Golod: The Hunger House
Until recently the term 'Big Brother' conjured up the all-pervading authoritarianism of the Soviet State. Most people now think of it as a reality television franchise. The latest incarnation of the 'Big Brother' format has taken off in the country that first inspired the term. The Russian version is set in a house in Germany, it's created a barrage of protest in that country but has taken Russia by storm, as Kim Traill reports.
REPORTER: Kim Traill
SHOW NARRATOR (Translation): From this moment it's hunger for you. 12 people have passed rigorous tests to participate in the hunger project. Now they're going to an unknown city in an unknown country.
Like other 'Big Brother' reality programs, Golod, meaning hunger, throws a group of total strangers together and observes their interaction for weeks on end. But Golod has an extreme twist - the contestants are deprived of food and made to fend for themselves in a foreign country.
ALISSA TANSKAYA, TELEVISION EXECUTIVE: It was a joke. It was a joke I made at dinner when I was very hungry. I said we won't make the ratings unless someone dies of hunger in a 'Big Brother' house. That was a very black joke, but the bosses seemed to love it.
Alissa Tanskaya is head of development for the Russian television network TNT. Born in Moscow, her family moved to Australia when she was 11. She returned three years ago to work in Russia's booming new television market. After initially being shocked that her joke was taken seriously, she decided the program could be inspirational for young Russians.
ALISSA TANSKAYA: I knew that it should work because of my own experience of being a migrant and coming to Australia when I was little. Yeah, there were days when we went and we bought very, very, very cheap food the shops were literally throwing out and I've seen my mum, you know, work three jobs and, you know, all that sort of stuff and I just know you can survive. All you have to do is want to. So that's what the show's about.
SHOW NARRATOR (Translation): Welcome to the house.
At first, the contestants thought they had come to paradise.
CONTESTANT (Translation): What a house! I'm not going anywhere. I'll stay hungry here. Look, cigarettes!
The program's producers had prepared a surprise banquet for their arrival.
SHOW NARRATOR (Translation): Congratulations. Now you have your dinner. It may be your last.
According to series producer Masha Shaikevich, the excitement was short lived.
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): When they woke up exactly a day later they found there was no food at all. All the leftovers that they thought would keep for a week in the fridge were removed at night.
They were kept locked in the house for six days with no food, but to allay health fears they were given vitamin drinks.
CONTESTANT (Translation): I keep seeing sausages and dumplings. I could even eat fried eggs with tomatoes every day. Don't mention eggs.
The incentive for enduring the hunger is very strong, especially for young Russians.
REPORTER: What's the prize?
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): US $1,000 every month for the rest of their lives. A Russian prize. They won't have to work.
After six days and still no idea of where they were, two of the girls were taken into the city to try to find food.
CONTESTANT (Translation): No, it's not France. It's definitely not France. What language is this! Let's go faster. It's not the USSR. It's either France... Berlin! It is Berlin?
Wearing hidden cameras and followed by four cameramen filming secretly, the girls began looking for ways to make money.
CONTESTANT (Translation): Do you think he's for real? Maybe he's also in some kind of reality show. A different one.
Excuse me, do you speak English?
MAN: Yes.
CONTESTANT: I am Russian student.
MAN: Yeah.
CONTESTANT: TV show. Reality show.
MAN: Oh yeah.
CONTESTANT: I'm very hungry.
MAN: You're hungry?
CONTESTANT: Very hungry.
MAN: We're hungry too. We're always hungry, Americans are always hungry.
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): The only way they managed to get food during their first time out was to approach a Russian man in a supermarket and tell him they were hungry. They realised how humiliating and demeaning it was to beg. You can see that Karina is crying. She was horrified that they had to do it that way, that they had to beg.
News that the program was sending hungry Russians out into the streets caused outrage across Germany. Lurid newspaper stories accused the show's producers of imprisoning and starving the contestants. Politicians called for the show to be banned.
HEIDEMARIE FISCHER, SOCIAL DEMOCRAT MP: That is absolutely terrible and disgusting that young girls have to go on the streets with nothing, no money, not knowing where they are and at least doing everything to survive and I can't believe that in our time it's possible to do so.
ALISSA TANSKAYA: It's what people do every day anyway. They earn money for food and for shelter and our contestants do not have to earn money for shelter, because we provide that. So it is the most real reality show, really.
Unaware of the controversy the show was generating in Germany, the contestants became desperate in their search for ways to make money.
CONTESTANT (Translation): You can't imagine the way those people are. If you tell them you haven't eaten for five days... they laugh and walk away. They treat you like a leper.
But Moscow law student Liuba, who has also worked as a stripper, couldn't see the difficulty.
LIUBA (Translation): I'll rub my arse on his prick and he'll cough up 5 euros. You think I've never done it? Any man can be milked. You shake you arse... I love you baby. and it's done.
HEIDEMARIE FISCHER: I hope it will not be possible in Germany to send young persons in that way on the street. You don't know what's happened. They could be prostitutes, they could do crimes.
