I recently went on a weekend cruise for my brother Mark's bachelor party. A bit extravagant? Most likely. Worth it? Most definitely. While Rule 4.2a of the Bachelor/Bachelorette Party Code prohibits any specific discussion of what occurred on said trip, there was one aspect of the cruise which I thought was worth mentioning.
The overarching theme for the weekend involved eyeing the countless attractive females on the boat with us. At dinner on Friday night, one of Mark's college buddies picked out a smoking blonde about 100 feet away. As we all casually turned around chairs or craned our necks to discretely check her out, I immediately thought aloud, "Huh, she looks a lot like Kristin from 'Laguna Beach.'"
It didn't help that no one else at the table had watched the MTV reality show, not to mention even heard of it. I was alone in my insistence that this girl looked just like Kristin, and I was determined to prove it.
Later that night, at a pool party on the top deck of the ship, she crossed my path. No doubt in my mind at that point. She wasn't a look-alike; she was Kristin from "Laguna Beach." Saturday night, at dinner, I made a couple of unnecessary walk-bys to the restroom to double and triple-check.
As a final resort to affirm my pop culture acuity to my "Laguna Beach" aficionado-friends back home, I seriously considered taking a picture of her: not use my digital camera and press the shutter button, but literally TAKE one of the photographs the cruise's photographers provide for sale on the boat. Wisely, under the advice of my brother, I opted not to steal the head shot of Kristin. My friends would just have to take my word for it.
In rehashing all of this on the flight home, I quickly realized the ridiculousness of the situation as a whole and the absurdity of my actions. When I reached home, my friends got a laugh out of it, and I only received one tongue-lashing courtesy of my friend Kate, who was upset I didn't steal the photograph.
I guess I bought into the subtitle of the show that made Kristin famous. "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County" is anything but real. For this program, the guiltiest of guilty pleasures, to call itself "real" is akin to Fox News calling itself "the most trusted name in news."
In their obvious attempt to compare the reality show to the wildly popular nighttime soap on FOX, MTV executives are fooling themselves if they believe that viewers think that "The O.C." is a real depiction of life in southern California. "Laguna Beach," full of fantastical montages of rich, spoiled high-schoolers, passes itself off as a reality program when in actuality it's a hack job attempt at a documentary.
But back to Kristin. I came to refer to her as the "celebrity guest" on the ship, when really, what had she done to become a "celebrity?" She allowed cameras to follow her around for a few months, bringing millions of viewers into her glamorous life of beach parties and sordid love triangles. And for that, I felt empowered that I even knew who she was?
Perhaps the most absurd part about this is that I've only watched two or three episodes of the show. So why did I still care about the whereabouts and actions of Kristin? When I saw her canoodling with a burly ox, who I later learned plays football for two-time NCAA champion USC, did I really say to myself, "Gee, guess she's not with Stephen anymore?"
Sadly, yeah ... I did. While sipping down my fifth 7 & 7 of the night, and as the [SECRET BACHELOR PARTY EVENTS] played out, I was preoccupied with a girl from SoCal, a girl who I pretended to know something about, when in reality, I knew nothing.
In the half-hour "Laguna Beach," there are about 22 minutes of original programming. Take away the B-roll shots that have become a staple of reality shows, and maybe there are 20 minutes of the characters interacting. That's not nearly enough time to actually know someone well. The producers of "Laguna Beach" created a caricature of Kristin so she would fit into the overall designs of the show: a view into the world of attractive and wealthy teenagers.
So sitting in the On Your Toes nightclub on the ninth deck of the Majesty of the Seas, I was staring at an exaggeration of a lifestyle which this girl may or may not epitomize. Kristin was simply taking a normal vacation with her boyfriend and her parents, in an environment removed from pervasive video cameras and boom mikes.
The only thing stopping her from removing the "reality show" stigma was me and the other handful of television addicts on the boat. Sure, she agreed to be on "Laguna Beach" and apparently enjoyed the attention enough, seeing as she is returning for a second season of the show. But isn't she entitled to a life outside of a pigeonholing reality series?
The reality genre, as a minor cog in the modern societal machine, has stripped our culture of personal privacy. Anyone can be a celebrity, and by extension, no one can be anonymous. But there is some hope; people still have some small sliver of propriety.
As I sit at my desk, there's only a picture of me and my family. The picture of Kristin on the ship stayed on the ship. Visions of the dirty blonde hair and curvaceous figure will remain confined to the television screen, at least until they make "Laguna Beach: The Movie."
Brian Wolly is a senior majoring in history. He can be reached via e-mail at brian.wolly@tufts.edu.
