The effects of advertising and marketing of the entertainment industry as a whole whether it be geared for film or music is very persuasive to our youth. People are always looking for the latest craze and interpretation of life. Lately, with websites such as YouTube and iTunes people can access all forms of entertainment at their discretion with the click of a button. Recently, on myspace and youtube websites videos have been launched of a girl named Bree which has its fans questioning the whether the video itself is another creative marketing ploy of a big studio advertising for a movie or TV show. The video is labeled as Lonely Girl15 and is an interactive type video in which appears to the audience to be a real video diary that some girl just happened to decide to film one day. The videos of Bree seem to be authentic but really are the workings of three friends who have hired actors to be a part of this experience. Fans who have begun to follow this video series were beginning to become disenchanted when they thought that the videos were in fact not real and were some marketing ploy of a studio for a movie or television show. What does it matter whether the videos are or are not connected to a major studio- it is still entertainment. Does it make it less legitmate and less creative if a major studio did have backing for it? And futhermore, shouldn't the real question address the American public's obsession with other people's lives? Is it not creepy that people are actually so bored with their own lives that they have the time to sit and watch what they thought was a video diary of a female teenager? The value of true imagaination is becoming muddied when studio executives sit around brainstorming ideas for reality television instead of developing new ideas for shows that would promote social change. The creators of the show are represented by Creative Artists Agency and it will be interesting to see what in fact does happen when they feel the pressure to make money off of it.
Lonely Girl15
Bob Smith (not verified) @ September 15, 2006 - 10:16am
The LonelyGirl15 series is really nothing new at all, just a decade-old idea of online fiction masquerading as reality, repackaged with up-to-date online multimedia presentation technology.
11 years ago, a small group of creatively-minded young advertising agency employees in southern California, who hoped to get a foothold in the entertainment business, launched a website called The Spot. It purported to be the daily real lfe observations of a half-dozen 20-somethings sharing a beach house and living a life not unlike a mix of Real World and Melrose Place. They posted in a manner anticipating the later blog format, staying totally in character online and even opening up a message board and IRC pages to interact directly with an audience that eventually grew as large as a successful major market radio station's daily cume.
The cat was soon let out of the bag that it was entertainment fiction and not reality (although in some ways it was roman-a-clef based loosely on the principals' lives). But people who had become attached to it took that revelation in stride, continued to enjoy it for what it was, and stayed tuned until the ad agency took over creative control, folded it into a new corporation, turned it from a witty contemporary dramedy to a soap opera, tried to build a whole lineup of web serial sites like a TV network online, and spent the 'network' broke.
Many of the people originally involved with The Spot during its first year online later went on to write, produce and direct indie films and documentaries, or appear in cable programs and films, and a few even got supporting roles in larger budget theatrical films and broadcast TV series. The LonelyGirl15 creators may be aware of that, as most online old-timers are, and may hope similar opportunities await them. We've yet to see the first example of a "star" of any online entertainment venture crossing over to major broadcast or theatrical film stardom. But sooner or later, someone probably will.
Conor Friedersdorf @ September 14, 2006 - 12:55am
And futhermore, shouldn't the real question address the American public's obsession with other people's lives? Is it not creepy that people are actually so bored with their own lives that they have the time to sit and watch what they thought was a video diary of a female teenager?
I don't find it particularly creepy that people are interested in a video diary, or indicative of extreme boredom with their own lives. All sorts of quirky things interest people. Consider televised golf. Or grown men who go out to a lake, throw a string into the water and wait for a fish to bite it, only to throw the fish back once they've caught it.
Stamp collecting sounds to me like the most boring pursuit imaginable -- far better to spend a few minutes each day drawing whatever insights on youth, American culture or humanity that might be culled from a young person's diary. One imagines it to be somewhat compelling since apparently entertainment professionals tried to make it that way intentionally.
While I'm at it I'd like to defend reality television. I'm as put off by The Bachelor and as infrequent a viewer of Fear Factor as the next guy, but I don't see why that genre of television show is so particularly maligned when set beside other television fare. Have you seen Entertainment Tonight? Days of Our Lives? The Nanny?
I'd rather watch reality shows like Project Runway or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy any day.
Many times a novel, a film or even a biography is interesting insofar as it gives us insight into the human character. If you cut out the author, the filmmaker or the journalist, the portrait of human nature is no longer focused into art that rings true. But so much information in this world of ours is filtered through someone else's lens, and sometimes it's both interesting and rewarding to seek out relatively unfiltered portrayals of humans, even if it requires sitting through a lot of garbage to glean a bit of insight.
I submit that reality television is sometimes compelling largely because we find it unfiltered relative to the other ways we see humans portrayed on television, even if that impression is often mistaken, as it was with this video.
Is it fair to fault the sponsors for misleading viewers? Sure. But maligning those who watched seems to me mistaken. People are interesting, and the human impulse toward voyeurism is part of what drives us to discover things about fellow humans.
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