Why 'Real World: Cancun' Makes Sense
Posted by meredith on 01-28-2009
Full disclosure: StudentCity.com is a Ypulse sponsor.
When I heard that the 22nd season of "The Real World" was going to be set in Cancun, I couldn't help but feel relieved. Mostly, because it meant that the spotlight would finally be off Brooklyn (No, I did not spot any of the cast members or their camera crew in my neighborhood. Please stop asking), but also because after what felt like a seriously misguided choice this season, going down to Cancun among the college kids and their Spring Break revelry just seemed right.
Yes, Brooklyn may have had the aesthetic appeal MTV looks for in a cosmopolitan "Real World" location, but the tension between the show and the setting was palpable even before the show went to air. The cast's presence in the outer borough was called everything from an invasion to the apocalypse and for me and other casual observers, this meta-drama overshadowed the actual show. I had less interest in watching the seven strangers "get real," than simply reading the snarky New York media coverage of how they were attempting to do so among the hostile natives.
Cancun, on the other hand, is a different story. As anyone who has watched MTV in the past 20 years knows, the channel pretty much has Spring Break down to a science. By recruiting the housemates to serve as guides for visiting college students with the resource site StudentCity.com, they're playing to their strengths; creating a believable and more importantly watchable setup. Moreover, while the elusive and territorial twentysomethings of Brooklyn are on one end of the MTV tolerability spectrum, the college students who make an annual pilgrimage down to Cancun for Spring Break (or yearn to do so) are on the other. Simply put, given the network, the target demo and the nature of the show (in its current form) "The Real World" couldn't have found a better home than Cancun.
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Categorized under: Collegians
January 28th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
As a Portland, Mainer, I've always wanted to see a Portland, Maine Real World. I am pretty sure the Real World / Road Rules Challenge happened upon there a decade or so ago.
Or maybe, for the sake of education, a war zone? The Real World Gaza, perhaps? That would shut everyone's petty drama up so fast:
"Oh yeah? You're a conservative and I'm a gay kid from the back woods? You better put that on the back-burner for a second, sweetheart, because Hamas militants are camping out in our next door neighbor's abandoned home and we're getting shelled by the IDF. You might want to put your contrived and totally-predictable reactions to this artificial melding of personalities aside for a minute or two while we duck and cover."
Remember when Anthony Bourdain was in Lebanon when Israel began shelling the crap out of the country? It was right about there – and I guess this seed was planted what back during the documentation of the tragic loss of Pedro Zemora – that I began to wish more "reality TV shows" incorporated elements of ACTUAL real world. If war is indeed how Americans learn geography, The Real World could very well be how Americans learn about war.
Or maybe the tragic protagonist of next season (season 459, of course) of the Bachelor can be a veteran of one of the current conflicts, out of his mind on PTSD and amputated all over.
I feel like there's got to be an authentic way to get reality shows to work for more people than the addicted (myself) and exploitive.
January 28th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
"Jon and Kate Plus 8 [Serb Nationalists]" anyone?
January 29th, 2009 at 4:49 am
Production has already started at the ME Resort in Cancun building up to the Spring Breakers arrival in March.
http://www.mm-agency.com/blog/mtv-real-world/the-22nd-season-of-the-real-world-goes-to-cancun-mexico/3445/