#12
Los Angeles Times
November 24, 2001
COLUMN ONE
Glasnost to Glass House
Russian reality show has contestants shedding clothes and cavorting before
millions, raising questions about moneymaking and decency on state TV.
By JOHN DANISZEWSKI, TIMES STAFF WRITER
MOSCOW -- Twenty-six cameras track them 24 hours a day, from the shower to the exercise room and into their rumpled beds (why don't they ever make them?), where goateed Maxim tries to convince strawberry-blond Olga that going all the way in front of millions of viewers is part of the job.
"Easy for you to say," she answers breathily as he tries to detach the microphone strapped to her back. "You're a boy. Can you just imagine what people are going to call me?"
Although they are in the dark in an otherwise empty bedroom, they know that all of Russia--not to mention Ukraine, the Baltics and parts of Central Asia--can see whatever they do through the magic of infrared photography. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. But six young people in a glass apartment close to Lenin's tomb are tossing Russia a few questions: What are the limits of moneymaking and good taste on the country's heavily commercialized but mainly state-controlled television networks? And when does reality degenerate into raunchiness?
For a chance to win their own apartment, a commodity that almost no twentysomething Russian could afford without help, three men and three women have been baring their souls--and more--in a thrice-daily series called "Behind the Glass." It's Russia's first foray into reality TV.
Since it began Oct. 27, the show has become wildly popular, drawing 50% of the television audience in Russia some nights, its producers say. They suggest that viewers are watching because it provides a window into the minds of a new generation and shows what kind of society Russia has become.
Bunk, snort the critics. "This is a gimmick aimed at making money, and that's all there is to it," said Vladimir Pozner, a noted television commentator and analyst.
The series also has been criticized by the Russian Orthodox Church ("very dissolute" and potentially "ruinous" to viewers) and the country's Islamic mufti ("a propaganda of lechery.") At least one moral-revival movement has appealed to the Mass Communications Ministry to have it banned from the airwaves.
What sets "Behind the Glass" apart from reality TV serials in the West is the willingness of the participants to shed their clothes for the unseen cameras, a tactic they seem to believe is the surest way to the hearts of viewers. When the show airs Dec. 1, the public will vote to award the apartment to one couple from among the participants. The losers, who are voted off as they go along, get nothing aside from celebrity and small bonuses they can earn during the program through assigned tasks.
In the first two weeks, viewers witnessed Sasha sudsing Margarita in a shower segment that lasted nearly 20 minutes, Olga and Margarita lying atop each other and kissing ferociously, Denis awkwardly declaring his love for Olga, Maxim and Olga making out in bed and Denis walking in on them. The nudity and steamy (literally, in the case of the shower) scenes are concentrated in the segment that airs after 11 p.m.
When at last Maxim reached his amorous goal--with Margarita not Olga--the Obshchaya Gazeta newspaper called it "an epoch-making event." Komsomolskaya Pravda's headline announced: "Max and Margo Finally Did IT."
Only Janna, a pouty, dark-haired contestant of Armenian descent, has eschewed being drawn into the general sexiness. But that has not seemed to hurt her. She was kept on the program while the spicier Olga was voted off.
So far, the acme of drama on the show has been Sasha's agonized decision to leave after learning that his real-life girlfriend was angered by his splashing around with Margarita. He says that the shower incident was platonic and that his relationship with his girlfriend was more important than winning an apartment.
"It was the decision of a man," producer Grigory Lyubomirov said approvingly, although he added that he liked having Sasha on the show.
Sasha was replaced by muscle-bound Anatoly, who arrived with a cake and a bottle of champagne for his new roommates. More recently, however, the relationship between the newcomer and the rest seems to have soured. One day--encouraged by the producer, whose disembodied voice gives provocative instructions from time to time--they declared Anatoly their "slave."
Not a Pretty Picture of Russian Youth
In general, the six have not supplied a very flattering portrayal of Russian youth. They have been listless and sloppy, have read little, shuffled around, and have few evident convictions or goals. Yet there is something faintly touching about them, caught in a surreal situation, trying their best to be engaging.
