The slew isn't all that surprising, after all, prison is fascinating (for example, Prison: Where You're Free to be Gay). What's more surprising is that there aren't also more fiction shows and movies based around incarceration.
Maybe part of the reason for the disparity is that, when people are looking for a show about prison, they're looking for authenticity, and no made-up shit is going to cut it (for example, on OZ, Evan Seinfeld (a Jew) played a Skinhead; then again, maybe a lot of Jews actually do end up having to "blend in" with the Aryan Nation).
Of all the dicks Tera Patrick has been with, this is the only one she get's criticized for.
But prison is just about the most authentic place in the world, where people stop being polite, and start getting real. That slogan always sounded fake on The Real World, and not just because a bunch of white people co-opted the usage of "real" from prison (by way of hip-hop). It was also because, even in its early days, everyone knew that "Reality TV" was utterly fake, not because the situations were so artificial, but because the people were all such goddamn poseurs.
In prison, if you're fake, you get shanked.
Prison is full of rule-breakers, people who don't understand the number one rule in society: pretend you like the people around you. In a society of phonies, these prison documentaries are the only option for true reality programming.
No comments:
Post a Comment