“I’m A.D.D.”
“OMG, I’m SO ADD! And I have anxiety.”
“Anxiety? Me too! High five!”
“High five!”
*All high five*
This is how they bonded. As the Real World cast gathered at a restaurant in Cancun, they immediately sought to define themselves in an around-the-table fashion by name first, then sexual orientation, “ethnicity,” as they put it, followed by diagnoses (and high-fived their similarities).
Really? It sounded like an oral college admissions form mixed with the form you fill out at your new primary physician’s office. But I suppose at that point, 21 or 22 years old, that is your point of reference.
Am I really that much older, at 27, to start a new relationship with definition by activities, interests, crew and maybe some background story? I observe the rest, but I don’t seek to define by it. Funny. Why must I define at all? Fair question, but if you are truthful with yourself, we all do it.
Sometimes I wonder if I will ever stop watching the Real World. Growing up, I didn’t have cable TV, much less anything fancier. I had PBS and NBC and thrived on the Cosby Show, Blossom, Saved by the Bell and the Fresh Prince (all-time fav). I wasn’t tapped in to MTV until my mid-teen’s, but as soon as I tapped in, I tapped into the Real World and caught up on everything I had missed. It just hooked and fascinated me, watching these people’s lives. And it had a far higher level of authenticity in its early days.
They set the mold in those early days by their actions. By what real people would do when picked to live in a house with strangers and have their lives taped. They hook up. They party. They are ridiculously lazy and undedicated to whatever task or so-called “job” they have been assigned. They cheat on and then break up with their boyfriends and girlfriends back home. They fight and there is always a domestically dramatic crescendo to every season.
21 seasons later, we have generations who have grown up in the Real World World. They don’t know a world without the Real World and its nine billion reality show successors. They are products of that world and now, we watch them live out the expectations we’ve raised them on. It’s insane.
The casting mode is still the same. It varies a bit from season to season, heavying up on one casting category or another, but this season, they almost nail their typical mode. A gay guy, a black person (they suffice one to be the norm, rather than ever have anything close to “the white person”), the heartthrob (whose roommates this season even nicknamed and refer to him as such), the rocker (or its modern day expression thereof), and a smattering of All-American girls with one out of the bunch being a little quirky (a la promise piercings), one being typically J-Crew and the other being a downright sweetheart of mixed undefinable “ethnicity.”
On Episode I, we’ve already nailed it all, from casting to decor to drama, although I must say that these season really took it out of the gate with the roomie love. There wasn’t too much I-hate-you-right-off-the-bat, though I can see that Emilee (J Crew of the girl crew) will have it out with at least Joey, if not Joey and CJ and the rest of ‘em before too long goes by. They set the stage for a sex storyline, a BFF storyline, an in-house hookup storyline, a breakup storyline and a clear work ethic problem storyline (they are set to be non-alcohol fun-on-spring-break promoters and they party their faces off), all in episode one.
Of all the storylines though, the sex-in-the-Real-World-house-with-an-outsider storyline is the one that floors me most. By now, as I said, these kids featured as the storyline, have grown up on the storyline. I’m schooled in the storyline of the Real World and yet, if I went on the Real World (ok, maybe three years ago), I would have lived it out myself. I won’t say “storyline” again. My point is, there ain’t nobody out there (that would find themselves in such a situation) who doesn’t know the premise of the Real World:
There are cameras everywhere.
Everything you do is fair game for TV.
Everywhere includes the bedroom and the paths to and from.
Everything includes you having sex.
YET, we have Joey (the rocker), who has announced he will host a different lady in his bed each week, kicking back on night two with his hands behind his head on tape like he’s hosting and starring in a porn video. Which means there was a willing lady accompanying him.
We aren’t talking about hidden cameras. You can’t tell me you didn’t know they were there. They have had cameras in the bedrooms maybe always but at least as many seasons back as I can remember. You can’t tell me “I forgot all about the cameras.” You knew you were having sex on camera in the Real World House with a Real World cast member that would be broadcast internationally and set in history’s stone. With your face on it. And maybe your ass.
Seriously?
You have to be proud, or you wouldn’t have done it. Even her walk of shame out of the house (and she did look like she lost her dignity on the way out) was captured and broadcast in Season 22, Episode I. Well done. Oh, did I forget to mention that her mom (whom a roommate nicknamed “Sharon Osborne’s twin”) made out with another roommate in the bar. She did. He did. They did.
At least they plugged condom use as an expected action that only an idiot would omit.
High five!
Maybe someday I’ll stop watching the Real World. But not until I stop loving it. And even when I hate it, I still love it, so I stay plugged in. I see how much ground we’re losing and I see that we’re still following the mold. I can plug everyone in my life into a place or a melding of the mold and then… I feel normal, too. Right? Like I live in the Real World. But in mine, I actually have to get up for work and try. Nothing is paid for on my behalf. No one pranks me in the night and I’m not hooking up with my roommate, while talking to my boyfriend back home. I didn’t get punched in the face at the bar last night by a transsexual who thought she was a better singer than I. And my other roommate is not going through a sex change, identity crisis, abortion, teen divorce, sexual abuse or anything even close. In short, my life is boring.
So, I’ll just keep livin’ mine and watching theirs. And we’ll all keep on rockin’ in the Real World.
