The Reality of Depravity...

Mr.Atos

Brent Bozell blugeons reality T.V. over the weekend, while noting its fatal plunge into sleezy and perverse teen exploitation.

Surely parents can do better than turn out children whose major goal in life is to be on television and become a star. But thanks to the "reality" show format, we're exposed on nearly every night of the week to young people parading their clawing, scraping ambition to become famous in nearly every desperate look-at-me field.

He focuses his attention on one show in paricular - WB's, "The Starlet" - which has emerged as one of the most depraved shows in a genre of television productions already scraping the bottom of cultural depravity.

The show took the predictable turn into the gutter in Episode Two, in which the girls were told the theme was "seduction and passion," but they had no idea what it was they were going to be seducing. They started by acting slutty and sensual with -- you won't believe this -- a two-foot teddy bear in a director's chair. Now that's a "harrowing" acting class. Can you imagine how proud you'd be of your daughter making it to Hollywood so she could strip in front of a stuffed animal on national television?

From there, the competing starlets graduated to stripteases in front of male human beings, and in the end, everyone seemed most pleased with the performance of the 18-year-old contestant we're told is a virgin. Congratulations, you've come so far from that place of teenage innocence to convincing depravity with a stranger.

But these exploitative titillation scenes were nothing compared to the weekly screen test, where the aspirants were told they'd be filmed kissing one of their fellow contestants in the hot tub in a lesbian love scene.

The sad reality of ratings means that someone is watching. Obviously there is a target market for WB's advertisers, culling America for circles of adolescent jerks, stalkers, rapists, voyers, child sex-offenders, and other closet deviants to lend cultural credibility and sell allergy medications, automobiles, and wireless plans.