Will Main Street Teens Turn On 'Privileged' TV Teens?
Posted by anastasia on 09-30-2008
I've blogged here before about the question of whether teen TV that's too gritty or realistic will resonate with teens vs. the rich-teen escapist fare that currently dominates networks like The CW and MTV. Heather Havrilesky wrote a great piece for Salon.com about the potentially negative impact of these "twisted fables that teach teens the countless advantages of being filthy rich." Given the economic disaster we're in and the growing bitterness of "Main Street" towards "Wall Street," I wonder whether teen TV viewers will start to turn on the uber privileged stars of these buzzed about shows.
Part of what made John Hughes movies so quintessentially 80s was the thinly veiled class warfare – Molly Ringwald's character Andie Walsh in "Pretty in Pink" literally lived on the wrong side of the tracks, and she and her friends had open disdain for "the richies." Yet the characters in these movies crossed over – geeks ended up with beauty queens, wallflowers with jocks, etc., without really compromising who they were. The rich kid party scenes were definitely more about excess than success. That's different from the newly rich or middle class fish out of water we see on "90210″ or "Privileged" who always seem in awe of everything their uber rich peers have from clothes to private planes to "cribs." Havrilesky notes these middle class characters are shown with the clear message of "what a disadvantage it is not to be able to rub shoulders with the elite."
If I were a TV writer thinking about new scripted teen TV series right now, I would be cranking out script ideas with more working and middle class characters, who like Andie, are creative and thrifty — it doesn't bode as well for product placement if they're not wearing the latest designers, but how fun would it be to click on what this character wore and find out that she got it at Target? They can still interact with and fall for kids on "the right side of the tracks," but maybe they end up being empowered without "help" from their well-off friends and teach them how the rest of us are living. Yes, as Havrilesky noted, Ypulse favorite "Veronica Mars," had many of these traits and was canceled…but that was before the events of the past two weeks.
Categorized under: TV
