MTV constantly reminds us of how much they loathe their core teenage audience, and the little buggers are too stupid to get it. Hopefully, they’ll subject us to more cynically inane “Vote or Die” campaigns in the coming weeks, like they did in 2004. But for now, we’ll have to settle for Exiled, a show that sends former My Super Sweet Sixteen-ers to third world hell-holes for a week ostensibly as punishment for being themselves. Sixteen was (especially at the beginning) a cruel little show, showing us in-depth looks inside the heads of rich girls at that most stupid and overconfident of ages. You would think most of the girls (and boys) who were featured on MSSS would be so mortified by their portrayal on MTV that they would never show their faces in public again. Sadly, for many of them, it just affirmed their “Me-me-me” brain-style.
This is why Exiled is a good idea – there’s unfinished business here for half of MTV’s audience, the half that watched the show because finally somebody was showing the young and rich at their very worst, and not trying to Make Them Seem Like Us. It was like a siren for anyone with any integrity or humility to hear, a siren that blared you could turn into this if you’re not careful. Sure, it was packaged as princess fantasies and money-fetishism, but half the audience had ears to hear the real message. But still, after the show was over, the miscreants of MSSS still had the adulation of their peers and their range rovers and their myopic memories, and probably regarded MTV’s smarter viewers as “Haters.” That’s why they needed to be humbled.
From watching the lame preview (but aren’t they all lame?), it seems that MTV is playing this off like the parents are trying to teach their children a lesson, so they’re sending them to dig ditches in Africa for a week. If it weren’t affiliated with the Hitleresque youth of Sweet Sixteen, it would make a horrible show premise. This is all totally fake, and I’m sure the girls (and one boy) lustily agreed to the trips if it meant being on MTV again. My hope is that there’s some reality to it, and that the people involved learn something from the experience. And I mean real learning, not the kind of learning where you pretend to learn when MTV cameras are on, then go back to being horrible when you get back to your real life.
Exiled features three scuzzbags whose episodes I have seen (Ahh-va and Sierra from Season One, and that Florida girl from the beginning of Season Two), and a fourth that I tried to watch but just couldn’t take (Bjorn – the so-called “Divo”). Excited isn’t the right word for how I feel about this – more like perplexed. Can Exiled bring the vengeful noise, or will it end up being a touchy-feely disappointment like Average Joe or My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé? Does America even have the stomach for public humiliation anymore?
We’re probably not about to find out, but it’s fun to dream…