The producers counter that the contestants aren't breaking any laws. But what they do to make money is up to them. Liuba approached a Russian-owned club for work as a stripper.
CLUB MANAGER (Translation): You can take off your top and bottom... if that's all right.
LIUBA (Translation):It's OK, I can do that. Fine.
CLUB MANAGER (Translation): With us tonight is Liuba from Moscow! I don't hear your roaring applause, folks!
Liuba earned 50 euros for the house fund for food, alcohol and cigarettes. The program does do some things that would be hard to imagine on Western television, including kidnapping one of the contestants.
Karina had been receiving a lot of attention from the boys in the house. A few weeks into the show her boyfriend, watching from home, could take no more. He demanded that the producers release her from the show because he wanted to marry her. Masha says it was his idea to kidnap her.
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): We decided it would be romantic if her fiance kidnapped her. In fact, it wasn't our idea. He wanted it that way and we allowed it. We said, "OK, but we're going to film everything. And we'll set it up so it looks beautiful." You must be a Russian Mafia... in Berlin, yes?
Neither the audience nor the contestants knew that it was set up. Meanwhile, Karina had been driven halfway across Berlin to a restaurant where her boyfriend was waiting.
SASHA (Translation): Don't open your eyes. Drink it. Drain the glass. All of it. To the bottom. We have a wedding in a week.
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): She agreed at once. It was her dream to marry him. Apparently he hadn't proposed before... at least our show forced him into doing it.
The participants were screened by a psychiatrist before the program started, but after six weeks of deprivation and isolation, the pressure was starting to show.
CONTESTANT (Translation): I don't want to be a superstar, really. I just want to have everything I want. You get inside our souls and then torture us.
The program has been a huge commercial success, screening in more than 600 cities across Russia. After two months, the contestants had found enough ways to make money to keep starvation at bay, but none of them had found regular jobs. It was a huge disappointment for Golod's creator.
ALISSA TANSKAYA: It has been a thoroughly heartbreaking experience for me, really, because I personally wanted to say "Hey guys, look how that can be, look how that can work. If you just get off your butts and try and do something for yourselves you can do it. You can build a little community, you can survive, you can do whatever" and it didn't really work.
CONTESTANT (Translation): My friend hungry.
ALISSA TANSKAYA: I know that Russia has been putting itself back together again for the last 10 years but if that's how it's planning to do it, it's going to be a very long time before it puts itself back together again.
Until recently the term 'Big Brother' conjured up the all-pervading authoritarianism of the Soviet State. Most people now think of it as a reality television franchise. The latest incarnation of the 'Big Brother' format has taken off in the country that first inspired the term. The Russian version is set in a house in Germany, it's created a barrage of protest in that country but has taken Russia by storm, as Kim Traill reports.
REPORTER: Kim Traill
SHOW NARRATOR (Translation): From this moment it's hunger for you. 12 people have passed rigorous tests to participate in the hunger project. Now they're going to an unknown city in an unknown country.
Like other 'Big Brother' reality programs, Golod, meaning hunger, throws a group of total strangers together and observes their interaction for weeks on end. But Golod has an extreme twist - the contestants are deprived of food and made to fend for themselves in a foreign country.
ALISSA TANSKAYA, TELEVISION EXECUTIVE: It was a joke. It was a joke I made at dinner when I was very hungry. I said we won't make the ratings unless someone dies of hunger in a 'Big Brother' house. That was a very black joke, but the bosses seemed to love it.
Alissa Tanskaya is head of development for the Russian television network TNT. Born in Moscow, her family moved to Australia when she was 11. She returned three years ago to work in Russia's booming new television market. After initially being shocked that her joke was taken seriously, she decided the program could be inspirational for young Russians.
ALISSA TANSKAYA: I knew that it should work because of my own experience of being a migrant and coming to Australia when I was little. Yeah, there were days when we went and we bought very, very, very cheap food the shops were literally throwing out and I've seen my mum, you know, work three jobs and, you know, all that sort of stuff and I just know you can survive. All you have to do is want to. So that's what the show's about.
SHOW NARRATOR (Translation): Welcome to the house.
At first, the contestants thought they had come to paradise.
CONTESTANT (Translation): What a house! I'm not going anywhere. I'll stay hungry here. Look, cigarettes!
The program's producers had prepared a surprise banquet for their arrival.
SHOW NARRATOR (Translation): Congratulations. Now you have your dinner. It may be your last.
According to series producer Masha Shaikevich, the excitement was short lived.
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): When they woke up exactly a day later they found there was no food at all. All the leftovers that they thought would keep for a week in the fridge were removed at night.
They were kept locked in the house for six days with no food, but to allay health fears they were given vitamin drinks.
CONTESTANT (Translation): I keep seeing sausages and dumplings. I could even eat fried eggs with tomatoes every day. Don't mention eggs.
