Low Budget

Real Gilligan's Island?

Noted on a bus: The Real Gilligan's Island.
Now, Gilligan's Island was probably the perfect sit-com. Not the best, by any means. The Honeymooners, Seinfeld, the Simpsons, all far better in terms of writing, acting, production. But Gilligan's Island assembled the best group of archetypes to match the time. It provided a premise that ensured that, no matter what happened, the central group of characters would all stay together. And, most importantly, the inherent structure of every episode is hope followed by failure.
But that's mostly a sidenote. I'm a little worried about the evolving use of the term "Real". Once we described the "Real" version of a story as, perhaps, more historically accurate. Or, perhaps, as pertaining to the source material of the story. The "real" Cheers bar, the "real" soup nazi, etc. Sometimes local news people will introduce some off-beat character as the "real" version of a literary device just to get a headline. But at least the quirky character is genuine.
Gilligan's Island certainly had no source material, no historical accuracy to be concerned with. It was probably not based on real people. The characters were exaggarations, archetypes or caricatures.
Are there some genuine off-beat quirky types out there living a Gilligan's Island existence? (Maybe Bob Denver, who knows?) But that's not what the show is about.
The new, Real, Gilligan's Island is using the term to refer to a genre. "Reality Television". Nothing real about that, of course. Reality Television is a fraud. Everyone knows it's a fraud and many still insist on enjoying it. Like professional wrestling. That's fine, people should be able to enjoy well-perpetrated frauds as long as they know or should know better.
But calling this the "Real" Gilligan's Island expands the genre into quasi-history and docu-drama, at least in terms of the language used. Now we are mixing our forms of fraudulant entertainment, reducing the ground from which "real" can be extracted. Oh well.
How are the archetypes going to be updated? Gilligan is eternal, but the Ginger/Mary Ann split is dated. Young religious women who consider themselves prudes already dress in terms that Ginger would probably find too shocking. Meanwhile, the simple, nice, home-baked girl is cynical and worldly and tattooed. The professor has gotten himself rich enough to hire strippers, and Mr. Howell has his own reality show where girls compete to be his "assistant." The Skipper is an overweight type whom has largely been banished from television.
I hate to admit it, but I'm curious.

posted by dan @ 9/24/2004 01:42:00 PM