So our big California trip is winding up. Yesterday we drove from
Ventura County down to Orange County to visit a few friends before
flying back this morning.
Our friends live in Laguna Beach, the very site of a popular MTV show of
the same name. I've never seen it, so I can't comment on the show
itself, but I did learn that MTV apparently auditioned everyone in the
school and hand-picked the kids for the show -- no real surprise there,
since that's been the formula for every "Real World" staging.
The twist here, however, is that unlike the so-called "Real World"
shows, the kids aren't taken from their natural habitats and thrown
together for our amusement; they're followed around in their natural
habitat all the while remaining among the school chums and school
setting that they were already in.
Apparently, the other kids despise what MTV has done to their school,
because it seems that for 90 percent of the kids, their reality is not
non-stop partying interspersed with moronic dialogue.
The show is apparently so detested by the students that at their
graduation, 9 of 10 graduation speakers blasted the show. Of course, MTV
only showed that tenth speaker. Likewise, the students also flipped off
the cameras every chance they could get to make it a hassle for MTV to
air footage of the graduation.
It may seem like small acts of resistance, but MTV has at least educated
a few students about the mediated nature of "reality."
17 July 2006
Reality versus Reality TV
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6 comments:
This must mean that the LB high school finally allowed the MTV cameras inside. The first two seasons, there was absolutely no filming allowed at the school, and only minimal graduation footage shot (possibly because it was done off-site? not sure).
Anyway, good for them.
That's really interesting. I was wondering where the poor kids were.
That, dear Cuff, is creative editing.
Kathryn: They hold the graduation off site so the MTV cameras can be there. The school is still off limits.
MA: The poor and less fabulously wealthy (and also the more scholarly or just plain regular students) didn't make the screen test cut.
Cube: It's all about the edit. MTV hit on a formula for real world and they don't like to vary it much.
Yeah, I had heard that one of the girls on the show last season lived in a trailer park. Somehow I don't think you could virtually tour her house on the MTV website the way you could tour other people's mansions...
I did a piece during the past year about students' growing commercialism and interviewed a teacher from LBH. He said as much, that the kids are totally normal and that the show, not surprisingly, distorts reality.
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