The Simple Life
I watched one hour of The Simple Life, a reality-based show about Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton. They are known as two rich socialites who do not have a care in the world, and party all the time instead of holding down jobs. In the episodes I watched, the two young women are taken from their luxurious lives and given only a pink pick-up truck and an RV and their mission is to take a road trip across the country staying at different families’ homes and the only money they have is from the jobs they work along the way. The two jobs they worked in the episodes I watched were rodeo cowboys and members of a mermaid water show at a local water park.
What seems to be the main goal of this show is taking Nicole and Paris out of their element and mocking them as they try to live the “simple life.� Even more than this, the tone from the families on the show and the narrator was that these two women were not fit for the working world – from this show, the audience could feel superior to them because they knew how to work for a living and had morals, as opposed to Nicole and Paris. Even though they are incredibly wealthy, without their money Paris and Nicole could not survive. As Myra Mendible argues in her article “Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV,� the audience feels somewhat superior to the people who are being humiliated on the reality show, because they are embarrassed or are being judged in some way. Through the Simple Life, the television audience can create a sense of superiority of Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton, by feeling more intelligent and suited for the “real� world.