Big Brother Isn't Watching You

1116 Words5 Pages
Big brother isn’t watching you As the title “Big Brother isn’t watching you” refers to, the community is the one who isn’t watching the young people in London. This is the main statement that is reflected in the article by Russell Brand. The article is an attempt to understanding why the young rioters acted like they did, and Russell Brand’s explanation on the rioter’s motive for the vandalizing in 2011. Russell Brand is a British comedian, former citizen in London and now living in L.A with great success. In that context he begins his article by excusing himself, because when he isn’t living in the middle of the riots, people might think that it isn’t his matter to comment on the riots. When he is thinking ahead of the reader on the first page he uses the stylistic device, a rebuttal. In that way, he start out as honest and in a way innocent, even though he is going to criticize the society and government. Another rhetorical feature is when he is asking a rhetorical question: “Remember? No? Well, that's the nature of the medium”, where he doesn’t expect an answer. Then he moves on to commenting on the reality TV he has made throughout his career, where a violent accident in Big Brother becomes a reference to the riots in London. It is most likely that the readers of the text are British, and know about what is going on in their country at that exact moment. Throughout the article Russell Brand makes a lot of references to internal political comments and events. It is expected that you know about the political structure of the country. The riots have most likely affected a lot of people, and therefore Brand is careful when he mentions them at first. “This week’s riots are sad and frightening…”, then further on he uses his personal feelings to illuminate the subject. He wants to criticize and be harsh in his language, but he is careful in doing
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