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Teen TV Gets Real
First, a few clarifications. I am not a teenager. I have not been a teenager for seven years. When I was a teenager, I didn’t watch much television. In fact, during two years of high school, I didn’t watch TV at all. So, while I was aware of the 1990’s groundbreaking teen series Beverly Hills 90210 and My So-Called Life, I didn’t watch either of them until I was an adult and both shows were in syndication (90210 on FX and My So-Called Life on MTV). Then I was hooked. I appreciated and laughed at 90210 and am willing to admit, with some shame, that last year I watched about three episodes a week (we’re talking the high school, college and the After Dark years — don’t ask me why). I fell in love with My So-Called Life, however, and made my friends participate in more than one marathon viewing session. What I found in this show was a representation of adolescence as I remembered it, and while that meant dredging up some pain, it also meant that I found solace in knowing that there was something common about my experience. Several friends of mine who also were My So-Called Life fans appreciated it for the same reason. They liked seeing our specific brand of adolescent girl angst writ small on their 13-inch screens on a weekly basis. Unlike 90210, which tackled issues in an episodic, moralistic way (the Brenda-and-Dylan-have-sex episode; the West-Beverly-kids-solve-interscholastic-race-relations-problems-at-the-school-dance episode; the Brandon-goes-bad-and-drives-drunk episode.), the folks behind My So-Called Life rarely let things be that easy, or simple. Angela lied to her parents about going out on a school night and got away with it; Rayanne’s drinking problems weren’t resolved in one episode; Ricky didn’t come out in a Very Special Episode; Brian turned his back on his admirer much like Angela turned her back on him; and Angela’s parents couldn’t save her from the heartbreaking effects of her on-again-off-again relationship with Jordan. These realistic complexities are what appealed to me and my friends and 10 million other viewers (mostly teenage girls). My So-Called Life, in its brief 19-episode tenure (the show was cancelled by ABC the year after it debuted), gave us hope that there could be good television for and about teenagers. I was excited, then, when PBS started airing American High, a high school reality show, in April. American High enjoyed a brief run on Fox (four of the series’ 13 episodes aired on the network last August) before it was cancelled. PBS decided to run the series in full, allowing us to see what happens when ‘reality TV” meets teenhood.
American High follows the lives of 14 students at Highland Park High School in Highland Park, Ill. Some of the students figure more prominently than others; Morgan, Allie, and Brad, for example, have been central “characters’ in multiple episodes. While it might be possible for viewers to discern some ‘types’ in the group — Brad is the gay one, Morgan the annoying-yet-misunderstood one, Pablo the wry poet, Kiwi the jock, Kaytee the alternagirl — R. J. Cutler, the show’s executive producer (whose earlier documentaries include The War Room and A Perfect Candidate), works to create representations that are more dimensional than easy categorizations might allow. Cutler and his production team were interested in allowing the teens to have some control over their representation from the start, equipping all of them with cameras so that they might record their own video diaries. In an interesting twist, Cutler originally intended the diaries to be a forum for the students to respond to specific questions or issues — e.g., “What scares you?”– but the students were more interested in shooting what Cutler (in one of the making-of-the-show segments that air at the end of each episode) called ’scenes,” in which their friends and family were also featured. These scenes make for some of the show’s most interesting moments, such as when Morgan’s parents chase him around the house in anger and frustration, while Morgan challenges them, camera in hand. The diaries became an integral part of the show, and the teenagers’ own footage is intercut with what the camera crew filmed. Discuss Reality TV While the series features issue-based episodes, these issues aren’t the usual suspects (teen drinking, sex, etc.) but are instead less sensational ones: how one faces the end of childhood, or copes with a family splitting apart and reorganizing, or deals with the worry over college admission. When hot issues do turn up on the show, they do so as part of our introduction to the kids themselves (as with Brad’s sexual orientation, Pablo’s drinking and partying, or Allie’s truancy) and aren’t turned into opportunities for moral instruction or commentary. It’s refreshing, for instance, to watch Robby and Sara lie in bed together without fear of meta-commentary about teen relationships and sexuality, or to see Pablo and Lisa get away, for a while at least, with inhabiting Lisa’s grandfather’s unoccupied home as a haven from their ‘defunct” families. But this is, after all, a reality show, and this lack of commentary is what we should expect. It struck me, after watching the first couple of episodes, that doing reality TV for a teenage audience presents a particularly difficult challenge. I remember that when both 90210 and My So-Called Life debuted, much was made of their willingness to deal with ‘real issues’ faced by teens, albeit in very different ways. Of course, in the case of 90210, there was a good deal of fantasy in the mix (much of it class-related and having to do with the poor-little-rich-kid lifestyle in West Beverly), but it was the sugar with which the proverbial medicine — certain lessons about the ills of drug abuse, for example — went down. Now, a decade later, reality may not be the prime concern for much programming for teens: Roswell and Buffy the Vampire Slayer deploy otherworldly narratives to deal with earthly concerns; Malcolm in the Middle hyperacts the nuclear family; Dawson’s Creek features a cast who appear much, much too old to be