This morning I watched, with the aid of TiVo, the season premiere of Laguna Beach. For those of you who don't know, and are obviously missing out, Laguna Beach is MTV's reality show version of Fox's popular show The O.C. Like its fictional model, Laguna chronicles the lives of incredibly beautiful and lavishly rich high school students in "the real" Orange County, California. This is high school drama in all its glory.
But is it so real? I mean, I trust MTV that Laguna Beach is, as they say, a reality show following real people's lives. MTV would not lie to me. MTV is my friend. What I don't understand is how all of the reality shows on television can get away with saying they are based on reality. It seems to me that every reality show out there is about as far from real, ordinary life as the fictional shows are.
For example: on Laguna's season premiere, two girls go out shopping and each buys a pair of Christian Dior heels for over $600, which, they say, is worth the price because the shoes are "soooo cute." Come on. These girls are in high school. Need I elaborate? Aside from these extravagances, another unreal aspect of the show is how physically attractive each "character" is. Of course, I'm sure the show's producers picked these kids on purpose, but that's exactly my point -- they're not real, they're filtered for entertaining a TV audience made up of people whose lives, apparently, aren't as glamorous as theirs. And I'd like to see these kids mention something about academics once in a while -- homework, a test, or even a crush on a teacher -- because while they are in high school, you'd only know it from the graduation episode. Even on the fake show The O.C. the kids are shown at school and occasionally doing (or maybe just referring to) their homework.
The Laguna teens do little else but shop, surf, hook up, gossip about hooking up and talk about how much they love Laguna Beach. I know that even the most laid back Penn kid would have to agree that their high school lives consisted of a little more substance than this (we all know we were involved in countless extracurriculars); by the same token, I would venture to say that even with the wealth found on Penn's campus, most of us would not spend $600 whimsically on a pair of shoes.
Don't get me wrong -- I in no way wish to complain about my beloved programs. I'll take as many of these ditzy shows as I can handle, fact or fiction-based. But I'm not so sure they should be allowed to call themselves reality shows, because watching their Real World throws mine a little out of whack.
