Why I can’t stop watching ‘Made in Chelsea’

We have developed a bad habit in our house: watching shit TV programmes that should not be condescended with a look through one of your eyes, let alone both of them. Anyone who has lived with me before will know what a snob I am about these things; I shrink from Big Brother and its shrill shoutiness, am too busy having fun on a Saturday night to be watching manufactured pop crap on X-Factor, and am proud that only one copy of Heat magazine has ever made it into my house (and obviously I didn’t buy it). Predictably for a middle-class left-wing educated girl from Surrey, I think most reality TV et al is a load of vacuous corporate bullshit that only serves to fuel the meaningless cult of celebrity and downgrade the quotient of genuinely edifying culture.

Happily, I also took no enjoyment from any of the above vacuous shit, meaning that I never felt like I was missing out on anything, edifying or not. But now I appear to have succumbed to that now-clichéd idea of a guilty pleasure. The quite unbelievably awful ‘Made in Chelsea’.

This Guardian article sums up my reaction to the programme more eloquently than I could: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/07/grace-dent-tv-od-made-in-chelsea?INTCMP=SRCH. On a basic level, it’s a pretty standard response to really really posh rich 20-somethings swanning around Chelsea being twats, in “structured reality soap” format (read: people who can’t act acting like they are not acting). But what is it about this most exaggerated example of awfulness that makes me keep tuning in?

It’s so bad it’s captivating – you can’t quite believe anyone would be so lacking in self-respect to be part of it (participants and programme-makers – and me??). The worst thing about it is the fact that it is the pure embodiment of the word “stilted”. Whilst I realise that it is not designed to be a documentary, but rather sets out to be a crude rendering of a type of person you love to hate and who can’t possibly exist in the real world, I can’t help myself: I’m sucked into wallowing in the feelings of self-righteous indignation that the programme-makers have deliberately fostered in me by portraying the dickish antics of people with impossibly Etonian names.

Rarely does this wilful submission to being manipulated by a programme-maker jar on me quite so much… I wonder what their ulterior motive is… I know that when I watch True Blood I am a bit turned on and intrigued by the relationships, just as the writers want; but I can’t stand the idea that with this could-it-be-real-really grotesqueness someone is deliberately playing to my own stereotypes and disgust. I don’t like reacting in the way someone expects so predictably. You are supposed to hate the vacuous characters and pity their small-minded, shit-for-brains life – that’s the whole point. So if that’s the point, feeling outraged by them is a meaningless act and is just one-dimensional – you’re just playing into someone’s hands, which is tantamount to being told what to do – or even what to think (horror of horrors).

Also, it’s interesting(?) to see the in-built artifice of it all – the awkwardly long silent stares, contrived pouting and flouncing. It’s almost as if they’re trying to make some awfully clever comment on the form itself – a postmodern trick that forces you to confront the artifice of all forms of entertainment by slapping you in the face with it. This is the only way I can see someone wanting to make such a programme, because they can’t just be stupidly admiring and capturing these people.

So how real are the people? Maybe it’s the blurred line between real and fake that keeps me engrossed. It’s more comfortable to think that what you’re participating in by watching is layer upon layer of self-reflexive irony. But actually, it’s more likely that by watching these affected caricatures, who think they are better than everyone else, ponce about on your screen, you gain a sense of enjoyment and validation from knowing that you are more intelligent and self-aware than they are – better than them.

Cunningly, this turns back on you all the things you purport to hate about them. Neat.

PS Oh Lord, I have just read this quite sincere-sounding article by Made in Chelsea's creator: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2011-09-19/made-in-chelsea-they're-not-fakes. In the RADIO TIMES. There is no hope for any of us.