If you're drawing a blank, Jon & Kate is a reality show that follows the real life misadventures of the Gosselin family: husband Jon, wife Kate, their 7-year-old twin daughters and 4-year-old sextuplets. In its fourth season, it's TLC's highest-rated show.
Too Much Information
I'll be honest - I don't care for the show. Whether the family is at home - or traveling on an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii to renew their marriage vows with toddlers in tow - Kate tells way too many personal details about her children to make me (a mother of two teens) comfortable; I know from experience that it'll all come back someday to bite her in the backside when they get older.
Kate is verbally abusive toward her husband (I am not exaggerating - follow the link in #2 below) and they're so tired out from the daily grind of such a large and young family that there's little genuine love expressed between them.
Not So Pretty Without Pity
To its credit, it's incredibly honest, as the Gosselin family members are shown warts and all. Yet it also has its detractors, including more than half-a-dozen blogs that follow each episode (see the blogroll on Jon & Kate Plus 8 Without Pity) and dissect the goings-on every week.
So why am I linking the Gosselins with Nadya Suleman? Two reasons:
- Because the New York Times did it first in their online and Sunday editions - see "Big Brood Spawns Big Ratings."
- Because Big Article in NYT Spawns Big Blog Post from freelance writer Kelly DiNardo, who interviewed the Gosselins for a Valentine's Day article entitled "8 Love Tips from Jon & Kate" - see "Jon + Kate = Disaster."
Yet television history shows us that there is a cost.
An American Family Unraveled
Whoever said "The unexamined life is not worth living" did so centuries before the world's first true reality show hit the airwaves (and I do not mean Survivor).
Anyone remember the PBS series An American Family which filmed Bill and Pat Loud and their five children over a 7-month period? The 300 hours of recorded footage was edited down into 12 episodes that were raw and controversial at the time.
Back in the day (and we're talking 1973 when the series was broadcast), that sort of 24/7 coverage was unheard of. (Come to think of it, the phrase 24/7 didn't even exist.) As the series progressed, Bill and Pat's marriage disintegrated and their son Lance decided to live as a gay man. In fact, he was television's first openly gay person.
Eventually the couple got a divorce, and Pat said if she had it to do over again, she'd never have agreed to it. Years later, several family members were still traumatized by the experience.
Not until two decades had passed would anyone attempt to replicate the formula of following people around with cameras to produce a TV series. (In 1992, MTV's Real World brought together total strangers; no families were harmed during filming.)
Lessons Not Learned
So what did we learn from the Loud family? Not enough, it seems.
The examined lives of the Gosselins and Nadya Suleman illustrate a significant point that we have been ridiculously slow to grasp. The only people who can live under constant scrutiny and remain emotionally unscathed are not real - they're fictional characters. Since we can't know the story of our lives in advance, to try and live it with an audience watching and judging our every move is to dance with the devil. At some point, you're going to get burned.
We are unable to comprehend the full extent of our actions until years down the road, and by then it's too late to salvage what we may have inadvertently sacrificed - our families, our relationships, our selves.
If you want to be famous for more than 15 minutes, watch out...because someone somewhere will blog about you anonymously...critically...without pity. And unfortunately, between the snark and the snide, much of what they say may be the unblinking 'camera never lies' truth.
Related article:
Mother of Octuplets Nadya Suleman - Ongoing Developments in the Octo-Mom Story
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Comments
I liked this show at first but after awhile I started wondering how the parents of those young kids can stand to have millions of strangers see what those kids do and so many personal details about their lives. I’m a mom and I can’t even stand to put my son’s picture on my private myspace profile. It’s just weird… and Kate is too controlling and has gotten worse through the episodes. Jon and kate plus 8 has lost its charm
People like Suleman and the Gosselins make me sick. Children need love, not cameras and famous parents.
The Gosselins show is not “honest” it is a scripted ploy
As a man who plans to clone himself 14 times, go on welfare,hire a publicist and beg online for donations, I find the criticism regarding such actions offensive.
I do these things selflessly and only for the babies.
Link: The Babies
The Louds may have been the first to be scrutinized on television, but they were not the first to be publicly scrutinized – don’t forget the Dionnes. And the outcome of THEIR lives.
As far as commonalities between Nadya & Kate… don’t forget the suspicious circumstances regarding the conception of the multiples. Nadya’s is well-publicized. Although Kate did not have IVF, she had a procedure that – as anyone who has undergone it is aware – is monitored specifically so as to not get multiples. This monitoring would be especially likely in the case of a fertility patient who had previously (and quickly, and easily) conceived twins. It seems clear to me that, just like Nadya, Kate disregarded protocol and conceived her litter specifically for publicity.
All is not well in Gosselin land.
Jon’s been out getting drunk without Kate & the 8.
http://i730.photobucket.com/albums/ww303/strea449/Jonatshortys.jpg
Kate snips Jon’s nards in an phone interview.
Read it here.
http://www.kellydinardo.com/blog/comment1.cfm?ID=48
Kate G. is a psychotic witch.
We should turn off the entertainment channels, put on our thinking caps and teach our children that overpopulation kills small planets.
What a smart take on such a stupid story.
Maybe you missed your calling as a TV critic. Too bad for us. If there were more TV critics with such wisdom, maybe reality TV wouldn’t have taken off as it has. (What’s next “Roadside Crashes Variety Hour”?)
As it is, though, it seems like you’re sweeping back the ocean with a broom.
If we love o oooh so much the babies, why do we want to take them away from their Mum? Big families in their contexts need our support. Their contributions to preserve Manking is the best deal. Unless, some of us pretend to kill (literally) the future generations.