(Photo courtesy of TLC)It would be a fictitious generalization to state that the Thompson family, the focus of the hit TLC reality series “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” represents an accurate picture of the people living in the South.
Truthfully, even in their home city of McIntyre, Ga., the family is a group of oddballs.
Watching a few episodes, it’s clear why the Thompson family has captured the attention of Americans who survive on a steady diet of various reality television shows: They’re a completely dysfunctional family.
Viewers don’t tune in to watch what parents June “Mama” Shannon and Mike “Sugar Bear” Thompson have done right as parental figures. Audiences watch the show to see what these parents are not doing. Due to their poor parenting, the children will not become well-adjusted, level-headed young adults. The fleeting glimpses of normalcy the family does display prove to be superfluous.
Basically, what viewers come to expect on any reality series is examples of meanness, dysfunction and, of course, conflict. “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” provides all of these components in unhealthy doses.
To quote The A.V. Club’s initial review by Sam McGee, the definitive write-up on the series, “It’s not so much that Mama actively abuses her children so much as provides perhaps the worst example possible of how to live a life with a bit of respect, or at least decorum.”
A functional family will watch in shock and disbelief as the Thompson family engages in their regular activities, like a blindfold contest to guess whose breath belongs to whom and mixing road kill with butter and ketchup into a concoction called “sketti” (spaghetti). For the Thompsons, this behavior is normal.
So much of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” takes on these surrealist qualities that it is hard to believe that it is unscripted and not part of some sobering documentary.
The Thompson family and their antics are quickly becoming a reliable punchline for comedians all over.
Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel recently repackaged the footage of the family into a teaser for a fictional wildlife documentary on the Discovery channel. On South Park, the writers used Mama and her daughter Alana (“Honey Boo Boo”) as an allegory of deteriorating societal standards.
Critics have labeled the show as exploitation, and the label is not without merit. The show asks the audience to laugh at this dysfunctional group of people, not with them, which is exemplified by the jocular-toned editing of the series in post-production.
Any responsible production crew would cut the shot from the opening titles of Mama breaking wind and the family nonchalantly reacting to it, and demand a retake. Yet, when a network like TLC airs the footage, they make emphasis of it by layering jaunty music and graphics on top of it.
Conversely, it’s easy to see why networks like TLC would package these series the way that they have. To paraphrase “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” once a documentary crew gets locked into a filming a captivating situation, “the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
“Jersey Shore” is another reality series that temporally represented the cultural zeitgeist and indicates that people like to watch dysfunction. With the success of “Jersey Shore,” the film crew will be just as eager to capture bizarre scenes from “Honey Boo Boo” for the masses. And before long, they’ll move onto the next jaw-dropping spectacle.
Reach the reporter at tccoste1@asu.edu
