Before reality television was a ubiquitous genre, rife with bachelors, survivors and runways, there was the original. By now, most Tufts students and their Gen Y peers are familiar with the MTV show that sends in its cameras to "find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real."
In tonight's debut of the "Real World"'s seventeenth incarnation, the montage of voices opening the show will include that of fellow Jumbo Tyler Duckworth (LA '04) (see "Wait, aren't you that guy from 'The Ral World'?," page 4).
This season introduces Tyler and his six roommates to the sunny (albeit hurricane-prone) city of Key West, Florida. For Duckworth, spending a prolonged period of time in an area that increasingly functions as a rowdy spring breaker's paradise proved difficult.
"Key West is at a crossroad," he said. "It's become a place for people to get wasted." The city's culture, or lack thereof, in turn affected the Real World experience of the seven strangers. Since there were relatively few permanent residents of the same age group as the castmates, Duckworth said, "there was so much drama this season because we were left with each other."
The shared Real World mansion - always the eighth star of each season's debut - features a pale yellow exterior, the patented MTV predilection for detailed accessorizing and an aviation theme alluding to Key West's history.
There must be something in the panhandle water, because like their less-than-entrepreneurially-inclined Miami counterparts in Season Five, the Key West housemates, too, were asked to start a business as their house project. Unlike Miami's bakery/boutique that never was, however, the Key Westers saw their assignment through, ultimately opening a tanning salon.
Within the reality television tendency to quickly identify characters as "the meathead" or "the sorority girl," Duckworth takes issue with the idea of oversimplified demographic modifiers to describe himself and his roommates-turned-business partners. Acknowledging that many associate MTV's casting with an attempt to fill certain subcategories of race, personality or sexuality, he personally found himself and his roommates far too complex to boil down to a lowest common denominator descriptor.
Duckworth cites his roommate John as a prime example of this: While John comes off initially as the stereotypical "frat boy" type, John is not a member of any fraternity. In contrast, Duckworth, who sees MTV's initial branding of him as the "really smart, mean, gay person," was a member of Alpha Tau Omega (ATO) during his time at Tufts.
"What they cast me as and what I ended up being were two different things," he continued.
For Duckworth, the reality television experience began as an aside when he unceremoniously submitted an audition tape (which includes shots of the Memorial Steps and Tisch Library roof) to MTV. Once he had been cast as a Real Worlder, the subsequent four-month residency in Key West "was really about getting to know six other people and really investing in the process," said Duckworth.
As part of this process, his time on the show allowed Duckworth to "understand production and be a part of an amazing social experiment." An alum of Roberta Oster Sachs' Producing TV Programs for Social Change course, Duckworth often found it amusing to interact with the show's producers during their scheduled weekly interviews with the individual castmates. As an experienced producer himself, he knew what the Key West interrogators wanted him to say and reveled in keeping it from them.
Ultimately, Duckworth classifies the Key West season as a "documentary" rather than another half-hour addition to the modern barrage of "reality television." With no one telling the castmates when to wake up or what to do, no alcohol provided (contrary to reality television urban legends), and no set agenda, the unfolding of the Key West season will be an honest depiction of the emotional and literal hurricanes and placidity the seven roommates experienced
A director for the show advised Duckworth: "Let this be a fun part of your life, don't let it be your life." At 10 p.m. tonight, the fun part of this Tuftonian's life takes its place in the infamous MTV Tenspot lineup.
