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While cliking around cable TV several months ago, I came across some reality show that seemed to be about very average middle-to-upper-middle class pretty white (mostly blonde) suburban girls doing the things one does when pursuing a nice, happening, semi-hip coastal urban life. One was working some kind of fashion job in New York, I think. And another was working in an upscale business district of L.A.- probably in entertainment, it's hard to recall.
These girls struck me as your totally average run of the mill types you'll find across America these days. Very high expectations. An insanely comfortable, priveleged life, especially when compared to millions fleeing floods, famines, earthquakes, typhoons and machete-wielding warlords. And they were good looking in that plastic, cookie cutter Barbie Doll way that lots of frat dudes seem to idolize. But I didn't understand why a reality show was being dedicated to them and their pursuit of...I don't know, a good job? A further extension of their perfect life? Fame and fortune, even though they didn't seem to be creative artists or what one would consider raw celebrity material per se. And they weren't even existing celebrities of any type (like Paris or Nicole, for instance). They just semed like arbitrary, dime a dozen, extremely entitled, intellectually provincial, greedy bitches who would be near the bottom of my list of what would be intriguing or necessary or deserving of coverage by the television industry. But perhaps that's just my prejudice. And I'm not an executive at MTV or VH1 or whichever channel produces this sickening monstrosity.
And I gather that it's called "The Hills" but I'm confused because New York, where at least half the show seems to take place, has no hills, and in the LA portion, which hills are referring to? Beverly Hills? I never hear anyone refer to BH that way. And do these girls, who are clearly in the "ambitious intern/apprentice" stages of their future Martha Stewart/Madonna/Tina Brown -level careers, live and work in Beverly Hills? It didn't make sense.
And then, months later, I circuitously, accidentally find out that this show, "The Hills" is a colossal hit, that it's made these empty, vacuous symbols of disgusting vapid American superficiality, crassness and materialism household names in the pop culture tabloid universe and that "The Hills" refers to Laguna Hills, a pleasant place I am sure, but one which has as much specialness, honest authenticity and connection to struggle and adversity as Bel Air, Stepford or Disneyland. But that absolute lack of struggle or temporal difficulty seems to be what turns a good portion of America on right now.
People don't want actual kings and queens and knights or even larger-than-life movie stars like Clark Gable and Lauren Bacall, with their exquisite manners and mannerisms and seemingly super-human wit, bravado, charm, charisma and sense of adventure. In these cases, the swallowers of cheap, pulpy pop-culture garbage aren't even looking up to true wealth and power, or to exceptional humans with clear mental, intellectual and physical gifts, ones it would make sense to daydream about or to emulate.
It has come to endlessly marketing and glorifying a bunch of arbitrary, smug, seemingly spoiled, average rich kids with no particular outstanding qualities except very good luck and an inexhaustible capacity to ride the mass-media promotional machine like a barnacle on a whale's ass. These cute, cardboard cut out pseudo-people are taking up the covers of magzines, being talked about breathlessly on the biggest news websites and in legitimate daily papers and are no doubt going to turn up even more on our television screens, on more shows on more channels, and in more times of the day.
I despise violent fundamentalist religious terrorists with every bone and cell of my body and hate and stand against every horrible action they commit. But when it comes to the disgusting, shameless, over-the-top and ultimately mean-spirited message propagated in such filth as "The Hills", if those anti-Western terrorist guys pointed to such offensive trash as indicative of the hateful, poisonous, destructive and soul-crushing power of American culture, I'd have to say they sorta, kinda might have a point there. As much as I love our freedom and range of options and libertarianism in general, I think I'd rather watch "Live at the Al Ghazeera Mosque" with Imam Mohammed al Jabaz than be forced to know anything more about this scary, scary, horrible, sickening phenomenon known as "The Hills." And by the way, this is from a guy who actually sort of enjoyed the first few seasons of "The Real World"!
11:09 PM
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