The harsh reality behind Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (TLC comes to the UK) [View all]

[HiPointDem]

Recently, you might have seen the spate of billboard adverts featuring a piglet wearing a tiara, signalling the UK launch of an American TV channel called TLC... TLC specialises in what it calls "extraordinary people and relatable life moments", which translates into trashy reality shows like My Strange Addiction, Extreme Couponing and Little People, Big World. Their flagship show is called Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which combines several of the channel's main obsessions – obesity, teen parenthood, large families and child beauty pageants – into a depressingly popular show that may be the closest television has got to invoking the spirit of a travelling show.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo revolves around the Thompson family, who manage to encompass an exaggerated version of practically every white trash stereotype imaginable... If the programme was solely about one family, it could be dismissed as merely an exploitative freak show and a sign of modern society's lack of shame, but when the Thompsons go mudsliding and bobbing for pigs' feet at the Redneck Games, or bulk buy doughnuts and corn chips at a food auction, the camera will linger on the most overweight and slovenly people around them, and you realise that it's more a depiction of an entire part of America...

The trend is reflected on British TV... Manchester was home to several diverse programmes in the 90s, but in the last few years it's chiefly served as a base for underclass unemployment and criminality in shows like Shameless, Ideal and Waterloo Road. Liverpudlians might remember a similar representation in 80s shows like Bread and Boys from the Blackstuff. More and more, this is how the working-class are portrayed on television, both in fiction and in reality programming, and when these negative stereotypes are played on and exaggerated enough, they end up becoming cultural shorthand, the way that words like "benefits" and "council estate" now seem to be synonymous with scrounging and violence.

In an atmosphere of cuts and austerity, the existence of a demonised underclass makes a useful crutch for the withdrawal of services from people who would supposedly only abuse them anyway...Honey Boo Boo may pretend to show a sympathetic depiction of its characters, but the editing and framing of the show make it hard to avoid the sense that the cast is being presented not so much as a different class, but practically a different species altogether...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/20/here-comes-honey-boo-boo-harsh-reality