I somehow found myself watching about 6 to 7 hours of Keeping Up with the Kardashians the other day. I really just couldn’t stop watching it. I didn’t answer the phone while it was on. I didn’t eat. If Nathan Fillion had knocked on my door, I probably would have told him to come back later. I was powerless against it. In fact, I was sort of relieved when E! just stopped airing episodes because that meant I didn’t have to be watching them anymore. Hours later, I kept talking to people about the show as if it was interesting or anyone at all cared. (Sometimes, I’m just not good at talking to other people. Particularly in this unemployed/work from home part of my life. I think I’m going to start scouring the Internet for appropriate conversation topics before going out from now on.)
Candid reality shows sort of fascinate me in a way because even though they are clearly scripted, there are genuine moments that sneak in there, unbidden, and the dichotomy between the fake and not fake is surreal. Like, in this Kardashian show, Bruce Jenner bumbles around, clearly playing the role of the “sitcom dad.” There was this really contrived storyline where he was paying one of the younger daughters an allowance for doing chores around the house, and she had hired some dude who worked down the street to do the same work for half price. It was so obviously fake (where did she get the money to pay him before her dad paid her?!) and came to a predictably Growing Pains-esque resolution. There is really something just so strange about people playing themselves in reality TV versions of their lives, and I always wonder how dopey they must feel doing so.
On the other hand, there was an episode where one of the daughters, Khloe, got a DUI on the anniversary of her father’s death and the emotions there actually felt uncomfortably real. At least this show, unlike The Hills, does not mask the fact that the participants are celebrities and the show depicted the paparazzi following the family as they surrendered Khloe for her jail sentence. How odd that they are all shielding themselves from being photographed by the paparazzi … while they are simultaneously being photographed for the reality show they all star in!
(I actually saw a paparazzo last week outside some trendy-ish establishment. I rarely see them, which seems odd since I live in LA, but seeing a paparazzo was kind of as much of an amusement as seeing a celebrity for me.)
2 responses so far ↓
Alyssa // March 12, 2009 at 12:27 pm |
While I have not yet been sucked in for 6 hours, I did catch myself sitting through two hours of Keeping Up With The Kardashians a couple of months ago. There is something bizarrely compelling about it; like, the whole time, I was thinking about how ridiculous the whole thing was, and yet still couldn’t change the channel until I’d made it through four episodes.
I think it’s like you said–there’s something sort of inherently strange and interesting about watching people play characterizations of themselves in contrived reality TV situations.
Shannon // March 12, 2009 at 3:19 pm |
The only one of these shows I’ll watch is the one with Gene Simmons, because they’re all so nice and obviously love each other, and the kids are cute and way funny, and it’s not dysfunctional and weird. Which is probably why most people would NOT want to watch it, heh.