This sick cycle of money and fame and fame and money and celebrity permeates culture from the top down (and by top I mean TV). When someone sees the extravagance and pomp of the "Kardashian Wedding" it's easy to understand the need to recreate that. Hell it's a beautiful thing, the wedding that is, it's the most carefully planned and executed show of love that exists in American society today.
At the same time, it's completely relatable. Most people have gone to a wedding. Most people have gone to a nice wedding and a not-so-nice wedding. Most people would want their wedding to be one of the "nice" weddings. However, the problem comes when it's not just the niceness that's being recreated. The attention devoted to the entire situation; the cost and preparation, the wedding itself, the aftermath, and even the eventual (and almost definitely inevitable) divorce was voyeuristic to the extreme.
The reality shows that exist documenting the trials and tribulations of (closer) to real life people in these situations serve as a kind of foil to the upper echelons of celebrity. These wedding shows show greedy and petty women fighting for absolute perfection at the detriment to others around them. It is this comparison that television audiences crave. They need the "real" reality stars to falter where the actual celebrities succeed. These shows make you want to punch the women in the face, not gaze on them adoringly as they walk down the aisle in a dress that costs more than most people make in a year. They need to, otherwise how would we be able to tell them apart from any other celebrity wedding?
Ben, you were supposed to email that to Dana so she could post it on her blog. Did you post it on here because your my.pitt.edu is down, as well? Mine's been down for an hour now and that's the only way I can email you my post, I think. Maybe I'll post mine on my blog for now and once my.pitt.edu is back up and running I'll email it to you and you can post it here and I'll take it down?
ReplyDelete