Horizon

You can read my take on it here.

I was working on a theory that "reality" shows are popular because they reassure ordinary struggling Americans that their own lives must be OK so long as they're better than whatever's happening in the island/trench/pioneer/etc. challenge environment.

Was also thinking there was a funny kind of avoidance going in the pretense, for example, that Americans don't know how to live without electricity. The truth being that lots of Americans are basically camping out by candlelight all the time, but TV doesn't show the clever workarounds and jury-rigs that real poor people use to get by.

So is "The Simple Life II" gonna prove me wrong? No, I don't think so, because it still, like *The Balcony*, has one real detail and one fake detail. The other "reality shows" have real people in fake situations. This one has fake people in real situations.

But what does it mean that people watch this crap...?

I think you can't leave sexual politics out of this question. In the part described by Gene, the woman isn't getting money from gas station attendants because she is wealthy. The people probably have no idea who this person is, because she has never (as far as I know) had any fame apart from the first TV show.

I watched part of a few episodes of the first series and while I can appreciate the drama of something like Survivor or the sheer dumbness of some of the other "reality shows", this one really turned my stomach. What makes the least sense to me is that the first series was utterly boring and I seem to recall hearing that its ratings weren't nearly as high as was hoped. So why a sequel? I would guess that they probably started shooting it before the first series had even finished airing.

Why people would like something like this is hard to answer. I don't think that ordinary people enjoy reality shows because they feel superior to the participants necessarily. In the case of this show (or the first series), I can only guess that it's shock value. Hilton and Ritchie behave so incredibly badly that there's a certain fascination to it. And viewers are invited to have this complex experience of at once being repelled by their behavior and at the same time admiring them because they can get away with it. I mean, I would have loved to have blown off my fast food job years ago as they did in the first series. There's pleasure to be had in watching someone do it, regardless of the politics involved.

Which I guess means that, in a sense, in a very weird way, it plays to people's fantasies of privilege while at the same time showing ordinary people constantly being duped and abused by upper class idiots. Who was it that said capitalism is man against man and that socialism is the other way around?

But if there is any pleasure to be had in something like The Simple Life, then I think it must be this very complicated and ambivalent pleasure of identifying with someone while they dupe people who in some secondary sense you also identify with.

On reflection, two other, probably irreconcilable things occur to me about The Simple Life.

The first is that it's almost beside the point to criticize the show in socioeconomic terms because everyone in it is depicted as stupid and/or reprehensible. It's not rich-hating or poor-hating: it's people-hating. In the same vein, I can't understand why the films of, say, Paul Verhoeven are described as misogynistic when it's quite evident that Mr. Verhoeven has a deep and undisguised contempt for all human life, irrespective of sex, creed, or color. He's an equal opportunity misanthropist.

The second is this:

"The fact is that this business about the moral superiority of the poor is one of the deadliest forms of escapism the ruling class have evolved. You may be downtrodden and swindled, but in the eyes of God you are superior to your oppressors, and by the means of films and magazines you can enjoy a fantasy existence in which you constantly triumph over the people who defeat you in real life."

Your description of _Simple Life_ reminds me of reading _Wuthering Heights_ in high school and fervently praying that on the next page and earthquake would strike and wipe the entire cast of characters off the face of the earth. Of course, something almost as satisfying actually does happen there.

Incidentally, if you want a surreal experience, you should listen to the commentaries on the _Starship Troopers_ DVD, where Verhoeven tries to justify the whole thing as a satire on the Bush administration. I could only last about 10 minutes, though.

The funniest thing about Wuthering Heights is the persistent belief that it is a great romantic drama when all of the major characters are, without a doubt, certifiably insane.

In response to Alan's Orwell quote:

That's what seems odd about this to me. The Simple Life most decidedly does not show downtrodden people triumphing over those who defeat them in real life. It's exactly the opposite! It's rich people walking all over poorer people. Maybe this is the first real example of reality show anti-heroes?

I think the idea is that viewers are supposed to feel superior to the pampered but dumb-as-rocks Hilton & Ritchie.

There's obviously a miscommunication here so let's just drop it.