... position of authority from which they dictate rules twenty-four hours a day, much as Zimbardo's guards who "were free to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison [... they] made up their own set of rules, which they then carried into effect" (Zimbardo 1999: slide 12) The role of the Stanford guards and the Big Brother producers becomes that of bully; indeed, the very name of the reality television programme alludes to George Orwell's novel 1984 in which the power of the state, or "Big Brother", dominates the lives of individuals by controlling their behaviour and through cultural conditioning. Ultimately, Orwell's protagonist not just believes in the party line, but comes to love Big Brother. In neither the SPE nor Big Brother is the reaction of the prisoners, or contestants, to authority so straightforward, and it is the response of the housemates to the ...

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