MTV’s Exiled: Teaching Cultural Superiority to Spoiled Brats

Not that its surprising that a show on MTV totally misses the mark, but Exiled seemed kind of promising, or at least like a good opportunity for some schadenfreude (which is really the whole point in watching reality TV). The premise behind the show is that the parents of the insufferable brats featured My Super Sweet Sixteen ship them off to some far away land to live with another family for a few days and see how the other half (or really the other 80%) lives. But instead of cultural understanding, the teen’s observations are mostly about how gross and awful things are, and how strange and savage the people are (amplified by the horror movie-like music that plays over any scene involving poop- which most of them do). The “lessons learned” seem shoehorned in, mostly the kids act like they are in such a strange place with strange people that they are better than.

Learning about the billions of people the inhabit the rest of the planet is of course very valuable, but financing amazing trips abroad for spoiled rich kids seems like a backwards way to teach them a lesson. A much better idea, in my humble opinion, would be to send these rich kids a few miles away to live in the projects, work minimum wage jobs, attend under funded schools, and navigate the demoralizing bureaucracy of being poor in their own rich country. It might not sound like it would make for as interesting television, but Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days, usually manages to pull things like that off quite well.