Real World Denver

Real World Pittsburgh... potential cast members would stay away in droves on reputation alone...

 

A thought-provoking rant, D-Cup, but I do have to take issue with the idea that the Real World is a mirror of our society. A funhouse mirror, perhaps. A mirror of the periphery of the mainstream, perhaps. An indication of what the cool kids are doing (or want to do), maybe. But most of MTV's core audience has no personal concept of the kind of lives the RW or Road Rules kids lead. They go to the football game, fool around under the stands, some of them get blitzed on the weekend and others get high in the evening, and there's elements of ... how you'd say ... free-spirited activity. But almost none of them are going to be able to have a connection to what the RW/RR people do any more than your average dog owner would to the Westminster best in show or the backyard BBQ king to the Top Chef finalists.

MTV has an influence on culture, but they're part of a collective. If the next season was Real World: Vatican City, the viewers would drop it inside 30 seconds, declaring the show (and possibly the network) as being out of touch and outside the lines. But they're not aiming at the middle 33 1/3 percent, and none of the reality shows are (the unspoken but blindingly obvious irony they've all gravitated to). Real World, and for that matter the college girls in the photos you linked, are examples of the squeaky wheel principle.

Agreed on the other points, though. Particularly the one about Pedro being a self-styled martyr; not that he didn't do the AIDS movement a great service and not that he didn't impact the lives of the people around him (in particular Rachel), but they might as well have called Season 3 The Pedro Show, and he was more than willing to jump aboard the train. To be fair, though, the producers and MTV higher-ups have at least as much culpability. Hell, I'm surprised they didn't time the taping so he could die or at least make the final approach on TV.

The Real World has always targeted a demographic. The people who watched New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco are not the people they were trying to get to watch Denver or Sydney or the one after that. The people in the demographic in 2007 are not the people in that demograpic in 1993, and neither are the people who were in it in 1969 or 1952. But -- and heaven help me, maybe I'm an elitist or something -- the times I've watched latter-era Real Worlds, I find myself glad I'm not in their generation. I guess we all become our fathers at some point.

 

To a small part of our culture, maybe. Of course, there are a ton of TV shows that you could say are a mirror to our culture, using a wide variation of arguments.

 

This is not a show I watch much in the last seven or eight years, but I'm surprised, if you're talking pretty girls who have been on it, that no one has mentioned the most famous (and sanest) one:

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/5191/Events/5191/JacindaBar_Grant_10349453_400.jpg.html?path=pgallery&path_key=Barrett,%20Jacinda

 

Maybe everybody forgot she was on it. I know I did. She and Judd Winick are the only ones I can think of who actually have an entertainment career any more outside reality TV.

 

Amaya and Flora are my two favorites ... both nuttier than Apple Jacks, with cans to back them up.

 

I always thought Jacinda was a little flighty, and not THAT hot. Plus, I was all wrapped up in Neil that season.

As for the Judd Winnick thing...what has he done? People keep mentioning him...I wouldn't have known his last name had someone not posted it here. Does his "fame" just not reach me on the East Coast?

 

As I mentioned, I'm 26 and have been out of college for two years. I like to party, and I'm tellin you, my life is 1/50th of the Real World life.

Gay guys trying to fight 6-4, 250-pound black dudes isn't mirroring everyday life.
A crazy bitch screaming "rock starrrrr!" every 2 minutes doesn't mirror everyday life.
Staying home on 6-6-06 to read the Bible, then going out the next night and cheating on your girlfriend in the hot tub hardly mirrors real life.
Breaking down into tears because you get whistled at while walking home does not mirror real life.

These people are fucking insane.

 

That's true Shaggy, but I've known numerous people in real life who either did do something from the list you just mentioned, or if I heard they did something like that from a friend, I'd barely blink because it would fit right in with their normal behavior.

The Real World isn't a mirror to our culture in the sense that it reflects what MY life is like. But Mystery, in his excellent post, put it better than I did. It's a funhouse mirror. Or, maybe, a magnifying glass. It's just taking all our narcissism and blowing it up on the big screen, channeling it through these "characters" to represent the whores, the religiously conflicted midwesterners, the angry black guys, the anorexic girls with self esteem issues, the frat guys with daddy issues, the flamboyant gay guys, ect., in our society.

Would it be more "accurate" if they threw in some normal, well-adjusted, non-crazy people in the house? People who better represent the average 20-something in our culture? Sure. But that doesn't mean the crazy, angry, anorexic, bi-curious, alcoholic sluts with low self-esteem and daddy issues don't exist in large numbers. The mirror is just reflecting those people.