The incentive for enduring the hunger is very strong, especially for young Russians.
REPORTER: What's the prize?
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): US $1,000 every month for the rest of their lives. A Russian prize. They won't have to work.
After six days and still no idea of where they were, two of the girls were taken into the city to try to find food.
CONTESTANT (Translation): No, it's not France. It's definitely not France. What language is this! Let's go faster. It's not the USSR. It's either France... Berlin! It is Berlin?
Wearing hidden cameras and followed by four cameramen filming secretly, the girls began looking for ways to make money.
CONTESTANT (Translation): Do you think he's for real? Maybe he's also in some kind of reality show. A different one.
Excuse me, do you speak English?
MAN: Yes.
CONTESTANT: I am Russian student.
MAN: Yeah.
CONTESTANT: TV show. Reality show.
MAN: Oh yeah.
CONTESTANT: I'm very hungry.
MAN: You're hungry?
CONTESTANT: Very hungry.
MAN: We're hungry too. We're always hungry, Americans are always hungry.
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): The only way they managed to get food during their first time out was to approach a Russian man in a supermarket and tell him they were hungry. They realised how humiliating and demeaning it was to beg. You can see that Karina is crying. She was horrified that they had to do it that way, that they had to beg.
News that the program was sending hungry Russians out into the streets caused outrage across Germany. Lurid newspaper stories accused the show's producers of imprisoning and starving the contestants. Politicians called for the show to be banned.
HEIDEMARIE FISCHER, SOCIAL DEMOCRAT MP: That is absolutely terrible and disgusting that young girls have to go on the streets with nothing, no money, not knowing where they are and at least doing everything to survive and I can't believe that in our time it's possible to do so.
ALISSA TANSKAYA: It's what people do every day anyway. They earn money for food and for shelter and our contestants do not have to earn money for shelter, because we provide that. So it is the most real reality show, really.
Unaware of the controversy the show was generating in Germany, the contestants became desperate in their search for ways to make money.
CONTESTANT (Translation): You can't imagine the way those people are. If you tell them you haven't eaten for five days... they laugh and walk away. They treat you like a leper.
But Moscow law student Liuba, who has also worked as a stripper, couldn't see the difficulty.
LIUBA (Translation): I'll rub my arse on his prick and he'll cough up 5 euros. You think I've never done it? Any man can be milked. You shake you arse... I love you baby. and it's done.
HEIDEMARIE FISCHER: I hope it will not be possible in Germany to send young persons in that way on the street. You don't know what's happened. They could be prostitutes, they could do crimes.
The producers counter that the contestants aren't breaking any laws. But what they do to make money is up to them. Liuba approached a Russian-owned club for work as a stripper.
CLUB MANAGER (Translation): You can take off your top and bottom... if that's all right.
LIUBA (Translation):It's OK, I can do that. Fine.
CLUB MANAGER (Translation): With us tonight is Liuba from Moscow! I don't hear your roaring applause, folks!
Liuba earned 50 euros for the house fund for food, alcohol and cigarettes. The program does do some things that would be hard to imagine on Western television, including kidnapping one of the contestants.
Karina had been receiving a lot of attention from the boys in the house. A few weeks into the show her boyfriend, watching from home, could take no more. He demanded that the producers release her from the show because he wanted to marry her. Masha says it was his idea to kidnap her.
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): We decided it would be romantic if her fiance kidnapped her. In fact, it wasn't our idea. He wanted it that way and we allowed it. We said, "OK, but we're going to film everything. And we'll set it up so it looks beautiful." You must be a Russian Mafia... in Berlin, yes?
Neither the audience nor the contestants knew that it was set up. Meanwhile, Karina had been driven halfway across Berlin to a restaurant where her boyfriend was waiting.
SASHA (Translation): Don't open your eyes. Drink it. Drain the glass. All of it. To the bottom. We have a wedding in a week.
MASHA SHAILEVICH (Translation): She agreed at once. It was her dream to marry him. Apparently he hadn't proposed before... at least our show forced him into doing it.
The participants were screened by a psychiatrist before the program started, but after six weeks of deprivation and isolation, the pressure was starting to show.
CONTESTANT (Translation): I don't want to be a superstar, really. I just want to have everything I want. You get inside our souls and then torture us.
The program has been a huge commercial success, screening in more than 600 cities across Russia. After two months, the contestants had found enough ways to make money to keep starvation at bay, but none of them had found regular jobs. It was a huge disappointment for Golod's creator.
ALISSA TANSKAYA: It has been a thoroughly heartbreaking experience for me, really, because I personally wanted to say "Hey guys, look how that can be, look how that can work. If you just get off your butts and try and do something for yourselves you can do it. You can build a little community, you can survive, you can do whatever" and it didn't really work.
CONTESTANT (Translation): My friend hungry.
ALISSA TANSKAYA: I know that Russia has been putting itself back together again for the last 10 years but if that's how it's planning to do it, it's going to be a very long time before it puts itself back together again.