TV review
Findin' their feet
by Diana Wichtel
Apart from the obvious – blondes even more stupid than previously suspected, Western civilisation going to hell in handcart, etc – what are we to learn from something like TV3’s The Simple Life?
The concept is distressingly familiar. Obscenely rich minor celebrities (the Osbournes, Anna Nicole Smith) seem to be lining up to demonstrate to the world that they have the functional IQ of pond life. So pampered, notorious party girls Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie descend on a hapless farming family for a month of roughing it like the hoi polloi. “Thirty days,” goes the voice-over. “No money, no luxury, no clue.”
It’s all as depressingly modern as can be. Yet, as the girls prepare to board a private jet bound for the middle of nowhere (Altus, Arkansas, pop 817), you can’t help but think of Victorian times. In those days, much as in our own Act Party today, acquired wealth was seen as the visible marker of virtue. The Victorian rich would bestow visits on the more deserving poor, confident in the knowledge that their mere exalted presence would do the underclasses some moral good.
So, while the Ledings kill (and hand pluck!) the fatted chickens and fret over whether the girls will like them, Nicole and Paris have no such self-doubt. “We will rock,” insists Nicole. They throw themselves one last party, arriving, exalted, by helicopter. “What do you think this is going to do for you?” a party guest asks Paris. “Make me appreciate my life here,” says Paris.
No wonder The Simple Life PR couldn’t resist the idea of posing the girls as yet another parody of Grant Wood’s iconic painting “American Gothic”. The pitchfork, with its twin references to farming and going to hell in a handcart, aptly remains. Neither of the stiffly Victorian-looking pair in the actual painting was clutching an overdressed, yapping rodent named Tinkerbell, however. Nor were they revealing a breast, though Nicole’s, pre-Janet Jackson, is mercifully covered by what passes, with these girls, for underwear. But the sight is just as scary, and just as revealing, as the original.
“Lissen,” complains Paris. “Everyone thinks Nicole and I are two girls who never worked a day in our lives and can’t do anything.” Well, so far at least, it turns out that everyone was right. First task: drive a ute to the farm. “Paris, it’s not in gear!”; “Paris, you’re going the wrong way!”; “Paris!”
Out past the sign saying “Hillbilly Realty” and a lot of countryside, is the Ledings’ place. For Mom Janet, it’s frankly appalled at first sight, especially when Nicole asks, giggling flirtatiously, how old her second son is. Janet fires back her reply – “15” – like a warning shot across enemy bows.
Grandma Curly – “Ah’m proud to have you here” – wants the girls to help pluck chickens. “Ah’ll show you how,” says Curly. “I will not get near that animal,” rants Paris. “I can’t. I’ll vomit. I can’t even look at dead animals.” She’s not too good with live ones, either, as the mad scenes over a bug in the sleep-out soon demonstrate. There is – the horror – only one bathroom. Poor girls. It seems only moments since the flight attendant on the private jet was saying, “Moist towel?”
There’s the now infamous “What are wells for?” from Paris. “To get water,” replies Janet, with the look of one who has suddenly found herself teleported to Mars.
How is Dad Albert finding the visit so far? “Awkward.” He sends the girls off grocery shopping for pigs’ feet. “Barf,” observed Paris. “‘Feet’ sounds bad enough. ‘Pigs’ feet’ sounds worse.” They don’t have enough money with them and find that, in the real world, where people don’t pay $1500 for a Dior bag to carry their dogs, that can be a problem. “He said this isn’t a soup kitchen,” says Nicole, laughing and savouring the unique experience of being short of … anything. “I know,” says Paris. “What does that mean, soup kitchen?”
They cannot be serious. Can they? At dinner, the girls contemplate their plates of recently living fowl balefully. But then they didn’t get their own reality show by eating anything. Nicole wonders if the Ledings kids hang out at Wal-Mart. “What’s Wal-Mart?” wonders Paris, her engines briefly firing. “Do they, like, sell wall stuff?” Grandma Curly looked as though she was getting a migraine. I know we were at home.
Unlike Paris, Nicole gets some points for not sulking in an ungrateful manner all the time. “Thank you, guys, for letting us stay with you. I think that’s so sweet. And we won’t give you any trouble, I promise. We’re nice girls, no matter what you heard,” she tells the unconvinced-looking Ledings.
The episode ends with the girls out on the porch, flirting in a reflex manner with the laconic oldest Ledings son, Justin. He’s cute, says Paris as the slightly stunned-looking boy goes to fetch his jacket. “We should have a threesome,” suggests Nicole. “Let him have something.” How sweet. Alms for the poor.
