disenchantedbunny.

The most popular of the latest batch of competitive, degrading ‘reality’ television programs privileged enough to be gracing the exclusive and sought after halls of the Australian free-to-air channels is a show called Kid Nation. A bunch of American kids are chucked together with the intent of building and maintaining a model town. Luckily for anyone concerned about the ethics of all this, we could be assured that the network would have written permission from the parents to ridicule their kids as much as they wish. The only reason I put myself through the experience of watching this was to get some new material for a blog post (apart from the fact that I’m bored shitless in a country town). The ads told me there was a religious conflict so I was drawn in to see how they all inevitably decided that god was awesome. Oh, and also I’m bored shitless in a country town. Fucking holidays.

I don’t think that anyone seriously believes that ‘reality television’ depicts actual everyday life, but in case my often horribly misplaced faith in humanity fails me I should make a few generalizations about the genre. Shows like Big Brother and Survivor work through their narratives each season by presenting an end goal and a means for achieving it, such as individuals competing and conspiring against each other, gradually eliminating the others. Each episode is a fragment of the main narrative with brief conflicts inserted to be resolved before the next; kinda like a purposeful soap-opera. To make the story-telling ends meet contestants are reduced to fit fictional characters of the main narrative. In Kid Nation the competitive aspect is largely overlooked for the teleological end-goal, which is the completion of their town ‘Bonanza’. Still, the miniature conflict-towards-a-purpose model fits as the kids perform their given tasks with the notion of hopefully choosing what is best for the town.

The problem is supposed to arise when the kids are literally told to organize their religions. While it seems that about a third of the kids have no real strong religious conviction/indoctrination, the kid leaders try to organize a group ritual where everyone can pray and worship and learn about the other’s religions. While there doesn’t seem to be too much protest at first, somehow the idea gets to the kids heads that there should be conflict here and blonde fundamentalist declares that her faith is so strong that she wishes to remain ignorant of ‘them’. At the dinner table the ‘Jew Crew’ is formed, while the Christians declare that they are awesomer and much betterer. We are told a couple of times that putting together people of different religious persuasions is what starts wars - “even with guns”. Yep, it is surely the case that few of these kids have any idea of what is going on, let alone why there is supposed to be a conflict other than “Ma an’ Pa raised me this here way”.

The exception is little gap-toothed Asian kid, who compares the disagreements to the Tower of Babel problem, with kids talking around each other, making no progress, unaware of why they’re arguing. He does a census of the religious population of the town and the diversity makes it obvious that the script writers chose the contestants with this problem in mind for the meta-narrative.

Eventually one girl organizes a bunch of people to makes prayers around a fire (mind you, she eventually wins $20,000 for this kindness by the end of the episode). And after succeeding in their competitive church-building activity they get to choose between a bunch of bibles or a fucking MINIGOLF COURSE (I want one). Despite the kids being clearly torn between the two, they are eventually convinced that the minigolf is only a temporary gratification (much like the show itself) whereas the holy books are forever, like diamonds or some shit, there to be looked at and to be put on display to show how much better they are than others. “This is a chance to grow spiritually”, one boy states matter-of-factly, as if patience and virtue have nothing to do with golf. Upon reading the ‘Holy’ texts (out-loud to the cameras for some reason) the selected sample of kids conclude that “It’s all saying the same thing”. Tall black Christian kid cries at the fire-prayer service, touched by how prayers to gods sound the same in other religions. It isn’t just theism they talk up either. ANY religious teaching is claimed to be valid, as long as we all get along.

While the ‘many paths up the mountain’ idea may be good for stamping out fundamentalism and sure makes me laugh when it turns into vague crystal-worshiping spiritualism, the problem is that they have blatantly ignored all the kids who are indifferent in their beliefs or are merely unreligious. There is no voice in this conversation for dissent from religion. The show acts as if these people are just too different to be considered: their ideas are incommensurable with the ideal community. To drive the point home, the theistic religions (plus Hinduism) are looked at in the mock-census, while Atheists are grouped with ‘Other’, tacked on the end like a footnote not relevant to the discussion at-hand. One girl claims that she is having a “crisis” where she is not sure if she believes in god anymore, like being irreligious is something detrimental that needs curing. I can almost hear the voice of Bush Snr echoed in these kids.

If I was a betting man (which I’m not) I would say that the producers of Kid Nation did not realize what they did. They solved their episode conflict in the same manner that religious conflict is generally pushed under the carpet: by completely ignoring the Other (which in this case is unbelief) and by selling minor difference as novelty not to be taken seriously. Rest assured that there is no conflict when pushing ideology.