Woody Allen says, “Life doesn't imitate art. It
imitates bad television.” And it turns out life doesn't just imitate bad
television, it makes for bad television.
This past summer brought us Richard's expansive
naked ass, Brittany's quest for perpetual virginity, seven strangers in
New Orleans making a pointless television show while on a pointless television
show, fourteen high school kids being “young” and “hip” and “co-dependent,”not
to mention the continuing saga of O-Town (which I didn't watch and won't
mention again).
American High is by far the best
of the recent trend of reality-based television, but CBS's Richard III-meets-Gilligan’s
Island blockbuster, Survivor,
is the most fun. Aside from Richard, the obese exhibitionist turned Machiavel,
Survivor's
cast includes an Iagoian truck driver named Susan; a brain dead neurologist
named Sean; a crabby old man, Rudy, who reminds me of both Hemingway and
Walter Matthau; an Ivy League grad who likes to pretend coconuts are telephones;
Colleen, his cute jilted lover; Dirk, a man with a porn-star name and the
heart of a televangelist; and Gervase, who does nothing, smiles a lot,
is unable to swim, and lasts longer on the island than Gretchen, the one
person out of the 16 castaways actually qualified enough to survive being
marooned on a deserted island.
For 39 days, these people have been subjected
to horrible tests of endurance and cunning. The harshest test of endurance,
aside from Richard's bare ass, must be the survivors’ run-ins with smarmy
host Jeff Probst, a real life Ken doll with the personality of a car salesman.
Nothing ever happens on the show. No ideas are explored except perhaps
the idea that the “survival of the fittest” principle does not work. The
fittest of the 16 did not last, while the decrepit Rudy and the flubbery
Richard keep rolling along like Old Man River and Big Gay Al. It is the
killer instinct that has gotten these two to the top of the food chain,
not any superior genetic advantages.
Survivor is an empty spectacle you
can’t turn away from. It's a 16-clown-car pile-up, a Dan Rather newscast,
a Tabitha Soren/Kurt Loder catfight. I love every second of it while hating
myself for--and I wish I were making this up--actually feeling a sense
of loss each time someone I like is voted off the island.
Greg, I feel your pain. Colleen, I’m here
for you, babe.
But if Survivor is a vacuum with
disco lights, Big Brother is a compelling study in the unbearable
lameness of being. 10 people, picked to live in an Ikea show-room, have
their lives taped for TV and broadcast over the internet, to show what
happens when people stop being real and start getting moronic.
To call Big Brother a failed experiment
is to assume it had a chance. The casting directors for the show apparently
went out of their way to find the most vapid, emotionally-unaware humans
in America. CBS, heady with the ratings bonanza of Survivor, devotes
six nights a week to BB, has hired a female version of Jeff Probst
to anchor a weekly hour-long herd-thinning edition, pays Dr. Drew, of Mtv’s
Loveline,
to analyze the minds of the house guests (a nice gesture from CBS--promoting
the illusion that the house guests are really sentient lifeforms), and
dutifully pretends to have a hit on its hands. Big Brother is not
a hit. It is a waste of time. I am more interesting than any of the people
in the Big Brother house. You are more interesting. Marilyn Monroe,
moldering in her tomb, is more interesting than these people.
The only reason to watch Big Brother
is to remind yourself of how not interesting human beings can be. Perhaps
the producers of the show will come up with a remedy for this-- a wacky
Krameresque neighbor, maybe, or maybe they'll import Richard from the South
China seas to cause bloodshed and encourage group nudity.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, MTV's The
Real World follows the trials and tribulations of yet another group
of self-righteous, self-absorbed, self-abusing 18-25 year olds. It is the
ninth season for the father of reality based television, nine long years
of hissy fits, slacker chic, “life lessons,” manic editing, blah blah blah.
Aside from the token gay guy, the Mormon chick and the “fashionably ethnic”
young woman, none of the new cast warrant attention. Not that this fact
matters to Mtv, the same channel that devoted endless hours of screentime
to Jesse and the post-Real World New York career of Eric Nies. Mtv,
like Willy Loman, is a firm believer in the phrase, “Attention must be
paid.”
Oddly enough, the only well-intentioned,
worth-while reality-based TV show this summer comes from Fox, a network
who’s usual concept of reality centers on animal attacks and alien autopsies.
American
High, while terminally optimistic, is an interesting study of modern
adolescence and, more importantly, the kids on the show are, if not interesting,
at least active. Unlike the slugs in the Big Brother house or the
whiners in New Orleans, these kids do things--any number of things.
Ideas are explored. Relationships are explored.
Reality is explored. These kids aren't transplanted to unfamiliar surroundings
or put under house arrest--we are allowed to see how their lives really
work. Which is why it was recently canceled, after only three aired episodes
(damn you, Neilsen families).
While plans are already under way for
Survivor
II, the future of Big Brother is bleak and American High,
the best thing on television at the moment (not saying much), is canceled.
Whether reality-based television is a fad or here to stay remains to be
seen. One thing is for sure--that Richard guy sure does have a great big
ass.