What is real?

One of my newly-found favorite authors is the pop culture columnist Chuck Klosterman. He has written for Spin, Details and other popular magazines and has compiled his articles into books. The first book of Chuck's I read was Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs. It is one of the funniest books I've ever read.

One chapter analyzes the reality of one of my all-time favorite shows, The Real World. While I haven't watched the show in years, I was addicted to the first 6 seasons and if you were to give me a name of a cast member for the first 10, I could probably tell you what city/season they were in. I never really understood the insane attraction people had to this show but when I first started college, my roommates and I watched it religiously, sometimes scheduling classes around show times.

What Chuck so eloquently examines is how The Real World has affected the real world.

Are real people, after watching the show, just "acting" like a cast member from one of the shows? I had a friend who wanted to be on this show since it first aired. All he talked about every casting call season was shooting his video and how he was going to "re-define" the show. He told me once that he incorporated the mannerisms and speech of all the gay men from every episode because that's how he thought gay men were supposed to act. He was, in fact, acting like "real" people from The Real World. Nothing about him or his personality were real at all.

Are people on the show, just "acting" so they can become "famous"? The classic example is obviously Puck from San Francisco who was so awful and creepy that he became a household name for being such a jerk. Puck then went on to work for MTV (as did many cast members) and I believe even had his own spin-off show. During the season in Hawaii, towards the end when everyone starts "confessing" and becoming friends with their housemates, we find out that Justin, the openly gay 2nd year law student, had a plan all along to sabotage the show by intentionally causing and throwing gas on fires among his house/cast mates. He admits that he lied about pertinent facts about his life just so he could get on the show. I remember that he confesses to this and ends up leaving the show early because he felt so guilty.

How real is The Real World? It seems that every season of The Real World the cast is always the same: naive white chick (helps if she's from a Southern state or Utah), angry black person, a gay (or 2), someone with serious mental/emotional/medical problems, and the rich, good-looking guy all the girls on the show want to sleep with. The producers, by picking people who fit into these dynamics aren't creating a real world situation, but one that will cause the melodrama we know and causes us to be addicted. The Real World is a reality soap opera. (Which, would explain how they keep coming back with season after season after season of the same people and all the other reality shows that are a part of our culture).

I'm not sure why I mention any of this except that I find the whole thing to be absolutely fascinating. I'm sure if I had cable and a DVR, I'd save every episode of The Real World and watch them over and over again--even if I've already seen them 20 times.

I guess I'm just in awe of fake people or people who act fake to get what they want out of life. You can never tell who is being fake or real in our world today. And, I don't understand how one friend can be so completely different and fake around certain people that I find myself wondering what the real side of him/her really is. It's sad but also very intriguing.

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