Last night was the season premiere of The Hills. I’ve only seen a few episodes, but I am obsessed with the concept. I think my obsession was born of an episode where one of the characters possibly got a ‘co-worker’ fired.
You see, the primary person on the show is working at a real place with a real job. Whether she does all the tasks or not, we will never know. But, what we do know is that another person, a real person, lost their job. The other person never signed up to be on a reality show, and The Hills is, by their own admission, “a little fake.”
I live with my nieces, both quite young. They are old enough to be sucked into the world of Hannah Montana. If you aren’t up to speed, or missed the Barbara Walters’ Oscar Special, here is a quick synopsis. Miley Stewart, played by Miley Cyrus, is a bit of a nerd at school during the day. She has boy troubles and all that jazz. At night, she dons a blonde wig and becomes a singing superstar, Hannah Montana. Her theme song being “best of both worlds”. Miley Cyrus is, in real life, the daughter of the achy breaky Billy Ray Cyrus.
Her dad on the show, Bobby Stewart, is played by Billy Cyrus. Further deepening the confusion of little girls is that their suburban parents can buy them tickets to go see Hannah Montana in concert. My niece was somewhat offended when I told her that the tv show was filmed on a set and that Miley’s real house was much nicer than the house on TV. Then she thought about it and told me that I was incorrect. Miley watches TV on TV; therefore, it was her real house. Her logic, not mine.
Why is it such a big deal? Why does it make me feel uneasy? Am I that much of a curmudgeon? I mean Jerry Seinfeld played Jerry Seinfeld, a stand-up comedian on TV. Why can’t Heidi Montag play herself on The Hills with the help of some writers?
Then I saw Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova perform at the Oscars and it hit me.
Authenticity.
I really liked Once, the movie staring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. It isn’t too ambitious. Just a simple story of a busker trying to make it. He makes a demo and heads off to an uncertain fate at the end of the film. Now I know why it had such resonance… The film was the demo. Glen and Marketa wrote and performed the songs in the movie. In the end, the movie went out into the world and culminated in the most arresting musical performance in Oscar history.
Does that make me a sucker? For now, I will tell myself it is authenticity. The emotions and expression were authentic. Seinfeld, was never presented as Jerry’s real life, but The Hills is presented as a quasi-documentary. And while Miley/Hannah are clearly fictional characters, the publicists are doing everything possible to blur those lines. Miley even wrote a song about the loss of her grandparents on her new album. Were those her real grandparents or fictional ones? Does it matter since she co-wrote it with a couple label assigned writers.
With the degree of personal interaction in our daily lives (facebook, IM, WoW), we crave personal engagement with our entertainment at a greater level than ever before. Digital transportation of our thoughts and emotions through skype and twitter bring more people closer to us and crowd out less engaging diversions.
Some in the entertainment industry, clued in by ‘reality’ game shows, picked up on this and have been flipping out these new style wares like High School Musical (Did you know that Gabrielle is really dating Troy, I mean Zac, well Vanessa Hudgens is anyway). The connected life means more than sports highlights on my cell phone and stock alerts on my bathroom mirror. It means an opportunity to build and maintain authentic relationships at a greater velocity than in the physical world alone. This is translating into TV especially, and just like Myspace, WoW or any other virtual meeting place, authenticity is the illusion offered by yester-media and the potential promised by the new.
