The Peep Diaries

In 1922 American documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty would create the genre eventually to be known as documentary and eventually morph into Reality Television. His achievement was the world famous Nanook of the North , a documentary film shot in the Arctic and based on the life of Inuit hunter Nanook and his family. The film was a huge hit with audiences who bonded with Nanook and his seeming battle for “survival”. But some critics complained about the veracity of the film: when Nanook harpoons a seal and pulls it out of a hole in the sea ice it is obviously already well dead. Nanook and his family pretend to be tucked in for the night asleep in an igloo that is, in actuality, half of an over-sized igloo built so that Flaherty has enough room to film in and enough daylight to film by. In fact, throughout the film Nanook and clan mug for the camera and clearly enjoy the attention. In a way, that makes them America’s first Reality TV family — a family pretending to be who they are; a family recreating their everyday lives in order to provide entertainment for others.

Today the E! network in the US is launching Living Lohan . It’s the latest in a series of family based Reality TV shows in which famous parents ‘use’ their kids to enhance their own profile. The kids, of course, do not protest, usually because they too want to make money and be famous, but also, in some cases, because they have no clue what’s going on.

Living Lohan follows a typical pattern: mom Dina propels 14 year old Ali (younger sister of Lindsay, of course) on her supposedly inevitable path to stardom. Also in the mix is 11 year old Cody and grandma. Now, sure, the Osbornes and the Simmons parents used their children, but at least they’d hit puberty. These kids are too young and too stupid to have a clue what they are doing. And their mom is too obviously venal and self serving to even try and make the argument that she’s just following their lead. On one promo clip we see she calls a website and threatens to sue after seeing a blurry picture the site claims is of daughter Lindsay doing something with someone. But Lindsay isn’t part of the show, she never appears, is only mentioned over and over again, her aura of indisputable fame hanging over the entire proceedings. So what this really amounts to is simple: the mom trying to show how she’s protecting her children even while the famous one has already distanced herself from the project (and, presumably, her mother) and another (not famous) older brother isn’t in the mix or mentioned at all.

A few years after Nanook was an international hit and grossed millions, Nanook died of starvation on a hunting trip. His kids, presumably, went on to live the lives they were born into: there was no followup, no spin-off reality show, no record deal. Ali and Cody should be so lucky.

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A quick update right now. I’m working on the Peep Culture book, writing the chapter about Reality Television. Man do I have a lot of material! I can easily fill 50 pages just talking about people who have been on the shows, people who make the shows and people who watch the shows.

But here’s the thing: I also have tons of material on the history of television as it emerges into reality tv, basically arguing that from the beginning peep culture was embedded in mediated entertainment. But how much of that stuff should I put in there? Do people want to read about the history of television from Father Knows Best to I Love Lucy to CSI? What do you think?

ps – say something…it will be kinda embarrassing if no one bothers to answer this question…ha!

The news is all over a bar owner who turned a meat smoker into a remote controlled robot – the Bum-bot – in order to roust the unwanted from his downtown Atlanta neighbourhood. You can watch the bot in action here.

So here’s the peep part of this: the robot, which is equipped with a bright spot light and a hose that sprays water, also comes with a infrared camera that broadcasts its exploits on big screen tvs over at Terrill’s bar. Patrons can sip their beers and watch Terrill soak the poor, addicted, helpless and homeless.

What fun.

So got my first comment on the blog a few days ago. Very exciting. It came from an editor I know, who noted that essentially what I was doing was blogging about blogging. He astutely called the whole project very “met a”. It’s true, of course, though I would argue that the bulk of bloggers and others in the “peep” culture such as reality tv participants are also motivated by and conforming to the rules and expectations of a peep world, just less obviously.

In Joshua Gamson’s book Freaks Talk Back about the workings of talk shows, a talk show producer notes that it isn’t necessary to encourage the guests to act a certain way for a certain show. They already know how they’re supposed to act and come into it fully prepared to act that way because they’ve seen the show and they know that’s what’s expected of them. I feel the same way. I’ve seen the show and I know what I’m supposed to do.

But so far I’ve had a hard time doing it. I happy to blog about abstract ideas and emerging peep trends but I’ve been more reticent about blogging about my everyday life and feelings – which is, of course, part of this project. Hopefully once I get used to being a regular blogger, that’ll change and stuff will just start spewing out of me. Gotta train myself to be more like the talk show participant who doesn’t think about the performance they’re going to put on, but just goes out there and does it.

Interesting piece in the Washington Post – For 20 Years, a Pleasure So Guilty It’s Criminal – about the 20th anniversary of pioneer Reality TV show Cops. I remember watching that when I was younger thinking that it was as low as tv could get. How wrong I was. The article spends a bit too much time acting as publicity for the upcoming best of Cops anniversary DVD and too little time ruminating on the impact Cops has had on television in particular and society in general. Still worth checking out. Particularly notable is the fact that more than 90% of the people arrested on camera agree to sign the release that gives the makers of the show permission to use their footage. Wow.

