Just throwing this out there

Okay, so I'm sure that someone has written about Borat, but I can't find it to attach this to their blog, but I'm going to tie it in with Parental Control, so I figure I'll probably say something slightly new to the blog.

I'm sure that many of you have seen the Borat movie, but I'll still try not to give anything away. And I hope that many of you have seen Parental Control, because after Yo Momma it is the best reality show on television. For those of you who are unfamiliar with its genius, the plot is that there are two parents who are ridiculously unhappy with their son or daughter's significant other. So they interview a slew of willing candidates, choose two of them and then sit at home with the unhappy significant other, watching the son or daughter go on televised dates with the new candidates. After the two dates, the son or daughter has to choose between staying with his or her current significant other or taking one of the new candidates. The show makes me feel ridiculously trashy sometimes, but I can't help loving it. Sometimes I'll even skip meals to stay home and watch it on MTV. I often think to myself, "Why do you like this show?" I think it's because I'm convinced it's not actually real.

The people on the show seem like caricatures. They have great comebacks and their hearts don't actually break. Unlike Laguna Beach, where the characters make me sad because they're so believable, I don't feel anything here because I don't feel like I'm watching real people. I can never figure out the nature of the relationships on the show. Are they actors? Are those actually their parents? Or their girlfriends? Everything feels so staged (and I know it must be to a degree) but where is that line drawn? And where is it crossed? How much of it is actually real? And most importantly, does that even matter?

Which brings me to Borat. Because it's clear that many people feel that the level of reality matters greatly. You've probably heard by now that those frat boys are suing Sasha Baron Cohen for defamation of character. They claim that a random film crew took them out drinking one night and sent them on an RV, and then unbeknownst to them Borat showed up. What ensued appears in the film, with the frat boys really drunk and saying racist and sexist things every other sentence. I suppose they're contending that they were tricked into defaming their own character or something. The implication is certainly that the footage is presented as being "real" but it isn't. So where is the line drawn? Those frat boys actually said all of the words that came out of their mouths. What does it matter if they were facilitated in doing so? Does it become any less genuine or realistic? And furthermore, at what point do the characters on the screen stop being real people and start being characters? In Parental Control, I don't feel like I'm watching real people and in Borat I do. And it drastically alters how I go about watching the shows. I guess I just wanted to bring up the questions rather than provide real questions to it. And if anyone knows anything about how Parental Control is made, please let me know...or maybe don't. Because part of the fun is in the guessing.