When Trash Becomes Everyone’s Treasure

My older sister is responsible for exposing me to a lot of things as a young boy. Many musical artists that I listened to as a prepubescent were first introduced to me by my sister. Another thing my sister introduced me to was reality TV. My younger self prided himself on hating things just because other people (namely people didn’t care for me) liked. Jersey Shore, the first reality TV show I’ve watched, was no different. Now, just because some people loved watching this show didn’t mean it didn’t have its problems. Quite the contrary, this show was one of the most controversial of all time.

Airing first in December or 2009 and last in the same month of 2012, Jersey Shore followed the adventures of college-aged Italian-Americans who lived in an fraternity-like duplex in New Jersey. Their days would consist of endless amounts of drinking and buffoonery, and no mention of school or jobs or anything of that nature. They made headlines almost immediately because of their constant fighting, constant partying, constant hooking up, and constant infidelity, among many other things. What was most striking, however, even more so than their activities themselves, was their complete, total, unabashed pride in how they presented themselves. They referred to themselves as “guidos”, which is a slur in the Italian-American community. Their behavior was considered so abhorrent that Italian-Americans from all across the country banded together and decried the main cast as not representative of them as a group. I watched the show and thought to myself, “How can anyone watch this?”. I teased my sister about it whenever I saw her watching it, and she responded by asking me why I was watching it. Don’t get me wrong; this was trash personified. But it was so interesting and compelling to the point where I can’t, to this day, fully explain why I liked it so much. I definitely couldn’t have admitted it when I was younger. I never saw anything like it. It was completely fresh, something that hasn’t been done very much, if at all at that point. Except.......it kind of wasn’t.

On December 6th, 2006, a competition was aired on Oxygen concerning who was the toughest girl in Los Angeles. Women from L.A auditioned for this competition, and the winner received grand prizes beyond their imagination. This show was called Bad Girls Club, and it was one of the most toxic exercises I ever forced myself to sit through. These girls did nothing but fight over stupid things, if it was over anything at all. Go to clubs, fight, go to clubs, fight, rinse, watch, repeat. That’s all it was. It didn’t matter how many cities the show covered or how many seasons it ran. So WHY could I NOT STOP WATCHING IT?!?!? My cousin used to love reenacting the girls, and when I asked him why he was acting the way he was, he told me something about it being the way he was, and that I shouldn’t let anyone tell me who to be. It wouldn’t be years until I found out he was gay, and I don’t care about it as long as he’s happy. But it doesn’t make me feel comfortable knowing these women willingly portraying the worst kind of stereotypes they could about women, all the while knowing that people were actually following in their footsteps.

Love & Hip Hop is representive of the latest model of reality TV shows present in today’s climate. It follows the lives and adventures of has-been’s and never-will-be’s in the music industry, specifically the Hip-Hop industry. Unlike the last two shows I mentioned, these people don’t live in a house together; they’re spread out across an entire city. There’s a palpable amount of animosity among the participants, but they keep ending up around each other because the show is staged. Meaning, the producers plan for them to be at certain events at the same time as each other. One can probably guess how problematic that becomes. The show’s not about music, rest assured. The music’s not nearly good enough for it to be. It is, however, about two things: money and ratings. So is the shamelessness of reality TV: everything is done for those two things. Normally, when two people don’t like each other, they stay away from each other and never speak. But those paychecks from the producers are far greater from anything they’d ever get in music.

These shows are highly addicting. That’s the only reason why I’d watch them, and beyond that, I can’t give you another reason. I haven’t even watched one in forever. As terrible and as totally unflattering as these shows are, I must admit one thing: they are EXTREMELY entertainin.