CALL it the rise of the stupids.
Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Anna Nicole Smith – everywhere you look right now, people are getting famous for being clueless. Take Paris’s new reality show, “The Simple Life,” which began last night on Fox.
The series tracks Paris and her spoiled buddy Nicole Ritchie (daughter of Lionel) as they trade the 90210 ZIP code for the altogether less glamorous 72821 and attempt to live on a farm for a month.
Hilton recently said she was doing the show because, “People have this preconceived notion of me that is not who I am. I’m not a little rich girl who hasn’t worked a day in her life. I’m smart.” How’s this for smart: She takes heels to a farm. She can’t put a pick-up in reverse.
Some choice Paris quotes include: “What are wells for?”; “What does ‘generic’ mean?”; and the now legendary, “What is Wal-Mart? Do they sell wall stuff?”
Marc Berman, TV analyst at Mediaweek, says that stupidity sells. “Viewers want to see this stupid, rich socialite making a fool of herself,” he says, “For the TV companies, the mindless person or project is the easy sell.”
The execs at ABC know this – their latest hot signing is professional dimwit Jessica Simpson. Simpson was a moderately successful pop singer before she sprung to fame on the reality show “Newlyweds” – thanks to her rank stupidity.
She refused to eat buffalo wings on the grounds that she didn’t like buffalo, but her fame was sealed when she wondered aloud whether the tuna fish brand, “Chicken of the Sea,” was, indeed, chicken. That comment is threatening to supercede Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you.” in the country’s cultural lexicon.
“American entertainment has always been filled with characters who are dumb and dumber,” says Dr. Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University. “Stupid is funny. The difference is that now we are seeing a whole new category of people who are prepared to do it as themselves rather than hiding behind a fictional guise. And it’s very encouraging to us – we feel better after watching an episode of Paris on the farm because anyone is smarter than this.”
Thompson says that the “most extreme” example of the new stupidity is Anna Nicole Smith, whose inanity-filled reality show was such a success that entertainment channel E! made a second series. “She is literally famous for being stupid. That’s it,” Thompson says.
Currently, the second most compulsive stupidity on TV is to be found in the MTV show “Rich Girls,” following Ally Hilfiger (the designer’s daughter) and her pal Jamie Gleicher (a luggage heiress) as they cluelessly navigate New York.
It’s car crash stuff. On last week’s episode, for example, the girls sat around discussing how they could help the starving populace of Ethiopia. One of their friends suggested raising some money.
Ally, however, had other ideas: “Maybe wecould do something a bit more interesting,” she babbles,”Like a quilt-making thing to send dresses down there..”
“Yeah, and think of the therapy they need as well,” chimes in another pal.
With that level of stupidity, these girls are going to go far.
