I Demand a Revolution
I caught ten minutes of this E! series called Sunset Tan yesterday, and it was a new low. I immediately called bullshit. Like, immediately. It's the first time** I've seen a "reality" show that was so blatantly fake, I could tell without even watching an episode. The scenarios... the dialogue... there's something just stilted and staged about them. And there are these two girls working in the tanning salon who are so incompetent and dumb, they would be fired in about five minutes if it was real. I turned to my old friend Google ("Sunset Tan"+ fake reality show). Sure enough, the search turned up this fabulous article. In fact, it's so snarky, I shall quote:
Sunset Tan (E!, Sundays at 10:30 p.m. ET) is a six-episode reality series of such superlative vapidity that it seems right on the edge of mutating into some toxic new breed of media experience... This moderately misanthropic and mildly depressing show is a portrait of a country so ugly that it plays like anti-American propaganda.
Heh. What they said. Also, they filmed an episode where they had to spray tan a dead guy, and got busted because the dead guy was in fact played by an actor. Also, I wish I'd come up with the phrase "superlative vapidity" first.
It makes me upset. Mainly because the past ten years I have valiantly believed that reality TV is a fad that people will get sick of. And yet it just gets worse! It's all over the TV, even on otherwise reputable stations. I don't think it's a coincidence that I stopped watching TV right around the time reality TV became popular. I don't get it. I know a lot of people do watch it, and they are smart people, and I miss out on a lot of watercooler-type conversation because I don't watch it... but I still do not get it. I have tried to get it, but I don't.
Reality television is creating a whole new class of F-list "celebrities" who are famous for... nothing. But mostly it makes me angry because I feel cheated. I feel like if networks are going to FAKE reality shows, why not fork over the money, hire real writers and real actors, and, I don't know, MAKE A REAL SHOW? I just feel as if I am being handed a low-quality product, so why should I support networks who aren't putting in the effort? Dammit, when are the people going to rise up? When is my Marxist television revolution going to happen?
WE ARE BEING OPPRESSED.
** Actually, not. I just remembered I feel the same way about Laguna Beach and its spinoff(s). I do not know if there is more than one. I do not know what it is called, except that there is this girl in New York who isn't even cute, but has a hugely inflated opinion of herself, and has a life that is way too insipid and dull for me to watch. Anyway. I am convinced that these people, who-EVER they are, are also fake.
4 comments:
Yeah, I heard about the "dead guy" and saw him on some show. I do watch Laguna and the spinoff The Hills... mostly because I'm just amazed that kids live with that kind of wealth. They have said that much of it is staged because they don't film on the school campus, so they'll ask them to "replay" the conversation that they've had earlier... whatever. I still get sucked in. But, I do consider that different than Amazing Race or Survivor. Those are "challenge" shows. I like 'em a lot :)
I agree-- I don't mind the shows that are actually about something, like something that involves talent. Amazing Race remains the most legit and least trashy of the reality shows, in my opinion. Whenever I catch it, I always think it's so cool that they're traveling the world and we get to see it.
T--Once again you've nailed it. I can't stand the people who are famous for nothing. I miss people with talent being famous. Don't get me started when reality "stars" start appearing on other reality shows...Get a Job people.
Ok... I watch *some* reality T.V. but I tend to like the ones that are more strategy oriented (i.e. Big Brother, The Amazing Race, Pirate Master). I like that in these, normal people have to actually work towards achieving something. Especially the amazing race... My dad and/or Sisiter and I would so kick @$$ on that show. But these other shows where abnormal "normal" people (i.e. your Paris Hiltons, Nicole Richies and B-class movies stars/wrestling stars/80's flash in the music pan wannabes) drive me nuts. Get over it people, get a job. And to the studio execs I'd want to say "really, dude? seriously? what'd you do, hire a group of 15 year old boys as your think tank?" I'm with Sarah, I stopped watching cable T.V. for this very reason... I could FEEL my brain dying.
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