Knowing little about Paris Hilton beyond the haughty, bulky Hilton brand-name, her name wrapped around an odd tabloid headline or two, and random iridescent glimpses of Paris---a soi-disant supermodel---sauntering up and down a runway during a fashion soiree?, I can safely say I was not wildly familiar with Miss Hilton and knew quite a lot less of Nicole Richie. During a “The Simple Life” promo I stumbled upon the fact that Nicole was the daughter of Lionel Richie---a long since discarded name of a once popular 80’s vocalist. I guess one could still tune in his catalog on vinyl or your local oldies radio station. Was I supposed to be impressed? Needless to say, I knew more about Ozzy Osbourne’s penchant for burritos than these two lovelies.
I assumed from the promos that “The Simple Life” was a fairly straightforward “reality” romp: pampered daughters of wealth attempting, with lippy pouts, to acclimate themselves on a labor intensive working-class farm. Who could resist peeking around the woodshed to watch some rich, swanky folk get their long overdue comeuppance? (We’ll show you how the other 98% live... Ha!) Something not entirely dissimilar had been produced on Public Television, a riveting show called “Frontier House,” but certainly it did without any of the puerile hype fermented by Fox, unreeling winsome clips of each lady in various states of undress and carousing---the promise of pubescent sexual tension hanging gamely in the air. “Frontier House” hurled astern three 2001 families into the fairly wretched, harrowing existence of American pioneers claiming their land rights and surviving on the frontier of 1883. “The Simple Life” teasers seemed to suggest we might be watching two California girls on Easy Street hoe a backwoods turnip patch... in their lingerie.
I can assure you that there was a time in our own history, as well as documented consistently throughout Western European and British society, that having the good fortune to be seeded as a scion of wealthy parents meant without question that one would have an extensive, disciplinary, classical education---oft times away, in a grim boarding school (bereft of any foolishness)---complete with rigorous spiritual training and even, for the male offspring, a military assignment; for the females, the post-education milieu was normally artistic or refined religious undertakings. These sons and daughters of high society might have never trudged around a factory, dug a ditch, or kept shop, but they were usually as well-cultured and erudite as this sort of monied class distinction would allow. One cannot help comparing these bygone, shall we say, learned upper-crust snobs to the enervate children of Reality TV’s current well-heeled households. Ozzy Osbourne’s two boorish progeny may have use of limitless gobs of cash and credit cards, and tons of gadgets, but it seems that some of Ozzy’s loot could have been spent on instilling more thoughtful longings on his two cursing, whining, lazy, contemptuous neonatal “adults.” Yet, I suppose starting an ominous, jejune musical career, or switching one’s hair color, out of sheer boredom, is something that an 8-year-old wouldn’t contemplate or attempt.
Likewise, we saw in the premiere episode of “The Simple Life,” Paris Hilton being sent-off into her television excursion by her sybaritic parents amid a sumptuous sip-and-nibble gathering of assorted elites. One might believe that this ostrich-like female, clothed like a tart in front of her foppish father, would have been the recipient of some worthy academic warp. A flair for some practical talent; some acquired capacity for cleverness, some knack... besides a mere existence as a temptress. Being slutty and half-naked in the company of males reeking of incontinence is surely an avenue toward some weary sort of “stardom,” but it is hardly a “talent” that either Paris Hilton or Nicole Ritchie should think they alone possess or think is in any way novel. It is necessarily the whims of this jaded, gluttonous and nihilistic pair that they obviously believe robotic sexual appetites should be among a catalog of their achievements---like a dog getting a graduate degree for sniffing the rear end of a bitch. This, in some quarters, is what rocketing personal success has come to mean and what some television networks---say, the arid MTV---have settled upon as glorified treats for their repugnant productions, their scripted flyblown wasteland. As if getting whacked in the groin with a hockey puck is a feat, a realization, a victory. It is only insanity festooned with posies.
