MTV's The Real World has Stopped Being Real

MTV's long-running experiment, The Real World recently finished its latest season of episodes nestled in the Rocky Mountains of Denver. Having concluded its eighteenth season, today's Real World resembles nothing like the real-life drama the world was introduced to in 1992.

When the music network introduced us to the New York City cast that first season, we met seven individuals with lives, goals, and jobs. They were starving artists and writers, musicians and rappers. And our privilege was to watch the dynamics of culture, class, and race play out in varied relationships. The Real World was the one reality show that had nothing to do with entertainment and everything to do with giving the world a bird's eye view into the way people from different backgrounds live their lives.

When we met the casts from NYC as well as the following seasons of Los Angeles and San Francisco, we were glued to the lives of adults, career-minded men and women who were more focused on their futures than sexual escapades. The show had depth and character that was unfamiliar to the television world. In the first season, we saw Becky and Kevin have a verbal wrestling match around race and class. In the second season, we saw how quickly a joke can go from humor to upsetting, when comedian David pulled the sheets off Tammi. The third season was probably the most gut-wrenching season in reality television history as we saw AIDS up close and personal when we were introduced to Pedro, a Hispanic 20-something dying of the virus.

At the same time as the world saw Pedro we were also introduced to Puck. And it was Puck and the massive viewership drawn to his antics that signaled the change in trajectory that the Real World has been on. While we wept for Pedro and the way he was ridiculed and ostracized by Puck, we found humor and salaciousness in Puck that we had not known before. People did not like Puck. They did not respect Puck. But they watched Puck. And because the world watched, the company that produced the show paid attention.

The Real World was a production of Bunim-Murray. When Mary Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray were brought together for creative purposes, their goal was to create a soap opera for the Music Television Network. However, they soon recognized the cost involved in producing such a thematic show. So they turned their attention to an unscripted show. The free nature of the show gave the production staff the chance to bring whatever kind of show they wanted to the small screen. While early on the show seemed more documentary, it became more sexumentary after the two seasons in California.

The shift occurred in response to hat is considered the worst viewing season in Real World history. After the two seasons in California, Bunim-Murray decided to take the experience across the waters, and place the series in London. To put it plainly, without charismatic characters and real drama, the show struggled to build an audience. This struggle seemingly catapulted the production company back into research and development to analyze what the audience watching MTV wanted more than what they thought the viewers desired.

When the Real World arrived back on American soil it did so with Jerry Springer like shock-value, changing everything that was real about the show for an experience similar to an extended spring break. Whereas the old cast members were varied ages between 19-30, in various career places, the new casts were all young, unemployed, and in sexual overdrive. This contradiction was intentional and instrumental in launching the Real World into heights it had not reached previously.

However, along with the growth in viewership the essence of the show was removed and replaced with something less meaningful, less substantive. Rarely now will you watch an episode and glean a life lesson from the episode. Outside of the travails of someone wrestling with homosexuality, a continuous stream from season to season, there are no issues around which the show is shaped. It's a tug of relationship war that has won over the mtv generation.

This dichotomy is a tragic example of the reshaping of the country. We are less real and more about having a good time. The Los Angeles cast partied like every other but you also saw individuals graduating college, serving in law enforcement, writing columns, and doing a myriad of other things. The Real World stopped being real the moment it turned its attention away from one segment to another. The broadcasts are typical and the show is as well. Any season over the last fourteen can is just a replay of the previous one, with the setting the only noticeable change.

This is not real. It is a sham. A shame for what the show could be.