual", by the way. I found this gem on a Big Brother forum where people are writing that they hope Charley wins: "Gerry's a bit of an intellectual bully... always putting people 'right' and 'educating them' or saying that he's got this or that... not nice.. shouting can be over and done with, but sowing the seeks of inadequacy in people? Plain nasty!"
Yuck. How disgusting!
Posted by: passing_fancy | July 26, 2007 at 09:33 PM
That's an interesting quote.
I think the issue is that a lot of people aren't that well educated and if they are educated tend to be vocationally trained or have learned stuff in order to get a job or on another course.
Gerry, on the other hand, has spent a lot of his life learning purely for the pleasure of learning and the sheer fun of knowing stuff.
If you've not experienced the joy of just knowing stuff and sharing ideas then someone throwing weird and unfamiliar ideas at you can be difficult to understand. A lot of people then assume that the person chucking the ideas around is showing off or trying to put other people down whereas that's not really what it's about.
I think Big Brother has taught Gerry that most people don't enjoy exploring new ideas and actually they can react in quite a hostile manner to educated people and so knowing stuff can really isolate you.
I really really feel bad for Gerry at the moment because he's terribly lonely and is desperate for acceptance.
Posted by: Jonathan McCalmont | July 27, 2007 at 12:17 AM