…that you advertise to your audience. I had no idea—and was quite surprised to find out—that those who watch The Real Housewives (any iteration) also read The New York Times (or, read at all).
On a similar note…
Finally…someone of influence—or at least, in the media—wrote exactly what I’ve been thinking all along!
I was recently in a Duane Reade drugstore, having a Hamlet fit of temporizing over which moisturizer to choose, when the normal tedium pervading the aisles was suddenly rent by the ranting distress of a young woman in her early 20s, pacing around and fuming into her cell phone. She made no effort to muffle her foulmouthed monologue, treating everyone to a one-sided tale of backstabbing betrayal—“She pretended to be my friend and shit all over me”—as mascara ran down her cheeks like raccoon tears. Judging from the unanimous round of stony expressions from customers and cashiers alike, her cri de coeur engendered no sympathy from the jury pool, partly because there was something phony about her angst, something “performative,” as they say in cultural studies. Her meltdown was reminding me of something, and then it flashed: this is how drama queens behave on Reality TV—a perfect mimicry of every spoiled snot licensed to pout on Bravo or VH1 or MTV. The thin-skinned, martyred pride, the petulant, self-centered psychodrama—she was playing the scene as if a camera crew were present, recording her wailing solo for the highlight reel. Proof, perhaps, that the ruinous effects of Reality TV have reached street level and invaded the behavioral bloodstream, goading attention junkies to act as if we’re all extras in their vanity production. There was a time when idealistic folksingers such as myself believed that Reality TV was a programming vogue that would peak and recede, leaving only its hardiest show-offs. Instead, it has metastasized like toxic mold [emphasis added], filling every nook and opening new crannies. Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s satire about a future society too dumb to wipe itself, now looks like a prescient documentary.
Excerpted from “I’m a Culture Critic…Get Me Out of Here!” | James Wolcott | Vanity Fair | December 2009
It really amazes me when I see people otherwise very well educated glued to their TV screens and attached to the next episode of such self-glorifying portrayals of excess and pettiness like the “Real Housewives of…” series, the inane machinations under the watchful eye of “Big Brother” and in the so-called “Real World.”
