The Hills - How Real is It?!

The Hills is a show on MTV, said to be one of their most successful shows ever. Keep in mind MTVs target audience is those between the ages of 12-24. Therefor majority of MTVs viewers are teens. The Hills is a spin off of Laguna
Beach. It travels with Lauren Conrad, to LA where so pursues her
fashion career. She attends FIT. She interns at Teen Vogue. And spends
all of her time in between partying at all the LA hot spots and
lounging around the pool with her friends. Impromptu trips to Vegas,
summers in a Malibu beach house. I was inspired to look further into
the show when I picked up the current months issue of The Rolling
Stone. It was actuallylabeled one of the most influential shows MTV has
ever had! This shocked me. If you've ever seen the show, And caused me
to actually think about things, after reading the lengthy article.
Leaving me to come to a few conclusions. This is a show that appeals to
a large audience. Everyone loves it, or hates it. Either way they still
watch it.

The only problem that these girls have is what they are going to wear to the club that evening, and which male suitor
they are going to have on their arm. These girls do not have bills.
Money is never ever talked about. They go shopping and They have no
issues getting particular jobs. Lauren works as an intern at Teen
Vogue, a position that would bevitally impossible to get as an ordinary
person. These girls also get treated better than ordinary citizens.
They get into the best clubs, drive the best cars, date the most
attractive guys, eat at the bestrestaurants, and go away on exotic vacations whenever they so desire.

It gives the viewers
very false sense of reality. One of the main characters, Heidi, drops
out of school on her very first day, and magically lands her 'dream
job'. This does not send a positive message. To me,struggling through school it was actually
one of the worst messages on television. However, without her
connection to the show, it may have been a lot more difficult to
actually land a job. Especially in LA of all places. Not only are these girls
loaded, but they also famous. Their level of social class is many
levels above our own. Young girls watch this show and want to be like
them. They want to wear what they're wearing, and that's simply not
possible on a middle class budget. Many viewers have accepted that
fact,
and we simply live through them. One of the reason why I believe many
people watch is because Lauren is a likable character. We like watching
hersucceed
in everything from work, to friendships to relationships. Another
reason is because people enjoy watching drama. And by this I mean
fighting. Way back in seasons one and two, Lauren and Heidi were the
best of friends. Somewhere between season 2 and 3, that friendship was
over. The fighting became almost the only focus of the show. It's sad
because I feel as though MTV feeds off of of this feud, and encourages
it. It also majorly profits off of these girl's broken friendship.
Pictures of the four main hills cast members all together go for
$200,000. For at least a year they wouldn't even get together they
wouldphotoshop it to make it appear that way!

Either way
this show gives us our weekly insight to how the other half lives "the
good life." They say the grass is always greener on the other side, and
"more money more problems" and that may be the case. The characters
never actuallyacknowledge the fact that they are on the show, and that has to cause some sort of issue. I do now agree with MTV that the show is very influential
, but I also think it's only to a certain extent. The viewer decides
how much their going to be influenced. Sometimes it's more discrete due
to the fact that certain songs played on the show quickly become
popular, maybe not because it is on "The Hill" but because it's
exposing the large audience base to the music. In a lighter sense it does a good job of showing who teens are, for the most part.