So yesterday was the first annual Family Day, a new rather lame “holiday” invented by the Ontario government. Daycares were closed so I was home with E. I guess that’s the point of family day but of course when you are freelance you don’t have anybody giving you paid days off. W went into the office for half the day. As I was busy keeping E entertained I started to think of how weird it is to have a holiday that utterly lacks any kind of tradition. So anyone got any ideas? I’m thinking deep fried raisins, a televised parade of crying toddlers, and a marathon of family friend video games that goes deep into the night and leaves all parental and kid units bleary-eyed and vaguely hostile for the rest of the week.

One more thing on family day: what about people with no family? won’t they feel bad sitting at home alone? Family Day, coming just a few days after Valentine’s Day, is a double whammy for those without any source of love in their lives. Will Ontario see a rise in suicides and help-line calls in the 3rd week of February? Help me, I’m at home eating my deep fried raisins and watching the toddlers on floats bawling their eyes out but I’ve got nobody to play Wii with and the only Valentine the mailman brought me was from McDonalds and I’m thinking of ending it all, damn you Dalton McGuinty! (premiere of Ontario, responsible for holiday…)

In order to celebrate family day after E went to bed we watched the first two episodes of the second season of Gene Simmons: Family Jewels. I was impressed with his star turn on celebrity Apprentice and wanted to see more of this aging pseudo-Lothario in action. Very disappointing. The whole thing just came off as Ozzy-lite. Everybody wanted to be wacky and histrionic but nobody seemed to have the chops to do it. Gene’s family lacks dysfunction in a big way. According to Gene’s website season 3 debuts in March. Maybe it gets better? Never mind. W is obsessed with that new HBO show In Treatment anyway. More on that later.

So a long gap between my first post and the next two posts. That’s because the launch date for the blog got put off until Sally (director of the peep culture documentary) got back from Paris. You see, the doc people want to film the launch of the blog. So everyone’s coming over today to capture this exciting moment. I spent the morning cleaning my office. You can see the floor now. It’s nice. I’ll take a picture.
Anyway, I’m feeling a bit anxious about the whole thing. I’ve never blogged or really had much about my personal life out there. As a writer I like to re-read and re-think everything I put out there. I’ll need to get over that. Plus, of course, the whole idea of developing an audience of people interested in peeping my life. I can honestly say that I have no idea what that will feel like. So we’ll see.

Just finished reality tv night. We watched one episode each of Intervention, The Moment of Truth and A Shot of Love With Tila Tequila. We watched them in that order. Lindsay came over to have dinner with us (I made spaghetti in tomato sauce with shrimp and scallops). Lindsay has just moved here from Montreal to work at the CBC. She’s also working with me on the Peep Culture CBC radio special. More on that as it develops. Anyway, Lindsay hadn’t seen any of these shows before so it was interesting to get her reaction.
The Intervention episode we watched featured a meth addict logger spiraling out of control as he struggled to deal with the death of his mother while his wife and kids looked on. It was pretty boring to start off, lots of interview testimonials about his background and problems. The wife had the best lines, stuff like: “His mind is a prison with many doors” and “Addiction is dragging this family into the grave.” But it doesn’t really pick up until we get right into it, with the logger and his wife fighting and the logger doing lines in his garage workshop and the kiddies crying. Every time logger snorted back another line of speed Lindsay and W would cringe. Eventually the Intervention happens and logger agrees to head off to a clinic for healing. Three months later he’s apparently all better and, as usual, there’s a quasi-happy ending. So why do we all feel so dirty?
The show I was most looking forward to was the one I hadn’t seen yet, the first episode of Moment of Truth, a new Fox venture. It’s eerily similar to a proposed ‘fake’ show I had suggested creating in various proposals for Peep Culture the book and documentary. My show was going to be called Your Deepest Secret and it was going to revolve around people’s willingness to confess secrets. The Fox show has a contestant and three guests – usually life partner, friend and family member. The contestant is asked personal questions and as they amass more money and move up levels, the questions get more and more pointed and personal. So it starts out with “Do you think you’re better looking than most guys your age?” and by level two it’s “Do you have something you don’t want your wife to know about.” The contestants have already been asked all these questions previously while hooked up to a lie detector test, so if they don’t answer the questions truthfully on TV a giant FALSE flashes above them and they lose. On the episode we watched a personal trainer who had already won $10,000 lost it all while his wife looked on when he denied sometimes touching his female clients more than necessary. FALSE!!! Wife cringed but you couldn’t tell if she was more upset about the money or about the revelations including one very amorphous admission that there were things he’d done he didn’t want his wife to know about.
Anyhooo…this show is the purest incarnation of the concept of Peep Culture I’d seen yet. There’s no claim of any kind of public benefit from watching this. It’s just pure peep. We’re just deriving entertainment from the normal everyday stuff of other people’s lives. Intervention at least claims to be showing people that they can and should overcome addiction. But Moment of Truth can’t really claim to be doing anything other than offering us 42 minutes of pure, delicious, squirmy, sleazy, supposed revelation.
For dessert we watched the final episode of A Shot of Love. We all knew she would pick the guy over the girl. Actually Lindsay kinda ruined it by revealing during dinner that her sister, a big fan, had already told her that she picks the guy and he dumps her a few months later. Still it was only the second episode I’d watched and the whole Springer-meets-Bachelor vibe of the show was momentarily compelling. At the end of the show Tila emerged to select the ‘winner’ wearing a frilly black party dress. W kept saying: she looks like a gremlin!