Some out there might remember the 1960s CBS comedy television series “The Beverly Hillbillies,” with the all-too-lovable Clampett family. The story is about a family of Ozark yokels who strike oil — you know, black gold? Texas tea? — while out hunting, and then move to Beverly Hills, where they hilariously collide with the overzealous, upscale Californian society.
The Clampett family consisted of: Jed, the widower head of the family, Elly May, his gorgeous daughter, Jethro, the oafishly charming nephew, and Granny, Jed’s mother-in-law. The interaction of the simple-living Clampetts with the posh city made for some pretty amusing entertainment — for example, thinking the billiard table was a “fancy eatin’ table” and using the pools sticks as “pot passers.”
“The Beverly Hillbillies” was one of CBS’ most successful and longest-running series.
CBS now wishes to recreate that success while still feeding into the current craze for reality-based television shows. CBS is currently planning for a new show, “The Real Beverly Hillbillies,” where instead of paid actors they find a real rural Southern family, move them into a Beverly Hills mansion for one year and record what happens.
The mansion will be complete with maids, personal assistants, a swimming pool, a fat $100,000 check and the chance of winning cold, hard cash during weekly contests. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?
Well, there are many who would disagree — it turns out that there is a huge campaign against the production of the new series. The Center for Rural Strategies, a non-profit organization based in Whitesburg, Ky., took out large ads in The New York Times and other major newspapers in protest.
The ad states, “Watching rural people being ridiculed in front of a national audience may be CBS’s notion of entertainment. But for most of us, mocking a group of rural Americans who have endured, despite hardship and inequity, is more than just offensive. It raises troubling questions about CBS management and the advertisers sponsoring these programs.”
In response to these advertisements, Chris Ender, a spokesman for CBS Entertainment, said in an interview with The New York Times, “We are mindful of their concerns, but we hope they reserve judgment until a program exists. It is not our intention to humiliate anyone.”
Actually, it seems that the whole point of reality television is humiliation. That’s what is so great about it — people get to see other people make fools of themselves while in the comfort of their own living room.
It then comes down to the question of how far is too far. Should it be allowed for a television network to make a joke of an impoverished family strictly for good ratings?
Whether “The Real Beverly Hillbillies” will become an actual CBS series has yet to be decided, but many believe the very concept of the series goes to show that corporate America would do anything for a quick buck.
