Here at BNH, we’ve looked at how the modern fame game, with it’s emphasis on eyeballs and branding opportunities above all else, is slowly eradicating the Hollywood Movie Star. However, it’s not just that venerated breed that’s feeling the heat. Despite Q scores that rival those of established actors, reality stars, especially young ones, seem to be suffering the most emotional fallout from this anything for ratings, train wreck television fame.
What’s a Q Score? It is a metric development by Marketing Evaluations, Inc. that measures a “quotient,” the appeal of a brand, a company, a celebrity, or a TV show in the U.S. The higher the Q Score, the more highly regarded the brand or the person in spotlight, in a group that’s familiar with them. Q Scores and other variants are primarily used by media, marketing and PR firms.
Last year, with the final season of their flagship reality ratings juggernaut, Jersey Shore, coming to an end, MTV was searching for something new to capture the hearts and minds of America’s fickle teens. Executives settled on Buckwild, a combination of the hard partying who gives a f*@k mentality of the Seaside Kids, as well as the redneck/DIY-fun of Duck Dynasty (clearly influenced by MTV’s own former cultural high watermark, 2000’s Jackass) that has become the new rage in non-scripted programming. In essence, Buckwild would highlight a group of lower middle class rural youngsters as they got drunk and caused the dramatically sloppy scenes necessary for current reality television stardom.
Though the show was a bit derivative and shameless, it’s youthful energy and overall sense of fun managed to secure a second season, and its early 20-something cast watched their star’s rise on the social media scene. That is, until the show’s buzziest male star, 21-year-old, Shain Gandee, was found dead, along with his uncle and another family friend, after they disappeared during a drunken ‘mudding’ adventure in the back-country near their home. According to police reports, all three men died from carbon monoxide poisoning when their vehicle’s tailpipe became submerged in mud, and the three individuals were too heavily intoxicated to realize they needed to get out.
Let’s be clear however, just because they may have engaged in or promoted reckless behavior, neither the sweet, fun-loving Gandee, nor his young cast-mates, are to be blamed for this tragedy. Young people have been testing their personal boundaries, driven by an unrealistic invincibility complex, for as long as humanity has existed. Instead, MTV is the true culprit. The Youth Culture Arbiter has been encouraging this type of behavior ever since it ditched the racial and socioeconomic discussions of the once probing Real World series in favor of more ratings friendly booze, babes, and bros. Thus, a climate of constantly upping the ante on its programming each season, set the stage for a tragedy like this. It’s actually a suprise it didn’t happen sooner.
Yet, for all of MTV’s increasing greed and shamelessness over the past 13 years, Buckwild represented a new breed of show, unlike any before it. Snookie and Company certainly partied with the best of them, but on Jersey Shore, there was always this unspoken stipulation that all the craziness did not represent these kids’ real lives. Rather they were simply engaging in a Spring Break style summer at the shore, or vacation in Miami/Italy which justified them blowing off some steam and hitting it hard before returning to their mostly sober, Winter work lives.
Buckwild, on the other hand, took place right in the childhood homes of its cast, most prominently Gandee’s family compound, The Hollow. MTV’s decision to give this show such a realistic setting brought the program’s never-grow-up/ live like we’re dying, constant partying out of the realm of fun and into the much scarier world of real life implications: What do their parents think? Are they in college? Is drinking at home on your couch by yourself a sign of alcoholism?
Though if the unspoken ramifications on Buckwild can be depressing, they represent nothing but a frivolous romp compared to VH1’s terrifying new reality show, Wicked Single. While most of us had our fair share of revelry in our teens and early 20’s (at times even seven 7 days a week, don’t judge), maturation, and responsibility eventually stepped in to ensure we didn’t become full-fledged emotionally stunted alcoholics. Well not everybody got out of the lifestyle, as they say. But instead of just fracturing off from the world, consumed by seething resentment and chemical dependency, now these peeps have a series.
We’ve seen subjects like this profiled on Intervention, or wacky TLC series, but never before have producers fitted an obvious cautionary tale with such a lighthearted, come join our fun tone, even slapping diverting Jersey Shore style graphics, catch phrases, and fast editing all over this. These “kids” are not right out of college, nor are they on a fantasy 6-week producer-paid vacation. Rather, they are hard working grown-ups with big hearts, but also rampant drinking problems that have made them bloated, unable to advance at work, and emotionally unavailable for relationships.
Who could have ever imagined that reality television (especially that aimed at youth culture) would become so bad that one would miss the innocent days of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica,and even The Hills? Yes, LC and her friends were fame-and-status obsessed, entitled brats, but at least they lent to their fans an air of aspiration. Say what you will about Lauren Conrad, but you can’t accuse the girl of not being ambitious. Now, it appears that MTV and especially VH1 have officially reached a point we’re they’ll televise anything no matter how tragic, even celebrate it if they think enough people will watch. Shame on these influential networks for programming a whole new generation to look to the gutter and not to the stars.
CLICK HERE for more on Shain Gandee death on MTV.com
CLICK HERE for VH1’s “Wicked Single” page.