If you have never heard of Honey Boo Boo, you may have been living under a rock.
The show features a little girl, named Alana, who does beauty pageants, gets sugar rushes on her "Go-Go Juice", plays with pet pigs, rolls in the mud, helps her mom with her "couponing," and just bounces off the walls constantly.
Alana's family consists of Mama June, an enormous woman with a "forklift foot" that attracts gnats; "Sugar Bear" the father who never spits out his dip; Lauren, "Pumpkin," a girl with manners and hygiene that would make anyone shudder; Jessica, "Chubbs", a girl who thinks you can lose weight by farting; and Anna, "Chickadee", the teen mom.
The show is a redneck exhibitionist nightmare.
Think of any stereotype of a redneck, and they've covered it.
Mud flopping, bobbing for pig's feet, poor hygiene, teen pregnancy... Words have entered our vocabulary that didn't need to be there. "Vajiggle jaggle," "beautimous," "forklift foot," "biscuit," "redneckonize."
Exploitative? Oh yes. The family is shown in every moment of their embarrassing glory. When Mama June has sneezing fits, they go on air. On any other show, if the person being interviewed suddenly had a sneeze attack, the interviewer would have them repeat the answer, and the editors of the show would edit out the unusable footage. When Alana, a 6 year old, sneezes and gets snot on her face, the film crew zooms in on her as she sits there not knowing what to do. A compassionate person would have gotten her a tissue. Any show that cared about the people they were filming, would not have let this go to air. Instead, we get several awkward minutes of a child squirming with her hands over her face, too embarrassed to get up. If Pumpkin picks her butt, we get a close-up. When Chickadee refers to her vagina as a "biscuit" this too makes it onto the show. TLC is clearly operating on a policy of the more hideously embarrassing it is, the better. Get it on tape. Or are they? Maybe there are far worse things that happen that they DO edit out because its not ethical to put that on air. (I personally doubt that, but it could be.)
But even if they are being overly exploitative- can you blame them? The show is widely popular. People are watching. I have watched. The show is amazing in a way that baffles you. You are just stunned that ANYONE actually lives the way these people do. That they see nothing wrong with it. You wonder if their neighbors shun them, or are they also like this? Is the family faking any of it? Does the family KNOW that they are the laughingstock of the WORLD right now? Would they even care?
I'm not advocating that anyone should or shouldn't watch it. The family could have declined to renew for another season if they felt like they were being used. (Whether they would have been smart enough to recognize that they were being used is debatable.) They clearly are benefiting monetarily from the attention.
The question I have is simply, what are the long-term effects of this stuff on the family? Can a network really be expected to protect people from making fools of themselves? Or is this all just in good fun?
One thing, I predict. You will see more shows like this in the future. Look at what we have now. Hoarders, My Secret Addiction, American Gypsies, Toddlers in Tiaras, Hillbilly Handfishing, Taboo...a large number of our current high-ratings shows are voyeuristic. The weirder the better. People with no teeth? Awesome. Bad parents? Heck yes. Mental disorders? Get the popcorn.
Is it bad to watch this stuff? Maybe. Maybe not. It is highly addictive, though. Maybe just for the simple reason that you can look at someone else and say, "I thought I had problems...at least I'm not THAT guy!"
I don't know.
But I'm going to go get lunch and watch those episodes of Confessions:Animal Hoarding that I have on my DVR.
No comments:
Post a Comment