Nice article here from someone who did an English degree and finds themselves distraught at becoming an avid follower of the horror that is TOWIE ... but then intelligently reflecting on the actual nature of the show and comparing to historical reaction to the Brontes work...
I've put this in as its a nice illustration of the high v popular culture binary opposition - music vids are seen as simple pop cul, tho are often vastly superior to productions by name-artists whose 'video art' will screen in art galleries (eg, Corbijn's work for DMode is generally stunning)
This debate is particularly relevant for analysis of Audience; if you do any wider reading on this you'll soon discover that academics in Media/Cultural Studies have long been debating the
ideological issues around this (
cf. Leavis, Williams, Hoggart, Arnold and more recently Sunderland Uni's John Storey)...
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_culture
One of the things we decided to try and do at Louder Than War was to
experiment with a debating club challenge; defending some seemingly
indefensible guilty pleasures that even we’re not convinced about, and
trying to find a bit of punk in the apparently punkless.
We’ve done Coronation Street and Leeds Festival so far, and they turned out to be pretty easy to defend.
So now I’m cracking the toughest, most nauseating nut I can think of: The Only Way Is Essex.
Make no mistake, this was not easy.
My dad was responsible for my first encounter with The Only Way Is
Essex. I remember I was at my parents’ house one day, and in the minutes
it took me to leave the room to make a cuppa, it seems he watched a bit
of the first episode of TOWIE by accident.
By the time I re-entered the living room, he was livid with me and my
entire generation for doing whatever it was we’d done that had
convinced commissioning editors we were a potential audience for this
show, thus leading to its existence.
Naturally, as a sensible adult, I decided that whatever my dad hated, I was going to love, and would watch later in secret.
At first, TOWIE disgusted and confused me, and I was convinced it had
misfired. Was it real? Was it fake? Does anyone really live like this?
And… can I actually SMELL Mark’s Eu de Smug Pour Homme through my screen
as he casually buys a shiny three grand watch in which to see his own
reflection when he’s on the go?
But, inevitably, by the end of the first episode I was hooked, and –
worst of all – it was for all of the above reasons. You have no idea how
much this upset me. Not least of all because I had to tell my dad when I
next saw him that I had developed a TOWIE habit. I’d rather have told
him I was partial to a bit of crack (make of that what you will).
I stopped watching it after the first series because I started to
have regular fantasies about Mark Wright: Mark Wright suddenly realising
he’s losing his hair and isn’t one of those guys who looks good bald;
Mark Wright publicly finding out that one of his previous wank-puppets
was a post-op transsexual; Mark Wright gambling away all of his
mysteriously available cash and having to get a job as Arg’s cleaner. It
was just distracting.
Having since cast a glance over Made In Chelsea and Desperate
Scousewives, it seems the format, characters and appeal are the same
dramality genre of The Hills. But there’s something else familiar about
this…
I studied 19th Century literature at uni, love Jane Austen, and
Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is probably my favourite novel of any century
ever. I could watch the six-hour BBC adaptation once a week and not just
because of the things their Rawden Crawley and his dashing ‘tash do to
me.
The real appeal of the fiction of TOWIE, Made In Chelsea and
Desperate Scousewives is that they push some of the same buttons, for
better or for worse, as those classics. I know it sounds far-fetched,
but consider criticisms of Jane Austen back in the day:
‘Why do you like Miss Austen so very much?… I got the
book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a
commonplace (everyday) face; carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden,
with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of bright vivid
physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck.
I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their
elegant but confined houses.’
Charlotte Bronte
‘I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen’s novels at
so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in invention,
imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without
genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and
narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer in both the stories I
have read, “Persuasion,” and “Pride & Prejudice,” is
marriageableness. All that interests in any character introduced is
still this one: has he or she money to marry with, and
conditions conforming? ‘Tis “the nympholepsy of a fond despair”… Suicide
is more respectable.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So even Austen was worthless trash to some at the time, and to others a guilty pleasure.
