Is this the real world?
The long running MTV show “The Real World” is in Brooklyn this year. You’d think that maybe being in Brooklyn they’d be keeping it real. Now, I’ve never watched it but I found this amusing. The show highlights eight roommates living supposedly in “the real world.”
But the amusing this is out of the eight you have these three:
1) Transexual Katelynn Casanelli, 24, computer geek who is a Tae Kwon Do black belt.
2) J.D. Ordonez, 22, a homosexual competitive swimmer and dolphin trainer.
3) Sarah Rice, 22, a bisexual sexually abused artist.
That’s just a typical slice of life, right?
I remember when MTV first came out. I loved it. Watching videos. Men at Work. The Hooters. The Talking Heads.
But Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Lester Bangs in the movie “Almost Famous” nailed it when he said the music industry was in danger of becoming simply “an industry of… cool.” There’s no better way to succinctly define what MTV has aspired to become.
But in order to be cool and edgy MTV has had to keep pushing the envelope. But the envelope only had so much elasticity. I think that the envelope is gone. Torn to shreds. There are no rules anymore so in an effort to shock, the entire network has just became a freak show parade of 15 year old girls yelling at their parents they want a Beemer, 19 year old transsexuals arguing with a Mormon at 2:30 in the morning, and the existential angst of spoiled high cheekboned rich kids deciding who to sleep with next.
Are they trying to convince young people that despite their own experiences that this more accurately represents reality. I mean, do young people even watch this stuff anymore or does it seem to them like Rolling Stone always seemed to me, aging hipsters struggling to seem relevant?
H/T Aint it Cool
January 12, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I, too, “grew up” with Mtv; I graduated in 1988 from high school and spent many rainy (and sunny) days watching Mtv, hoping for a chance to hit “un-pause” on the VCR to record a favorite video. That was then: it was music. Now it’s just trash, sleaze and agenda pushing. My kids, ages 12 and 14, are NOT *that* into music; they know Mtv exists, but the few times we’ve viewed it (on purpose, together, “just to see” since it’s “erased” on our TV), they’ve said, “this is dumb, what’s the point?” What’s the point, indeed.
Thanks for your great blog!
January 12, 2009 at 1:14 pm
MTV killed the music video star.
January 12, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Mau, today’s kids wouldn’t even get that music pun…how sad.
January 12, 2009 at 3:22 pm
I think if you rewatched the video, you’d think how sad it is that we watched it. What was going on back then?
January 12, 2009 at 3:40 pm
All I can say is that the dolphins in Brooklyn are all really unruly: hanging out in Prospect Park, leering at girls, trying to score anything they can suck up their blowholes.
Gay or no, I’m grateful to MTV for bringing in a top-notch dolphin-trainer to do his thing in Brooklyn, where it’s really needed.
January 12, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I’m right there with ya. I graduated in ’89 and remember when Mtv first came on the air. We all thought it was cool and we’d spend our Sat nights in sleepovers watching it with our girlfriends. Even though I may now officially be considered “old and unhip,” I still couldn’t see myself “getting into” what they show on Mtv these days. I pray it’s not an accurate reflection of our kids today. So sad, so empty. We were happier then when we didn’t have to “live up to the muck” they present on TV today. Nobody had to be gay. Sleeping around was shunned by your peers and my goodness, mom and dad never let us go to Mass in jeans or sweats! We knew respect, we weren’t politically correct and life just seemed happier.
January 12, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I haven’t watched “The Real World” in years … I don’t think it’s ever been anywhere close to “real.” Aside from the fact that there’s always a token homosexual on the show (even though homosexuals make up 2-5% of the population, making only 34% likely at most that one or more of eight characters on the show will be homosexual), there’s also the fact that the eight people on the show never have to pay rent! That’s the most unreal facet of the show if you ask me.
Yeah, I guess in “the real world” one sometimes has to live with people one doesn’t really like, but I would say that those people are usually members of one’s own family! 😉
January 12, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Matt Smith played the token Catholic on Real World New Orleans.
He recently spoke at a Denver Theology on Tap event, saying how at a reunion of former cast members from Real World and Road Rules, people came up and sincerely said “Sorry I was such a jerk, I found Jesus now!”
One of his stories concerned a woman producers voted “Biggest Bitch” who, supported by all her maturing cast members, went up to receive the reward.
She said “This isn’t who I am now, I love Jesus!” and threw the award over the cameramen and into the nearby pool.
Lots of stuff doesn’t make the cut on these shows, but Smith can tell us exactly what that does.
January 15, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Us aging hipsters are always relevant. It is you silly young things who aren’t relevant. WE are the generation of the Age of Aquarius, who informed Mr. Jones once and for all that something is happening here, and he was hopelessly ignorant.
Actually, I was never hip, and never watched MTV. And I read one article in Rolling Stone, once.
But I think everyone to some degree has that eternal 17 or 18 or 20 year old inside of him who just knew that big changes were coming to the world and his or her generation was in the vanguard, and to whom subsequent events never seem quite so real. Those helicopters taking people off the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon, the lady holding her baby up begging the soldiers to take it…that seems more real to me than whatever happened in the world yesterday. This is why we have the phenomenon of the aging liberal baby boomers in the church. The changes in the church coincided with the freshness of their youth and idealism. This doesn’t apply to me because I am a convert, read Newman and all the preVII apologetic and convert literature and fully expected in 1972 that I was joining the church they spoke of. The Redemptorist parish I converted at did not much disillusion me, but what a wild ride I was in for after that!
YOur friendly aging baby boomer,
Susan Peterson