Girls Next Door
The show that I watched has already been discussed in a post, so I will try not to include similar information. The show that I viewed was The Girls Next Door. I do not have cable however; I viewed this show through DVD. The show is based around the life of three women, Holly, Bridget and Kendra. These three women have one thing in common, they are dating Hugh Hefner, and I think we all are familiar with what he is famous for, Playboy. I watched several episodes, but I only want to focus on one of them. The episode I would like to discuss is the very first episode of the show. This show included a miny episode; however the main thing it included was an introduction to the three women.
The first episodes titled Meet the Girls was first aired on Sunday, August 7, 2005 on the channel E!. The show is targeted towards adults, female or male. I have seen this show on E! and I believe on television it is more targeted towards females, however the DVD includes deleted scenes, which basically are all nude scenes, which brings the targeting more towards men. The topic of the show is basically the following of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends. It shows the lives of three women trying to fill their day with anything they want to do, pretty much. For example, in one episode Bridget throws a birthday party for her dog, in which the staff of the mansion has to cater to the dogs. This is not real life, this is pathetic. The construction of the show is to make these women look as dumb as possible; unfortunately I don't think it takes too much for them. For example one of them, Bridget has her master's degree, yet she is portrayed as a "dumb blonde" throughout the show. The more I watched the show, the more I believe she plays the role of the "dumb blonde" purely for the show. I believe this is because if there was an intelligent woman on the show, no one would watch it. People want to see the "dumb blonde" on television, they want that character, so they can mock and laugh at the stupidity of an individual. As discussed in “Humiliation, Subjectivity & Reality TV” “humiliation is the unifying principle behind a successful reality show”. By this I mean every reality television show focuses on one thing, the humiliation of the stars. The Girls Next Door is no different. The way the show is edited is to show the stupidity of the women. For example, most of the time during the solo interviews, they edit in music to make Kendra appear dumber. Now I will be the first to say, that I don’t believe it is just editing that makes her appear dumb, but they increase it by playing music. For example in one interview, she was thinking of something for a while and they added the jeopardy music. That would be okay if something brilliant was said to follow but that was not the case. All and all the show plays with the idea of the stereotypical “dumb blonde” and the “goldigger”, by following these three women.