Monday Musings: What I learned from watching Dubai Bling
Dubai Bling on Netflix follows a group of millionaire socialites living it up in one of the most fabulous cities in the world. It’s trashy reality TV at its finest, with the cast all possessing a complete lack of self-awareness and finding themselves devoid of basic social skills in highly improbable situations.
It’s so bad, it’s actually…good. But how does a terrible reality show become something we want to watch? Sure we are all marites (gossips) at heart, but why should we care about a random group of people in a heavily scripted non-reality TV show halfway around the world? I couldn’t stop watching it! It’s the same with Bling Empire. Why is this stuff so compelling?
I then realized that TV shows like this have three layers of fantasy imbued in their narratives. The first layer is the hook: we, the viewer, fantasize about living their fabulous lives, having their money and their fame. We get a look of how these people live the high life and imagine ourselves in their place. Wouldn’t it be nice?
The second layer of the fantasy is where it digs a little deeper: if we were rich, we’d be better people. We’d act with real class and always take the high horse. If we had that kind of wealth, we will actually be happy, unlike their sorry asses always embroiled in unnecessary drama. We will have better things to do other than wearing extremely tight pants and being catty just to feel alive.
The third layer of the fantasy is a little less obvious, but is the reason why we can’t stop drinking the juice. In these reality shows, someone always takes the side of the aggressive characters. No matter how much drama they cause, a friend or a partner would back up the villain of the episode or season. Usually, there’s a resolution and all is forgiven in time. This fantasy is the most addictive of all: that, no matter how shitty we are as people - something in our heart of hearts we believe ourselves to be, at some point or other - someone will love us in all our damaged glory. Best of all, we will be redeemed of our shittiness eventually.
Now THAT is powerful stuff. At least that’s what I tell myself after spending about 400 minutes of my life saturating my mind with crap. How did your weekend go?
