What Privileged TV Teens Can't Buy… Real Teens' Respect

Last fall Anastasia wondered whether a troubling economic situation would lead teens to turn away from privileged teen characters on TV and seek out more relatable middle and working class icons instead. Meanwhile, Bravo, the purveyors of "The Real Housewives" franchise — featuring many spoiled teenage sons and daughters– and now this summer's "Gossip Girl"-inspired reality show "NYC Prep" — appears to be banking on just the opposite.

But after reading Alyx's verdict for "NYC Prep" — "terrible role models for teens, but amazing entertainment" – and hearing about the uproar over the series at the high schools these students attend, I started thinking about the type of viewing pleasure that regular teens get from watching these shows about their filthy rich peers. Think less escapist and more schadenfreude.

Sure, teens might envy the accessories and the advantages money can buy characters on "Gossip Girl" and "The Hills," but when it comes to those not-for-sale items like true friendship and success based on hard work vs. parental connections — I think teens on the other side of the screen have the edge. And I believe they're savvy enough to know it. That's part of the reason I feel like TV writers ditched the 80s' variety of disdaining outsider (think: John Hughes) for for the social climbing newcomer of today (think: Dan and Jenni Humphrey). Because what does "getting in with the in crowd" ever get the peripheral characters? A whole lot of grief and an inferiority complex. My sense is teens would rather not directly relate to these characters and, if anything, might pity their naivete. In this way I see these shows playing off that class warfare dynamic, except this time around the viewer is the knowing outsider.

While catfighting and pot stirring aren't exactly groundbreaking territory for primetime soaps or reality television — and as we've covered here before, there's definitely been movement in the opposite direction with non-Hills programs on MTV and more realistic programming on ABC Family —  I think the extreme superficiality we've seen as of late isn't so much inspiring teens to fantasize that their lives were more like that, but rather take comfort in the fact that they aren't.

That said, I'm still not a fan of adapting the likes of "Gossip Girl" into a reality television show like Bravo's. For all of the clique-related issues I listed in my previous post, but also because, well, these are real people.. with real classmates. Who may one day want to go off to college or live in other cities and would probably prefer not to set the record straight. The stars of these shows voluntarily subjected themselves to the scrutiny of the cameras and audiences at home, but their peers, some of whom probably don't share the same extravagant lifestyles and most of whom are average teens, didn't. Regardless its now their stigma to bear, their class-based judgment to disprove — a distinct "privilege," that I can vouch, most non-reality star residents of "The Hills" and "Laguna Beach" still aren't too thrilled about.

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