Letters to the Editor
-
Lestat...
"I just always wonder at the hatred directed at people doing anything they can to achieve their dreams or how dare they go on a TV show to do art. Trained seals, really?"
Anybody who signs a "reality" show release form, be they "aspiring" dancers, singers, chefs, models, designers of all stripes, motorcycle builders, bounty hunters, rock stars, people stranded on islands, Hugh Hefner's harem, people renovating their neighbors rec room, people getting their hairstyle advice from gay man, parents with 8-18 children or 8 complete strangers picked to live in a house (and start getting "real") are worthy of any and all derision heaped upon them. Hatred? No. Comparisons to other denziens of the animal world? Hell yes! Reality TV is lowest common denominator television and most people involved, if not all, are to be viewed as lowest common denomnator people within the context of television program assesment. It's kind of the point of the column. If you want to get all meta, you could say that denigration is the point of Salon. Or did you think that last story (and the letters section) about yet another Bush Administration screw-up was rosy and positive?
"So you don't like to watch other people dance, that's fine, you prefer to just dance. Well that's fine, but why denigrate people who like to watch people dance, who love the emotion or stories that dance can convey."
Because (once) the point of Heather's Column is derision of all things cheap and taudry and greasy and oh-my-god-I-can't-beleive-she-did-that. Every other week some LW gets it into their system that just because HH professes love for a show that they also like, that must mean that said program is now off limits for scorn. But just as Heather calls us all condescending nicknames even while loving us, doesn't mean she approves. All of us have been caught up in the "drama" of a reality show only to find that when filming someone for 20 hours a day its easy to find enough material to make anyone heroes or assholes in the editing room. Or that producers influence judges. Or that, rather than a real democratic process, people are allowed more than one vote, etc. The list of ways that "reality" TV is not even close to reality are legion. And its all worthy of derison, scorn and, yes, denigration. Really.
But, no, the show you like is different. It's special! It's gonna change the world and how everyone views reality TV forever! Even convince yourself that, somehow, what people are doing on "So you think..." is art.
No. It's not. None of that will happen.
It's just that some of us already "get" that.