De Gouden Kooi (translated: the golden cage) is totally controlled by the media and this is a perfect metaphor for the power of the media in the real world.
De Gouden Kooi is a reality show on the new Dutch TV-channel Tien. It started with ten participants who were locked up in a mansion and lived like millionaires. The only catch is that they are actually in a competition with each other: only one of them can win the mansion and the price money of over one million euros. You can watch the show daily at 19:30 on Tien or you can watch it live online.
Let me get you up-to-date with the recent developments in De Gouden Kooi. When Nena left the reality show, her best friend Amanda entered the show, of course not knowing that her best friend was leaving. To everyone’s surprise Amanda quickly developed a sexual relationship with another participant, Brian. Brian was, according to him, in love with Nena, but had many fights (yes, actual fights) with his so-called love.
Yet, we have another major player in this ‘love story’: Huub. He has made a reputation for himself of being the bad boy. He orders prostitutes to please him every week, he annoys the other inhabitants to the extend that they want to beat him up (which some have actually done) and he’s the only one who is always playing the game. Huub hates Brian and that's why he tried to seduce Nena and now constantly successfully seduces Amanda, who recently had sex with Huub when she was drunk. But this week another player entered the show: Lieke. Lieke was the cleaning lady, but she got fired because she had a romantic relationship with Huub and didn’t do her job anymore. Now she has entered the show as a player.
On YouTube you can find a couple of music videos called Para Brother (referring to Brian's explosive temper) on this subject, they illustrate that the participants are pushed towards their own limits:
You can see that the participants are constantly manipulated by the creators of the show. When things get boring, they introduce another player, like they did with Amanda and, more recently, Lieke. It’s a major social experiment which is governed by the ratings. Because John de Mol, the boss of Tien, has always claimed that if the ratings go down, the show will be taken of the air. The media controls the lives of the participants, this way De Gouden Kooi serves as an example of Baudrillard's (1994) theory.
Baudrillard describes how the media controls our life:
Contemporary media (television, film, magazines, billboards, the Internet) are concerned not just with relaying information or stories but with interpreting our most private selves for us, making us approach each other and the world through the lens of these media images. (Felluga, 2003)The media creates a language of symbols by which we live and this language keeps us from accessing reality. Just as in De Gouden Kooi where the participants have lost all contact with reality, cause of the manipulation of the media. This reality show tells us a lot about how far this control reaches and how dangerous it can be. Read more about media control in another article of mine.
You can read more about Baudrillard's theories here.
Literature
Baudrillard, Jean (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Felluga, Dino (2003). ‘Modules on Baudrillard: On Simulation.’ Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Purdue U.