No surprise then, that “The Simple Life,” produced by avaricious MTV crews (“Real World”), should descend into infantile sandbox routines when we could have been afforded a well needed peek into America’s rural farm life---the life that brings us our unique cornucopia of milk and food---and how any one of us city folk would fair living under their more austere, agrarian province, from which most of us have an almost planetary detachment. Instead, we are subjected to both Paris and Nicole behaving like literal imbeciles, or what would have been considered the purview of morons a few decades ago. Paris claims she doesn’t know the widely hyped nationwide department store chain of WalMart---suggesting it might be a store that “sells walls.” Paris and Nicole are dispatched to begin employment at a local Arkansas fast food restaurant and when directed to change the announcement on the marquee both are consumed with jittery delight that they were able to slide in the word “anal” with the news of a hamburger sale. When Nicole is assigned to process an onion ring machine she unmasks her contempt for completing a tediously pedestrian task---a rote effort surely adapted for the nearby yokels alone---by tossing handfuls of raw onion slices into the contraption which is designed to ingest a few rings at a time---thus creating an inedible glop for the store’s customers. We are witnesses of nothing more compelling than toddler angst, spouting adrift as these small hissy fits of self-serving anarchy masquerading as actual accomplishments. What a day for post-modern feminism... privileged adult women proudly titter about as ornery pre-teen boys. When are they going to firecracker a lizard to its doom?
I suspect that some, if not most, of this misdemeanor clownishness is zealously fanned by the show’s implacable producers. I can only be hopeful. The amount of disrespect shown by these two waifs for people deserving of respect is alarming, if it is all to be believed. If it is this pair’s true guile, I dare say it is tragic and sad. Every opportunity they encounter that may enrich their soft, watery lives through exposure to a flinty work ethic, grinding physical labor, and encounters with differing stripes to compete with the squawks they’ve heretofore collected in their web of synapses, is squandered by roguish concerns to belittle the labor of others and labor altogether, and snafu tasks that may be accomplished for their own self-respect and the common good. The show could be about enlightenment and personal transformation---maybe on both sides---yet what else can one expect to be fed but sarcasm, irony and wanton destruction. Thus, feeling ambivalent and bothered at a dairy farm they were assigned to invade, Paris and Nicole spill a significant amount of fresh milk onto the ground while manually filling milk bottles, which produces befuddled giggling. Using a water hose, they wash away the milk so their employer won’t find the mess. Nicole then gets the idea to fill the remaining partially filled milk bottles using the water hose. Get this: they’re filling milk bottles destined for local households with water from a yard hose.
These agents of mischief walk about the earth sewing discord and agnosticism with unrepentant efficacy. At the dairy farm: both show up late for work, overstay their breaks, complain about the pungent smell, complain about the cows, complain about filling the milk bottles; they waste milk, they cover-up their accident, and then dilute and contaminate the milk with a dirty water hose. I can’t find the entertainment value in this vignette, nor the humour, nor the inspiration. Why is this empty slapstick, this void, this sedition from worthwhile human angels erected? What is anyone to glean from this panoply of chaos? We might as well be watching nose picking and gang rapes.
Naturally, the way out of this minimum wage hell for Paris and Nicole is to steal away from their hosts in the middle of the night and come upon a night club where they can brandish their breasts and asses to engorged young males---the MTV equivalent of redemption and renewal. The last corner of ego titillation for bored, listless souls whose every comfort and pleasure is filled to excess as if by divine supplication; hardship and toil is defined by the volume or magnitude of their cloying insatiability. So let the boys have our bodies, our machines, so we can feel alive again... oh! to feel THAT alive! Make me think I’ve accomplished SOMETHING! Alas, after watching several episodes, and not able to watch one more for the life of me, I realized we’ve got neither frontier historical documentary nor reality adventure. What we’ve got is an all female “Jackass,” as morally contaminated as it was grating, soporific, and lifeless.
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