I need to get something off my chest, ladies. I LOVE the VH1 series “Rock Of Love” (its present incarnation of course being the “Rock Of Love Bus,” or as I have dubbed it “Rock Of Love: Bus Of Fools”). It is, I think it’s safe to say, a guilty pleasure of a show on par with “Paradise Hotel” (also LOVED!), or the cringe-worthy but eminently watchable “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew” (VH1 clearly has my number… my sad, shameful number) — something one imbibes as a palate-cleansing aperitif in-between sober and intelligent programming like, oh, anything on HBO or “Mad Men” — at least that’s what we tell people, right? But really, why are so many of us — educated women who consider themselves thinkers and feminists — watching this BS?
I think I have it all figured out. One word: Schadenfreude.
The word is an imperfect fit, but it captures the spirit of what I’m going for. Defined as “delight in the misfortune of others,” for the purposes of unpacking what’s so compelling about shows like “Rock Of Love” I think of it more as “delight in the mistakes of others,” whether the mistake is choosing to wear an outfit that makes you look as though a strip club got sick on you (see: most of our lovely “Rock Of Love Bus” contestants), or creating flimsy and baseless alliances with untrustworthy douchebags (see: every relationship between every person on every season of “Paradise Hotel”), or just being desperate and imprudent enough to allow yourself to be filmed while trying to untangle your life from the death-grip of drug addiction (see: “Celebrity Rehab”… Oh and also “Hey Paula!“), all of these shows play to the dark but very human place in each of our psyches that can’t help but be tickled by watching stupid people make stupid decisions and do stupid things. I’m not saying it’s right or good, I’m just saying it undeniably IS.
However, as a woman, it gets a little more complicated when we’re talking about a show like “Rock Of Love,” because it’s pretty easy to correlate the joyous disdain women like myself feel for the surgically-enhanced Stripper Barbies on that show as a case of women hating on women, which raises some hackles, and I get that. But ladies, these are women who have wholeheartedly subscribed to the bottom-of-the-barrel worst, most self-denegrating and loathsome versions of womanhood Mankind (with great emphasis on MAN) has fabricated and foisted on us in our time. Their behavior, self-presentation and demeanor all effectively drain the female viewer of all sense of kinship with them AS women. I mean, it’s hard to feel all sisterly about a woman who’d see carrying a blow-up doll to the altar as being a way to bring that extra special something to a wedding, or would be eager to give aging douchebag and Hairclub For Men client Bret Michaels a lapdance in front of an audience of twenty other heckling women (I’m keeping my examples decidedly PG13 here, this being a family site and all, but OMG YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE THE THINGS SOME OF THESE WOMEN DO. NO, SRSLY).
Another, more introspective and cerebral way to look at this phenomena would be to say that perhaps these women are something like televisual voodoo dolls for the female viewer, each representing parts of us that we don’t like talking about, the parts we’d like to, at least figuratively, stick pins in — the hidden, trashy “slut”; the needy girl seeking approval and validation from men; the vain part of us that wishes our bodies were “perfect” and resents anyone we think prettier than ourselves — and certainly, the women of “Rock Of Love” could collectively be conceived of as a place for us to dump these sorts of “bad” shameful feelings. And from the comfort and safety of our living room couches, no less!
Does any of this ring true to you? How do you explain the mass appeal of these programs? Why do you watch — or not watch — these sorts of shows? And even if I’m wrong about why I shouldn’t have to feel bad for loving “Rock Of Love” — if it’s all just sick and wrong and I should be ashamed of myself — would it be okay if I kept my TiVo season pass just for this season? I mean, I kind of need to know if Bret Michaels is really so dumb as to not pick Beverly, who is clearly the least skanktastic and repulsive of the lot (not saying much it’s true, but I’m doing what I can with what I got). Listen, IT’S IMPORTANT TO ME, OKAY?
[small voice] Please? [/small voice]
OMG, I love those shows! Yes, partly for the schadenfreude-itude of it all, but also because it makes me feel like my mundane, NORMAL (?) problems pale in comparison to these trainwrecks. I'm also fascinated how the women can throw dignity and self-respect out the window and still think they are the shiz.
Want even more guilty pleasure? Try Jersey Shore! It's like those people are from another planet, and not just a few states up the east coast.
