Big Brother Isn't Watching You

In today’s society we enjoy discussing topics which are provoking and easy to interpret in a million ways. A good start to such an endless discussion is the article “Big Brother isn’t watching you” written by England’s one and only Russel Brand, whose fame comes from being an performer, actor, writer but mainly from being an comedian with a loud mouth, not I a bad way. The article is written entirely focused on the UK riots back in 2011, which were called “Blackberry riots” because of the riots being organized entirely with modern devices such as the blackberry smartphone.

Russel Brand is seeing the situation from both sides, from the rioters perspective and from the governments perspective. He thinks the rioters are acting weird destroying their fellow citizens shops and livelihoods without seeming to care one bit. Although he finds the rioters behavior mindless. He also sets himself into their position. He quickly tells the reader about his younger days as a “bad boy” and even going to riots himself in spite of him coming from a “proper” home.

Russel Brand’s writing style is very sarcastic and ironic. He uses his sarcasm to go against both parties with comments like; “..But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out…” and “JD Sports' is probably easier to desecrate if you can't afford what's in there and the few poorly paid jobs there are taken”. He uses the sarcasm to underline; how he sees the situation, and his dissatisfaction with the UK government. This type of writing is mostly found in serious papers and articles, because of its sarcasm many undereducated readers won’t catch the sarcasm, and it’ll throw them of topic. But sarcasm or no sarcasm the article is a letter straight from Russel Brand’s heart, expressing his thoughts directly into paper. The text is straight forward, no opinions are safe and Brand’s writing sure does express it with no restrains at all. The sarcasm contributes to the text making it more entertaining to read, which at the same time makes it clear that he lives off of doing exactly that.

Down throughout the text Brand asks not one but many rhetorical questions, by doing so he invites the reader to participate in the “discussion” which makes the text more interesting because of our sudden involvement in his thoughts and opinions.

His own opinions which make up the entire article are critical. As mentioned before, he does question his fellow Londoners choice, doing riots and destroying public and private property. But he also sympathizes with most of the citizens. He comes from an ordinary family, he himself has experienced riots and