just-now-graduating from high school; and Popular seems to be an over-the-top, ultra-vivid high school fantasia. Teens don’t necessarily watch the programming that’s designed for them, however, as a March 13 report in The New York Times notes. At that point, according to Nielsen Media Research, the top five most popular programs for teenagers were Malcolm in the Middle, The Simpsons, Temptation Island, Survivor and Grounded for Life — quite the mix for what has become a notoriously unpredictable, and desirable (because of their spending potential) audience. I can’t make any educated guesses about why these five shows are popular. I also can’t compare them to the shows teenagers were watching when I was one of them because we, as a demographic, didn’t matter as much to TV execs then — though believe me, in a way I wish we had, because maybe that would have helped My So-Called Life stay on air a little longer. What I can tell you is that, for some teen viewers, a show’s realness still counts. Those who watch American High (and care enough to post messages about it on the show’s Web site) take the authenticity into consideration when evaluating the show. Singer/Songwriter/Alternagirl
While most of the messages posted on the American High board give the show and the students their props (there are, as you might imagine, quite a few posts devoted to how hot or crush-worthy the students are), or mention how less-alone watching the show has made them feel, the message board also hosts its share of teenage critics. More than one thread has been devoted to the representation of wealth and race on the show, often in relation to the show’s claim to being ‘reality” TV. On May 10, a contributor with the screen name “<<<<>>>” wrote, “American High is not reality high school. … Some high school buildings don’t look that good. Some high schools are falling down. … American High should not be called American High because they have limited numbers of minority students in that high school, or rather on that show! And many high schools are multiracial, hey so Americans can’t be all one race can they?” This post was met with a challenge from another user, _Nikkita_, who asked “[Aren't] most people on there [A]merican citizens? Sure there are different cultures and stuff, but there really isn’t such [a] thing as a pure [A]merican [I] don’t think … if they are citizens why can’t it be called [A]merican [H]igh?” In a similar exchange that took place between May 13 and 15, Jesse wrote “HHS [sic] is like 80% wealthy kids, predominantly jewish [sic], and hardly representative of an “AMERICAN” high school Also, why was the guidance counselor ‘tracking” Pablo [one of the show's few students of color] into a community college when he is clearly one of the smartest kids on the show? Racist? I think so. This show would be better if the producers had selected a Chicago school. That would be ‘reality” television.” Another user, Jason, responded with a challenge as well, asking “And what’s your point? Most Americans are wealthy, and most are predominantly something. … This show reflects my town 100% PERFECTLY, but we’re mostly Baptist northern European descent people of “wealth” somehow [misplaced] in Florida. It’s how they ACT, and their LIVES and situations that are representative of most American [h]igh schools. Not their amount of money and religion or race.” What’s at issue here are not only questions about reality and the realness of the representation of high school life, but how the show’s viewers define “American” and membership in the national community. Pretty good stuff for teens to be wrestling with, in my opinion. My own reaction to American High has been much like that of the teens who like the show, but still want to think critically about its location and featured subjects. Highland Park High School is a clean, safe, nice-looking school. The halls are well-lighted, the lockers are painted bright colors and don’t seem to be vandalized. HPHS students have college counselors, trophies in their trophy case, quality art and music classes, and a good sports program. Teachers notice when students don’t show up for class. In one student’s (Allie’s) case, her absences are notable enough to warrant a parent-teacher conference, which several teachers and her mother attend. HPHS is a far cry from high schools I’ve seen — especially here in New Orleans, where I’m writing this — not only because of its physical condition, but also because of its fairly homogenous student body. When it comes down to it, American High is a pretty white show, which is largely due to the racial makeup of HPHS’s student population. I do wonder, though, why Cutler chose HPHS and its students, rather than shooting at a school with a more racially and economically mixed student body, with the qualification that it would be equally problematic to go for gritty “authenticity” by filming in an urban (AKA black) public high school. What is problematic about the show — that its subjects are afforded certain luxuries, the largest among them the luxury to experience the transition from childhood to adulthood in a comfortable environment — is also what makes it work, on a certain level. While the reality American High represents is not everyone’s reality (it’s still very different from my teen experience), it’s a more transparent, more honest depiction of the trials of being a teenager than almost any other we’ve seen on TV. We can watch and cringe as we see Pablo interviewing with a recruiter for the Marines, believing that the Marines ‘might be a good place to write poetry” and a place where he might gain the financial independence and stability he desires. We can empathize with Kaytee when her declaration of love for Teddy is met with his ambivalence. We can remember what it was like being (we thought) the only queer kid in school and wish we were as brave as Brad. Or, at least, that’s what I can do when I watch American High, which is something I haven’t done since I watched the last re-run of My So-Called Life Alana Kumbier lives and works in New Orleans. Her work has previously appeared in Bitch Magazine and Bust. Related Sites |
