The TV shows that are advertised on Channel One News
are often as offensive as their advertised movies. We have reported
on the ugly Starlet TV show that has being heavily promoted on
Channel One this school year.
The Parents Television Council is a great organization
that challenges the toxic popular culture that surrounds our children.
Check out the article about the Starlet show. Then imagine the
fat cats at Channel One making a ton of money off advertising this
cultural rot to children.
Starlets
and Sellouts
By L. Brent Bozell III
President, Parents Television Council
Surely parents can do better than to turn out children whose major
goal in life is to be on television and become a star. But thanks to
the "reality" show format, we’re exposed on nearly every
night of the week to young people parading their clawing, scraping
ambition to become famous in nearly every desperate look-at-me field.
The fad of look-at-me TV started with the singers on "American
Idol" and has now branched into modeling, business building, and
acting. Why anyone would want to be an actor today, when TV is so full
of "unscripted" programming?
NBC failed at the actor-reality concept with its series "The Next
Action Star" – no star was made – but now WB is floundering right
out of the box with its desperate show "The Starlet." It’s
lucky to capture one-tenth of the "American Idol" audience.
WB calls it "the ultimate wish-fulfilling reality series," but
the show’s ten aspiring actresses are competing fiercely for the humongous
prize of some "starlet" minutes on the WB teen drama "One
Tree Hill" – as if anyone’s heard of that show.
The WB’s publicity’s campaign to make this show sound as tough as military
combat is almost comical. Contestants will have to survive "an
intense Hollywood boot camp, complete with harrowing acting classes,
agonizing live performances and brutally honest critiques" from
a panel of judges. How rough a life have you had if you fear "harrowing
acting classes"?
The show took the predictable turn into the gutter in Episode Two,
in which the girls were told the theme was "seduction and passion," but
they had no idea what it was they were going to be seducing. They started
by acting slutty and sensual with – you won’t believe this – a two-foot
teddy bear in a director’s chair. Now that’s a "harrowing" acting
class. Can you imagine how proud you’d be of your daughter making it
to Hollywood so she could strip in front of a stuffed animal on national
television?
From there, the competing starlets graduated to stripteases in front
of male human beings, and in the end, everyone seemed most pleased
with the performance of the 18-year-old contestant we’re told is a
virgin. Congratulations, you’ve come so far from that place of teenage
innocence to convincing depravity with a stranger.
But these exploitative titillation scenes were nothing compared to
the weekly screen test, where the aspirants were told they’d be filmed
kissing one of their fellow contestants in the hot tub in a lesbian
love scene. Show host Katie Wagner explained: "Angelina Jolie,
Hilary Swank and Charlize Theron have all played roles in which they’ve
had to kiss other women. If they can do it, so can you." But at
least Swank and Theron played decidedly un-sexy roles in critical-darling
dysfunction dramas that won Best Actress Oscars. These aspiring actresses,
on the other hand, were made to reenact a soft-porn-style scene from
the forgettable hot-cop drama "Fastlane," which lasted a
few weeks on Fox in 2002.
The show’s producers even brought in Jamie Pressly, one of the pretend-lesbians
from "Fastlane," to make sure the cast members were appropriately
jaded. When one contestant complained they were being exploited for
ratings, Pressly advised her to get over it: "You cannot, whatever
you do, take yourself seriously. Because when you do, you end up worrying
about being exploited. Everybody in the business is exploited." But
some are obviously exploited much more than others.
The entire second half of the show was devoted to showing and then
re-showing the four lesbian hot-tub bikini scenes. You could see why
some wit on the WB’s own chat room joked that the next episode might
feature the actresses "Re-enacting an emergency room scene while
wearing a Playboy bunny costume and roller blades."
A make-a-star reality show can be uplifting and entertaining and family-friendly,
as "American Idol" has been. But when the ratings are not
guaranteed, the Tinseltown brain trust is one-dimensional in its thinking:
push the scandal button. The only thing this show could be good for
is to send a message that fame is not worth selling your soul, and
compromising everything you believe in, to help some piece of slime
in a Porsche goose the ratings so he can build a second swimming pool.
