Why Reality Stars Like Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson Can’t Be Real

 

When Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson opened his yap to GQ magazine, he probably didn’t anticipate the firestorm of controversy that would follow it.

He told Drew Magary: “Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong. Sin becomes fine. Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.”

While Robertson’s comments were immediately called out as homophobic and while some like Sarah Palin quickly jumped to his defense under the rubric of free speech, some viewers seemed surprised that their favorite cuddly Southern rednecks weren’t so cuddly after all.

That reaction was astutely mocked by Seth Rogen on Twitter, who wrote: “It's strange that A&E hired a guy for being a backwoods redneck and then were surprised when he started talking like a backwoods redneck.”

In other words: obvious thing is obvious.

Current reality TV’s entire premise has been to put people that represent a stereotype together and let them live up to that stereotype—within reason.

We’ll overlook the icky stuff to relate to the good stuff. Honey Boo Boo might be crass white trash, but she’s also sort of adorable and hilarious with a loving mother and family. Jersey Shore’s Guidos are obnoxious drunks, but Snooki’s kinda cute and tiny and the Situation seems like he’d be a good cook. The Real Housewives —any city, any season—are materialistic, plastic surgery-addicted, catty women, but at least Vicki in Orange County has an actual job.

The scrubbed version of the Dynasty clan lets Americans, especially those who might not otherwise choose to spend their time with religious fundamentalists from the South, relate to the cast. We want a glimpse inside the lives of Guidos, hicks, or gold diggers, and we want to watch them perform for our amusement. But if the Guidos or hicks or gold-diggers behave in an unsavory way that make us feel offended and uncomfortable rather than smug and self-satisfied, we’d likely shut off the TV. And nobody—least not advertisers—can have that.

“It’s commerce,” says Tim Brooks, a former network executive and TV historian, the co-author of the book, Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. “If you want to do a TV show on a widely distributed network and get a big audience there are certain rules.”

Robert Galinsky, Founder of the New York Reality TV School who coaches and trains hopefuls for shows like Survivor, Project Runway and The Voice, says: “One hundred percent of the personalities are scrubbed in the editing room and it's never for our benefit, it's for the benefit of profit. The producers scrub, the director scrubs, the pawns—I mean cast members—scrub, but the ultimate scrub-a-dub-dubber are the show and network lawyers. They have the final say and they only care about protecting the value of the network brand and advertising brand relationships involved.”

Source: The Daily Beast, 12/20/13

SolForce Marine

Dec 23 2013, 06:13 PM

Don't watch the show myself, but heard about it elsewhere.
Pretty sure it was a set up; these activist groups are full of such hypocrisy...

Kristmas Kunai

Dec 23 2013, 06:25 PM

SolForce Marine

Dec 23 2013, 06:13 PM

Don't watch the show myself, but heard about it elsewhere.
Pretty sure it was a set up; these activist groups are full of such hypocrisy...

but it wasn't an activist group....it was just one guy.

KittyChristmasCakes

Dec 25 2013, 06:23 PM

Don't know what the interviewers were fishing for, don't entirely care. In cases like this you don't look for the cause you look at the effect. Uncouth, uneducated hillbillies should stay out of the limelight for reasons just like this. They are just gonna tick people off and make themselves hated and look stupid. This has nothing to do with religion whatsoever, he insulted at least two different groups of people... And why? To be funny? To look stupid? Because that's how he really feels? Doesn't matter, he shouldn't have said it. Bottom line. There is no excuse for behavior like this, no matter how much "Whatevers" try to rack their brains and come up with one.

EDIT: You're gonna have people on either side of the fence who are gonna "cry this" and "cry that" when the bottom line is, you don't say homophobic and racist stuff like that. You just don't. You deserve any punishment coming towards you.

I'd also like to reiterate that this has extremely little to do with religion... Actually, nothing. Bigots will scrape the Bible with tweezers and a microscope to find excuses for their judgmental ways when truly, Jesus himself condemns these kinds of people! But religious nuts love to overlook that little tidbit. Shaking my head.