TV has me confused.

[JazzManJim]

I"m trying to figure out why it's okay to make a program where we stick a family of rural folks in an urban setting just to see what idiots they'll make of themselves, but it wouldn't be okay to do it the other way around....

 

[Nora]

They've done it both ways. The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.

 

[LukkyKnight]

They've done it both ways. The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.

So true.

Bottom line: TV sucks.

 

[JazzManJim]

Yeah. I see they're going to do it again.

I'm just curious as to why this program is okay with everyone. Well, not everyone, but there's been no real hue and cry over the blatant stereotyping involved.

 

[MissTaken]

Just a thought

After watching All in the Family and chuckling out loud, I wonder , would ARchie Bunker make it through one season in the new millenium?

I think not.

 

[sigh]

Fill me in, Jim. I don't watch the networks.

 

[Nora]

Gilligan's Island, too. Technically.

Because there's comedy in stereotypes, JMJ. Shit, if people kill off all the stereotypes then situational comedy loses it's meaning entirely. It's wholly based on stereotypes:

The befuddled dad
The working single mom
The single man/woman looking for love
The out-of-their-element city folk
The out-of-their-element country folk

They're all just stereotypes and the reason we laugh is because we see ourselves and/or the people we know in them.

But yeah, tv sucks.

 

[Pyper]

TV confuses me too. In Spain I had six channels. They were all in Spanish, but I could flip through them real quick and see what was on. I come back home and we've got like 500 channels, but you can't flip through them because there are actually like 999, but some have nothing on them, so you look in the guide in alphabetical order but even them some of the channels listed aren't there on the TV so I just come here instead.

 

[april-wine]

Fill me in, Jim. I don't watch the networks.

Let me interject........sigh check your PM's.......

 

[sigh]

Let me interject........sigh check your PM's.......

Let me reinterject. I did and I answered yours. april-wine, please check your pm's.

 

[JazzManJim]

Because there's comedy in stereotypes, JMJ

No, I understand that. Here's what bothers me. I guess I was too coy about it in my first couple of posts.

CBS is going to take a family of hillbillies and stick them in Hollywood as a real-life "Beverly Hillbillies". The object is to watch them flounder backwardly along in the hip-modern atmosphere of LA. The joke is that they're backwoods hicks. That's really it.

While I've no particular problem with the general idea, I also know full well that there's no wayh in hell that they'd do it with any other ethnic group. They wouldn't take a black family from Watts and put them in a house in, say, Simi Valley and call it a real life version of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air". They wouldn't grab a Palestinian family and stick them in the heart of Hasidic New York City. There's just no way in hell that'd stand. There'd be protests from the very second they announced such a thing.

And herein lies my problem. Stereotypes truly are funny. They're the basis of most comedy, stand-up, sitcom, and movies. It's poetentially really funy to watch one stereotype in a place where they're not familiar at all with what's going on.

BUt it seems that only a very few groups are allowed to be subjected to that sort of humor and I find that insulting in a lot of ways.

 

[Nora]

Ok, now I see your point. I wasn't aware that it was going to be a "reality" show. I really don't watch a lot of tv.

Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe those contrived "reality" shows? Ugh.

I agree that there are very few groups of people to whom they'd be able to pull this off without a hue and cry being sounded.

On the bright side, they did do this recently on a "reality" style show. I'm not sure if you may have seen or heard of the PBS mini-series "Frontier House" which was a Survivor-style show of that nature.

They took 3 families and put them in 1800's america. 100%. They started more or less from scratch and had to either sink or swim. It was really very compelling in a train-wreck that you can't look away from kinda way. *smiles*