Analyse af Russel Brands 'Big Brother isn't watching you'

When confronting a theme as comprehensive as Surveillance the article or commentary “Big Brother isn’t watching you” written by Russel Brand is a great starting point for discussion. Russel Brand is mostly known as a comedian, musician, author, actor, but he has a lot of talents. His article focus on the 2011 UK riots, which also is known as the “Blackberry riots” because of the enlarged use of new, smart, mobile devices, such as the smartphone Blackberry, to organize and develop the riots. Brand has clearly an overall sympatric view on his fellow citizens even though he, like the government, sees the behavior as mindless. He sets himself in their place, by telling the reader about his youth in Essex witch, in spite of his ‘proper’ family, participated in riots, did drugs and could be described as a ‘bad boy’.

The Writers style in the text is firstly very sarcastic. Brand uses an overload of both irony and sarcasm in the text, to describe his position in the riots. His tone is very sarcastic, not only against the Uk government but also their way to handle the problem. “Wow! Thanks guys! What

a wonderful use of planet’s fast-depleting oxygen resources” They spent more time focusing on the fact that there is riots and complain, than finding a solution – he uses the sarcasm to clarify his point of view and dissatisfaction with the government. Russel Brands style of writing is all through the text very harsh, and he does not mind to tell the reader exactly what his meanings are – you can say, that Brand has a distinctive opinion and he sure does expresses it with no kind of restrains at all. In relation to his increasing sarcasm during the text, he also asks a lot of rhetorical questions. This makes the reader feel like a part of the text and makes it more interesting because he involves us in his opinions and thoughts. All in all the most common and noticeable way he writes, ix with sarcasm and humor to get his message around.