The Two Americas

As every 13 year old girl in America already knows I am the reality asshole du jour on the WB’s newest reality show Survival of the Richest. That 13 year old girls know this is more of a tribute to their loyalty to the station than the quality of the show. According to the WB’s website, “SURVIVAL OF THE RICHEST matches people from opposite ends of the American dream to see if rich and poor can work together.” And Survivor shows the ability of the human spirit to triumph over adversity…

Like most of reality TV, what Survival of the Richest does is create a human train wreck so appalling that we can’t look away. We become enthralled by the human spectacle in a grand old tradition extending back through the days of the gladiators and down into the gooey depths of the primordial ooze. Amoebas jousting…

Reality TV is not, as so many amateur cultural critics have claimed, a new phenomenon and it is not the end of civilization. Rather it is a continuation of human civilization’s fascination with seeing their fellow man at his most vulnerable. The gladiatorial competitions of Ancient Rome required massive amounts of blood letting because, what the crowd really wanted to see, the emotions on the gladiators’ faces were out of the crowd’s view. The camera made cinema possible and the low priced digital video camera made reality TV possible. Rather than having to script out every last shot to conserve precious film we can now record every moment and sort it out in the edit. Now never you fear this isn’t about to turn into a justification of my performance on the show. I’m not going to take up the reality villain’s cry of, “It wasn’t my fault. The editors made me look like an asshole.” I was a huge asshole on the show. And I was fantastic at it.

Because you see the real reason to do reality TV is for your own personal amusement and the only reason to watch reality TV is for your own personal amusement. The reason not to watch is for some wider socio-political understanding. Clearly I hope you know this and yet so many don’t. For while Survival of the Richest purports to be an examination of an America divided along financial lines it really serves as an examination of an America divided along lines of belief. It just so happens that these two lines fall in roughly the same place.

During the course of the show, in true reality and I might add personal fashion, I make a spectacle of myself. I walk around the house in pink pashminas, swim only in a wetsuit and regularly drop such salacious soundbites as, “I like to make waitresses cry and then when they’re most upset I usually sleep with them.” That people understood my tongue was placed firmly in cheek didn’t surprise me. That people didn’t understand this, disappointingly, didn’t surprise me. For, there are two Americas. The first is permissive, post-modern, post-ironic, generally younger, generally better educated and typically coastal. The second is, well, the opposite. These are the people who save themselves for marriage. These are the people who believe in God and government and the conflation of the two. These are the people who send me hate mail. My favorite thus far came from Caroline in South Carolina. The choicest line of which was:

As I sat there watching your show I had to say to myself, “I question the moral integrity of this young man.”

Caroline is either the inspiration for Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” or deliciously ironic. It’s not for me to say which one of these two Americas she falls into. What I can say is that “the poor kids” on Survival of the Richest were, to a man, in the believer category. They believed not only in God but, perhaps more shockingly, in the process of reality TV. Their faith in God is a separate issue but to believe that the way to reality glory is by winning the challenges?!? How dumb can you get…I mean really. Who believes that? My Kansan team mate Johanna is who. So much so that when I tried to explain to her that it was essentially a popularity contest she went around telling people she wanted to vote me off…which would of course have meant her own expulsion. They’re jackals, Johanna! Give ‘em an excuse and they’ll turn on you like a desert fox on its own young. It pisses me off even thinking about it and whatever thread I was drawing out of all this meaningless stupidity is now well and truly lost. The important thing is this…

No-one wants to be voted off the island so everybody tries to agree that they’d all be doing so and so a favor if we all vote them off. That’s why you don’t tell people you want to vote off your own partner. Jayhawkers…