The Real World Gets... Real?

I recently attended a screening and Q and A session with the cast of this season’s upcoming Real World: Brooklyn cast… and I was pleasantly surprised. Two of the cast members don’t drink, there are three cast members who consider themselves LGBT, and there is a war veteran. MTV took its standard casting choices of culturally, ethnically, and sexually diverse casts up a notch to include new and exciting stories, and this particular cast seems like they all came to the house to stir up the wild-child reputation of The Real World, and actually talk about something important.

While I assumed it was a prerequisite for cast members to be able to express themselves well on screen and in the now-famous Confessional, there was always something inherently stupid in the idea of exposing your worst moments to audiences of millions over four months. In listening to this particular cast, (don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there will be plenty of drama), I got the sense that at least some, if not all of them went on the show to share insights rather than their forays with intercourse. Camera time seemed to them, like an opportunity to tell their story, and not necessarily to gain pseudo-celebrity status or participate in the post-Real World challenge programs. The Jerry Springer-esque turn the show has taken seems broken by these eight strangers, and hopefully the trend will continue.

The change comes at an interesting time for MTV and America as a whole. While I doubt the overall level of reality television will change drastically - as NBC continues to air Momma’s Boys despite the bigotry and sexism central to the show’s entertainment value - perhaps younger audiences are ready to embrace more sophisticated versions of the old formulas. Even though MTV has also recently given us the atrocious Double Shot at Love, they have also announced 16 new reality shows for the new season that are meant to push real-reality instead of the scripted reality to which we are accustomed.

I don’t have high hopes for Bromance or The City to push the envelope on intellectualism in reality TV, so we’ll have to wait and see what other fare MTV has to offer this Spring.