The producers gave them each a fixed budget equivalent to an average Moscow salary, and as a group they can order groceries sent in. They have no access to television but are allowed video games and techno-rock on their headsets. Olga and Margarita dress in scanty clothes most of the time and sleep in their thong underwear, while Janna wears long-sleeved pajamas. All are required to work out once a day. They do their own cleanup when they feel like it. In the one nod to privacy, the omnipresent cameras never show them using the toilet.
Appearing on TV6 network and scheduled to run for one month, "Behind the Glass" beat to the market two other reality-type series being prepared by the state-controlled ORT and NTV networks. ORT's series, "The Last Hero," was scheduled to start Nov. 17. Modeled on "Survivor," it has two teams competing to survive on a desert island in Panama.
As if three taped 40-minute segments a day of "Behind the Glass" was not enough, people also can view a real-time version of the menage-a-six on the Internet, purchase unexpurgated videos or queue to gawk at the six in person at the Rossiya Hotel, where one-way mirrors expose the apartment's interior to the cameras.
Most of the time, the line is as long as the one at Lenin's tomb nearby. And just as at the tomb, security guards rush several thousand people through each day.
Lyubomirov, the producer, said the program appeals because it dares to show "real life, something which for many years [under communism] was forbidden to the public eye."
But critics slam the program as a crass, profit-driven affront to good taste.
" 'Behind the Glass' is a sex show, and it is a unique one for Russia. . . . We have never seen anything like it before," said Igor Kon, a sociologist with the Russian Education Academy who has been following the project. The show's producers "could not lose because they appeal to a 100% sure thing--one's sexual instinct."
"It seems to me that it is a real indication of Russia becoming more and more Westernized," said Pozner, the television commentator. Although largely state-controlled, Russian television depends on advertising and "therefore cares deeply about ratings and looks for the common denominator--a mass audience," he noted.
Pozner disputed the notion that the show serves a social good by holding up a mirror to society. "When you are offering people an apartment to do what they are doing, I think that is very much exploitation," he said.
Lacking Hope and a Sense of Purpose
There is a feeling of hopelessness and a lost sense of purpose among young people in Russia today, Pozner argued, citing a recent instance in which up to 300 youths rampaged through a Moscow market attacking people from the Caucasus and Central Asia, killing three.
"There is a very big difference between people of that age today and their parents or grandparents. Because rightly or wrongly, their grandparents had a belief; the vast majority believed in the Soviet state, believed in the Soviet ideals," he said.
The participants, all between 21 and 24, were eager to get on the show, even knowing that it meant cavorting without inhibition, he said. "These young people have nothing to believe in. . . . And when there is nothing there--no moral fiber, no ideals, really, left--then what is it that can in any way limit your conduct?"
As for the audience, Pozner said the draw is pure voyeurism.
"There is no doubt that this show appeals to what each and every one of us has, and that is the desire now and then to peek through the keyhole and spy on other people's lives," he said.
Kon, of the education academy, said the individuals chosen for the show are by no means out of the ordinary.
"They are indeed the people who live around the corner. And this is exactly what makes this show extremely attractive to the majority of TV viewers," he said. That extends to their casualness about open sexuality--so different from the prim public face of the old Soviet Union.
"Since it had been made clear in the ads that the organizers were looking for young males and females not burdened with moral restrictions," he added, "it is clear that the participants will try to deliver what the audience expects from them: sex and sexuality, raw and unbridled."
According to the sociologist, today's 16-year-old boys in Russia have twice the number of sexual partners as their fathers at the same age, and girls have five times as many partners as their mothers at 16.
"The younger generation [watches] simply out of curiosity about relations within their own age groups," Kon said. "The older generation's curiosity is drawn first and foremost by the very fact that sex and erotica may be shown openly on television."
However, Moscow psychologist Tamara Gayvoronskaya sees a different reason for the program's popularity: It offers an escape for television viewers from the excessive negativity on the airwaves.
"It is not about politics, it is not about explosions, it is different from all the gory action movies shown on Russian TV. And against the customary background gloom, it is something different," she said. Her 12-year-old son, she added, is glued to the TV screen whenever the show comes on.
Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.
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