On last night's episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, 7-year-old Alana served Leaky Lindsay (the Garbage Pail Kid) when she sneezed, shot snot out of both nostrils and then held her hand over it for a minute. This aired unedited — televised vérité at its rawest. I wonder what Frederick Wiseman thinks of this show.
TLC's Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is a show about class, and one thing people talk about regarding the Thompson clan (when they aren't cursing them for existing) is whether fame and fortune will spoil their appeal of being trashy beyond belief. If a piece in The Hollywood Reporter is to be believed, there's little risk of that happening...so far. Says the trade:
The controversy was immediate. People were on TLC's Here Comes Honey Boo Boo like flies on pig shit. Or maybe our collective revelry in the show's trashiness resembled a pig in shit. Whatever it was, a metaphor involving pigs and shit is apt for a show that featured a rented pet teacup pig Glitzy pooping on a kitchen table. This incited laughter onscreen and validation within each audience member, wherever he or she fit on the continuum ("These people are vile" to "These people are endearingly raw").
TLC's deliriously trashy Here Comes Honey Boo Boo makes a lot of people whine about the quality of TV (as though you can't just change the channel to find something to rest your highbrow on), the exploitation of children (as though this show is a cause and not a symptom of much greater cultural values) and the fall of civilization (as though we haven't been headed there anyway, and as though that even matters since the world is going to end this year). However, it hasn't made anyone actually cry (to my knowledge)...until last night.
Last night, TLC premiered its first Toddlers & Tiaras spin-off, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. It is a show that reinforces what its source has been trying to tell us all along: the families of those who enter their children into beauty pageants are way more fascinating than the pageants themselves. The show's resulting viral noise has been astounding. You know a piece of pop culture is onto something when many agree that is that it's signaling the fall of civilization. Not since Jersey Shore's debut have the pearls been clutched so ardently, the eyes fixed so steadily.
