TLC: Big people, little people and men that bake cakes
Posted on 28. Dec, 2009 by Anupa in Pop Culture, Television
There was a summer during high school, likely between grade 11 and 12, when I didn’t have a summer job and so spent most of my days zoning out in front of the TV. That was the summer I realized how skewed daytime television is in the favour of bored escapist housewives. It became a running joke for my best friend to tell me I was obsessed with TLC because whenever she’d call me after lunch I’d be watching some wedding/baby planning extravaganza-not out of interest, but because I was “off soaps” and it was the only thing on until Oprah at 4.
I still watch TLC from time to time* favouring their specials (i.e. Half-Ton Teen and the one about Treeman) over their more pedestrian fare–I never got into Jon & Kate. But what the hell? Since when did they go from wholesome to Exploitation Central? There are the more obvious targets like Toddlers & Tiaras and Say Yes To The Dress which, the more I watch, the more I begin to loathe the idea of getting married (it’s like MTV’s Sweet Sixteen, but with grown-ups!) And Little People, Big World was an interesting enough concept when it was the only show about little people, but a riff on the theme was necessary and now little people are the new big family. The Little Couple and The Little Chocolatiers are apparently just like us, but little (duh!), so they must be interesting.
And the freak show–because that’s basically what this exploitative fetishization of people who are physically different feels like–continues with One Big Happy Family. It’s about a morbidly obese black family (each weighing over 300 pounds) and their struggle to lose weight, or as TLC puts it “fat people living in a skinny world.” I wanted to slap myself for making a mental note to watch the smut, because that’s what the promo commercial in all its zoomed-in-on-huge-thighs invoked. I don’t know how I’m learning anything by watching obese people eat piles of pancakes and fried chicken and I don’t know how this benefits the Coles, the family involved. And I cannot imagine where TLC will take it next.
* Except Cake Boss. I loooove Cake Boss.
Simon
Dec 30th, 2009
I’m not going to lie: Sweet Sixteen was perhaps my favourite MTV television program of all time. One day, space archaeologists will be archiving our primitive culture when they stumble upon that show and, as a result, they will conclude Humanity never deserved to exist in the first place and just drop their tools and walk away.