The Thompson family is being laughed at, not laughed with, on TLC
I’ll go ahead and admit I’m pop-culture ignorant. By this I mean that I have no idea who the people gracing the cover of People magazine are. I don’t social network, and I think it would be easier to teach a monkey how to shop online than it would be to explain Twitter and Facebook to someone like me. However, somehow, I know who “Honey Boo Boo Child” is.
Yes, in spite of my vehement hatred for all things reality TV, which puts me in the minority among my peers (and my own beloved mama), I’ve managed to learn about TLC’s “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”—a spin-off of the nauseating, Chanel-splattered train-wreck “Toddlers and Tiaras.”
The most I’ve sat through of this show before having to turn off the set was a segment or two. So, when I admit I can’t watch the show and complain about it, one of the first reactions I get is, “But, how can you criticize them? And besides, they’re hilarious! How can you not like the mom?”
For those of you who know and loathe or have no idea, Alana Thompson is the 7-year-old beauty queen who calls herself Honey Boo Boo Child. She and her gluttonous mass of a family made their way to fame being the most outrageous family on “Toddlers and Tiaras” and consequently getting their own show. Honey Boo Boo’s family consists of herself, three older sisters, her obese mother June, who is also known as the “Coupon Queen,” and June’s live-in boyfriend known as “Sugar Bear.” The show consists of flatulence, pageants, hoarding, beer bellies and every redneck stereotype under the Georgian sun.
Yet this isn’t the reason I cringe.
“Honey Boo Boo Child” Alana Thompson and her mother June Thompson, cast members of TLC’s reality show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” enjoy an afternoon on the front porch of their Georgia home. Photo contributed by Atlanta Journal-Constitution/MCT
I’m actually not as much of a prude as I may seem to be. I find tawdry and sexual humor hilarious and come from a family where Christmas isn’t the same unless someone asks me to pull the mighty finger. So my objection isn’t because of some elitist sniffing, as in, Look at that pathetic bunch, the proof of America’s demise. What kind of a mother is she to hoard Pop Tarts? Why can’t those children be eating organic vegetables instead? And that Southern drawl—somebody call “Hooked on Phonics” and deliver us from Jeff Foxworthy!
It’s not even the pageantry, either. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Miss America junkie. But the thought of a child being dressed up like a trollop and plopped on a stage to strut her incredibly prepubescent stuff makes my head spin.
So why do I cringe at “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” and choose not to watch it? Because TLC offered Alana’s family this show for the same reason the bearded lady gets the job at the circus: so the rest of us can pay money and gawk. Viewers may not be paying money directly, but, by watching this spectacle and giving TLC a reason to keep the money rolling in, essentially that is what’s happening. The Thompsons are geniuses for finding a cash cow in their little girl and her go-go-juice-fueled antics. But in their happy-goofy lowbrow minds, they haven’t conceptualized that they’re being laughed at instead of laughed with.
I blame Coupon Queen and Sugar Bear for throwing their daughter to the spectators, and I blame TLC for what I call the “Esteeming of the Vulgar,” or taking behaviors we probably shouldn’t be paying attention to and giving them a prime-time slot. Ultimately, though, I have to wonder about the viewers. I realize many of them look at the Thompsons and just see comic relief, as does my own beloved mama. But the punch line is seven years old.
Does that strike anyone else as being a bit wrong? And cringe-worthy?