Dude, I just did a whole post on "Schaudenfreude" a couple of weeks ago. Of course, I spelled Schaudenfreude wrong and completely botched the context, but I hardly am ever hard on myself for misspelling things in German. The english equivalent is "epicaricacy." I learned that from one of my smart readers. I was as surprised as anyone when I found out I had one.
My husband and I seem to always be enslaved to at least one completely trashy reality show at a time. Right now it's "Tough Love."
Hm. I liked the show, hm, I don't even know why. It was a complete break from reality, I suppose, without making me feel too sorry for the people involved (like I would with Jerry Springer contestants). Truthfully, I miss that show.
And I'm with Average Jane. I adore Tough Love.
I thought I was going a bit crazy there for a moment, certain I'd read this already, when I finally saw the fine print at the bottom!
In the end, even Beverley was a horror show.
I'm addicted to this one, too. My latest obsession, though, is Celebrity Rehab – Sex Rehab. And I'm getting a bit of a crush on the good doctor. Anyone want to talk about THAT freak show?
You are not wrong for watching these shows. I can't watch them because I have a real problem actually watching a train-wreck IN PROGRESS
But, wow, yeah. It has become increasingly difficult to see these woman as the same as me in ANY way. What would we even talk about over booze and nachos?
I'm gonna go with internalized misogyny, which is why women do a lot of anti-feminist things. No one's immune – makeup, heels, mommy-judging, all of that. But the show does strike me (I've only seen it once) as an especially tragic version of that misogyny. I mean, to the extent that misogyny/patriarchy us predicated on the premise that woman are sub-human, these women act out that fantasy with absolutely gusto.
I totally get it. This is why I don't have cable. I would never be unable to stop myself from watching this show all the damn time if I did.
Reality TV horrifies me and when I honestly could not watch it at first. I could not even believe it. I was like 'someone needs to make a LAW.'
I mean, it is totally against the law to do experiments on human subjects in which they are degraded–and that's private. Reality TV is just like one big human subjects experiment. An incredibly SICK one.
Ha ha, I'll never forget my friend Dave, the Hobbes fan and how into 'Survivor' he got. He was sure it proved that Hobbes was right about the state of nature.
At certain points in my life I would get very sucked into bad television and I always knew what the hook was–it always gave me the promise of learning something about human beings. Or it held out that promise. I know that sounds TOTALLY ABSURD. But think about it for a sec. Anyway, other people have agreed with me! Such entertainment is a total lie about real humans and yet it seems like it will reveal something real to us about other people.
So I finally saw Rock of Love a few years ago and I could not look away. I could not stop watching. So many reality shows are like this. It carries that promise to the N-th degree or something–like you will learn something about people. You want to see how far they will go. But damn if it isn't something we already know, which is that humans are capable of extreme levels of cruelty, degradation, stupidity and deceit. Also, they are disturbingly compliant when being treated badly. Particularly women, at least in the Reality TV world.
But one thing I think we shouldn't do when you watch–forget that these women are actually people, real flesh and blood. If you think they aren't women like yourself because of the demeaning context, this just confirms what's so wrong about any show of this kind, as addicting (and even fascinating) as they are.
It's just so easy to drain our ability to find kinship with people, as you say. Happens all the time–it's what makes the most awful things people do to each other possible. Even if no one is severely hurt by reality TV in the long run (or almost no one), that's the scary part about it.
I'm a guy, so I don't know if I can claim to have a complete (personal?) understanding of the feminist implications of the show, but I think awareness of these issues absolves one of any guilt one might feel about enjoying such a show. In a way, when you watch this stuff your brain is going, "This is a bad thing. I don't want this for myself or my kids." Sort of a modern morality play of sorts. I usually only catch tidbits of reality TV when "The Soup" makes fun of them, but my impression is that it's not so much misogyny on display as it is men and women both acting like idiots towards one another.
It would be one thing if the shows mocked confident, intelligent and successful women or sought to diminish equality somehow but my feeling is that it's crummy behavior all around. Whether it's men trying to out-douchebag one another on "The Bachelorette" or women getting drunk and slappy on "Rock of Love," it's all equal opportunity stupidity.
My guilty pleasure is watching the UFC. It's terribly violent and appeals to the most base emotions but, at least there's some athleticism and fair competition, right?