Jer-nalism in the new Millennium

Jer-ry! Jer-ry! We just finished the first rehearsal for Jerry Springer: The Opera. My stomach was in knots, my head felt like I was underwater, but dang - it's going to be awesome.  What a cast - every single voice is on-point, and I have my work cut out for me.  Still, it's surreal and amazing.  I remember reading about the show when it came out in London over 10 years ago.  Dad, knowing I loved musical theater, brought the New York Times over to me in the kitchen and pointed out and article about this opera - not musical theater but actual opera - of the lowest-brow entertainment available at the time, short of donkey shows.  Brilliant! 

It's been awhile, and we've had time to reflect on the Jerry Springer show.  All throughout the first rehearsal, as these gorgeous voices of Luke, Zak, Taylor, Lindsay and the cast, all saying gloriously dirty things, I kept having flashbacks to being in middle and high school. It was 1995 again, and I was checking out the latest redneck fight on Jerry as I finished some homework.  While I wasn't a dedicated watcher, my favorite episodes were the ones with the Klan, though.  I mean, at least I could pity the trashy cheaters, the purported white supremacists, however?  Delicious disdain - and even if you changed the channel, you could STILL feel superior as you sighed and rolled your eyes at the modern-day freak show.  It was before many folks had taken their kinks and niche interests to the Internet, and before the age of the "reality TV" show.  So really, a simpler time.  A time when we had a live studio audience to hoot at the Mama Junes and Honey Boo Boos of the world.

Remember her name.

Honestly, though - if you think about it, all throughout recorded history, literature and entertainment, we've enjoyed the schadenfreude (yeah, thanks, auto correct, you had my back just now) of watching people we consider weird, outlandish, exotic, just freaks, strange acts, odd bodies, faces, lifestyles, interests...far-out stuff.  That was one of my favorite numbers we rehearsed yesterday - "bring on the losers!" As much as we like to pretend we don't go for stuff like that, never underestimate the power of prurient interest and morbid curiosity to grab the imagination of the masses.  The tradition of the palace fool or jester, the fascination with extremes - dwarfs, giants, etc., the raucous and bloody circus of Roman times, the freak show or side show, talk shows, and now...TLC?

The L stands for Learning.  LEARNING.

I'm not saying without Jerry, there wouldn't be reality TV today, in its endless spinoffs and countless varieties, but there has always been an appetite for this, and Jerry just mainstreamed it quite a bit more, and real or fake, gave it the subtle yet critical spin of these losers WANT this fame - some have always needed the money or means, no matter how dehumanizing things like traveling freak shows have been.  That one element alone has been huge in popularizing shows like Jersey Shore or Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. 

Now, there's also the idea of inviting the viewer into this world.  By giving us the studio audience and inviting freaks and weirdos on as "guests," Jerry seems to have filled our historic void for gazing at odd stuff (while patting ourselves on the back for our normalcy) and embraced and celebrated fully the wacky spectacle of it all.  Now we have Twitter and such to boo and jeer at society's out-there types - but Jerry did it first, and you can't throw a chair on the Web.