Last night, two of my friends and I witnessed something that is hard to find these days...something that made us scratch our heads. There is a new show on MTV called "My Life as Liz" which was thoroughly confusing at first. We had all seen the advertisements during commercial breaks for the Jersey Shore, that featured a Chuck Taylor clad girl with an asymmetric haircut saying witty shit, basically Juno the television show, but it was all pretty vague. We started to watch the show, but even 10 minutes in we were still unsure if it was reality or not. MTV is the king of scripted reality and was doing an excellent job making us think if it was just another episode of Made or something different. After a quick Google search we confirmed the tales of the anti-LC were not actually true. That didn't stop us from watching an episode...or two.
The show follows Texan teen, Liz, who is fighting her way through high school and for her by-the-book-alternative-society-hating voice to be heard in a sea of cookie-cutter blonds. Her life is punctuated with the tunes of Lykke Li, Chromeo, and Passion Pit, which, for me, made for a fun game of solitaire name that tune (but also aggravated the shit out of me that MTV is whoring out these artists) and the overuse of the word "douche."
More to the point, I want to talk about Liz's appearance. Liz wears red lipstick to school (gasp!) and a backpack among a sea of Vera Bradely totes (You go girl!) which shows how ballsy she is (please sense sarcasm here, I beg you). There was a scene in the first episode where Liz is giving the popular girl a makeover at a thrift store (alternative!!) and has her wearing 1) an oversized Harley Davidson eagle shirt circa 1996 paired with skinny jeans and 2) an oversized ugly sweater worn with sweatpant cut-offs. MTV tapped into the indie/alternative fashion psyche pretty damn well... to the point where I was almost yelling at the TV. I felt a little frustrated, it was one of those moments where you wanted to scream "IVE BEEN WEARING/LISTENING TO/DOING THAT SINCE 10th GRADE," but you don't because you don't want people to think you are a closeted hipster/douche.
photo: www.mtv.com
I'm not sure what I'm getting at here, but I'm interested in how this show will continue to package the stylings of an indie chick for the sponge of a teen culture MTV has created.Also, I'm now just as confused as I was before about the authenticity of this show because she has a friggin Twitter that is too perfectly obscure AND she gives Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros a shout out. THIS SHOW IS THE ULTIMATE CULTURAL MACHINE.
Posts
That show is very funny and interesting.
ReplyDelete