Reality Is Optional

Of course, this is not what CBS says it's doing. But its efforts to promote the series give the game away. "Imagine the episode where they interview maids," says CBS's reality-programming honcho Ghen Maynard. Dub Cornett, one of the show's developers, says, "We will accomplish the most if we cast it well, with people who respect themselves but see the humor in themselves. We will end up with a piece that truly has, God forbid, social commentary, and maybe will enlighten, that it's not all barefoot hillbillies." Enlighten?oh, thank you, Hollywood! No wonder Cornett insists so stridently on his own Southern origins, because underneath his platitudes it would be hard to express more contempt for the culture he fled.

Let's get this straight: Brothah Dub professes to show us real barefoot hillbillies who will "enlighten" us to the extent that they are not barefoot hillbillies. Singing the praises of reality tv, he is impressed with the way "everybody fell in love with" Ozzy Osbourne, and expects them to do the same with the hillbillies. Yes, viewers "fell in love" with Ozzy in the way radio listeners "fell in love" with Amos 'n' Andy.

True, certain viewers fell in love with Ozzy because they identified with him. But CBS didn't want those viewers, nor does it want them now. Cornett, Maynard, Ender and others at CBS are disingenuous if they try to deny this. When the original Beverly Hillbillies was canceled in 1971, it was still among the handful of top-ranked programs in the country. Why did it disappear? According to The Washington Post's entertainment writer Lisa de Moraes, "That was about the time the Nielsen company started providing the networks with information about viewer demographics. Turned out, people who watched these shows were mostly rural, mostly older and lacking much spending power. Advertisers became less interested in the shows." Ender refers to his target audience as "a sweet spot of young adults." So the new show, too, will be aimed not at people who laugh with the rustics but at people who laugh at them.

The show is probably doomed to fail on its own terms. While it's true that you can find hicks who haven't been "exposed to big-city life or luxuries in any way," you cannot find hicks who have not been exposed to television. Television is the mark of the hick. In an information economy, the tube is the instrument of proletarianization par excellence. People of the self-respecting classes are far less likely to submit themselves to the programmed exploitation and constant intellectual insult that the television offers.

This means that authenticity on such a show as the new Beverly Hillbillies aims to be, is impossible. It takes a certain level of prior debasement by television to even want to be on a reality show. If you've ever seen fans jiggling their asses to "YMCA" between innings at a ballgame, in hopes of attracting the attention of the stadium cam, you'll realize that Americans live to be on television, and the more bereft of inner resources they are, the more they live for it. Look at the way people feign gravitas when interviewed in the wake of a catastrophe. ("The community feels the loss of Kelly, and indeed, of all the students slain in this senseless killing, Brian," says some Random Passerby in some Montana suburb after a shooting spree. "Indeed, one hopes that Americans watching this evening will view it not just as a tragedy but as a wake-up call.")

Television executives know this. In fact, a reality version of Beverly Hillbillies is possible only to the extent that authentic behavior in front of the camera?or "real reality," if you will?has become impossible. For instance, what I would want to do, if I were the 2002 equivalent of Jethro Bodean, sent to Beverly Hills to earn millions for some multinational corporation until their ratings dropped and they kicked me out on my ass?what I would want to do is get laid! That, Miz Ghen Maynard, would be my preoccupation on "the episode where they interview maids." (Hell, I can clean up my own house.) Is there any chance that we'll follow one of the characters as he begins dealing drugs? Is there any chance we'll get to see one of the characters harass his Jewish neighbors at their front door every night, telling them that until they take Jesus into their hearts they will be damned? Is there any chance of one of the characters expressing his attitudes about gays in an "authentically Appalachian" way? Say, with a baseball bat? No?there is not a smidgen of a shadow of a possibility that the slightest "reality" will creep into this reality tv. To the extent that there is, it will be purged from the show by its executives. We'll have the NPR Hillbillies.

Ender and other CBS brass refer to the hillbilly project as a "fish-out-of-water experience," comparing it to Crocodile Dundee and Pretty Woman. "This takes a great story," Ender says, "and translates it to reality form." Come again? How do you translate something into "reality form"? (And can I watch the version of Pretty Woman translated into reality form, please? I think that would be more my speed.)

The Washington Post noted that the news of the new show "did not sit well with some southerners who work in Hollywood, who did not wish to be identified for this article." It is curious that the Post has an easier time getting on-the-record quotes from Taliban defectors than it does from corporate dissenters in Hollywood. Why don't they feel they can speak up? When one of them works up the courage to do so, he should say this: First, fiction and reality are not just two interchangeable genres of "product." Second, any people who cannot tell the difference between the two are doomed. Third, one of the raisons d'etre of (creative) fiction is that it allows us to speak of things that are barbaric to talk about in "reality." Fourth, in a civilized society, the barrier to sneering at people because they do modest and poorly remunerated labor tends to be set rather higher than CBS has seen fit to set it.