The Remote Island : Heather Havrilesky

Are the CW's Ultra-Rich Kids Destroying Our Nation's Youth?

Ben Kallen — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:25:00 GMT

According to Salon.com TV writer Heather Havrilesky, pervasive sex and violence aren't what's harming our TV-watching teens -- it's pervasive wealth. On shows such as Gossip Girl, 90210 and Privileged, she writes, admiring depictions of the richest among us "make aspiring to own designer jeans and nice cars look hopelessly middle-class, compared to the fully serviced, spa-polished, couture lives of the truly wealthy."

Havrilesky points out that TV has always given us escapist wealth fantasies, from Dallas to Dynasty to, let's say, Dirty Sexy Money. But "we were meant to pity these lost, soulless, trashy people, squabbling in their enormous but somehow claustrophobic mansions." With these new CW shows, on the other hand, being rich just makes people happy.

"While Chuck, the poor little prince of Gossip Girl, may pace and swill fine bourbon in his lonely hotel room at the Palace, while Blair nibbles on chocolates in the fluffy confines of her four-poster bed and laments that 'Lady Godiva' is her only friend, these are rare low moments in otherwise fabulous, fun-filled lives that include glamorous parties in the Hamptons, dinner out at the best restaurants every night and a phalanx of handmaidens who quietly fulfill every whim. From the warmhearted, loving, McMansion dwellers Sandy and Kirsten of The O.C. to the spunky, good-natured grandmother lounging about in her Mediterranean-style villa on 90210, the filthy rich aren't the cartoonish demons they once were, and the benefits of their exorbitant lifestyles are paraded before our eyes at every turn. TV writers have abandoned the notion that heart and spirit might win out over money in the end, instead choosing to show us just how many things money can buy."

Still, it's just TV, right? But Havrilesky more or less blames a bunch of issues on this sort of wealth envy, from the mortgage crisis to a middle class drowning in credit-card debt. "Can these dramas -- which are made for young people, after all -- really be written off as harmless fun when so many of us aspire to throw money around like young barons and dukes with demonstrably tragic consequences for the entire country? As a growing percentage of families lose their homes and taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for the mortgage industry's indiscretions, while millionaire executives and private investors remain unscathed, should we feel so comfortable celebrating the growing divide between the haves and have-nots?"

We say, that's a lot to ponder. Which we intend to do shortly, but first we need to go buy a bunch of lottery tickets and try out for Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.

Image: The CW

Previously:
Salon Declares "The Summer of the Sensitive Slut"
All of Gossip Girl
All of 90210

Salon Sez "True Blood" Might Be Pretty Good

Bryan Christian — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:33:00 GMT

Salon's Heather Havrilesky has seen a few episodes of True Blood, HBO and Alan Ball's new Southern fried vampire drama. And she's got good things to say about it. Also, she's apparently been snacking on mescaline while on hold with the phone company.

In other words, AT&T not only hires hot-tempered vampires to handle its phone lines, AT&T not only colludes with companies run by hot-tempered vampires, but AT&T itself is run by hot-tempered vampires -- which explains why the corporate behemoth aided the president in his nefarious eavesdropping activities. But look, don't get rid of your land line, because even though the hot-tempered vampires at the FDA keep assuring us that cellphones are safe, international studies have correlated excessive cellphone use with brain tumors, something we might've known a decade ago, if not for the hot-tempered vampire CEOs of most of our large corporations and the hot-tempered vampire lobbyists who work for them and the hot-tempered vampires taking over the House and the Senate as we speak.

Um, HUUUUUUHHHHH?

But even though the second episode of the season isn't structured very well, with lots of rambling talk about nothing, even though the show lacks the tightness and the natural momentum of "Six Feet Under" (and the weight and the intensity, for that matter), "True Blood" is still odd, unpredictable and off-kilter. And while the same might've been said for the ill-fated, rambling David Milch experiment "John From Cincinnati," the difference is that at the end of each episode of "True Blood," I want to see what happens next. Sookie and Bill are both good characters, and the setting and the story are both original and unfamiliar.

Oh, OK, thanks, Heather. Don't leave the house until you get some sleep.

Salon Declares "The Summer of the Sensitive Slut"

Bryan Christian — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:04:00 GMT

There's an interesting thought experiment over on Salon, with Heather Havrilesky comparing Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Denise Richards: It's Complicated. Wondering who comes out on top?

Actually, we're not sure ourselves.

This is the simple math of a natural-born whore. In fact, while Hannah of "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" is clearly a romanticized, melodramatic version of her real-life counterpart, Denise Richards' clear-cut pragmatism probably comes closer to the thinking of the real Belle de Jour. You want to see my tits? Sure, why not? Charlie Sheen wants to marry me? What the hell, maybe he's turning over a new leaf.

You know what we like about this article most? How Havrilesky manages to get through the whole article without addressing the rumor that Richards was once actually a call girl, which we first heard many years ago and seemed, in a weird way, to have been addressed by the Heidi Fleiss TV docudrama, which featured an woman of Fleiss' employ who looked an awful lot like Richards.

Hey, listen; we got no idea if it's true. We're just wondering if Havrilesky knew about the rumor or not. Thoughts?