Austin Stories

So, the Real World Austin has begun. Please join me in welcoming the latest disposable pseudo-celebrity “stars” and their cloying entourage with a hearty Texas … *yawn*.

I doubt this media-crafted circus will affect my life much, and not just because I’m old and need an extract of pure human adrenal gland to party until 2am. On the odd nights that I am out on the town, chances are slim that the pre-packaged clan will be hanging out at Casino el Camino like Dave Attel did. No, I’ll hazard a guess that Coyote Ugly or Elysium will be more their speed. And they can certainly have each other, since that means less of my town will be sullied with their dumbed-down MTV drama.

This isn’t the first time MTV have tried to cash in on Austin’s cache. I never thought I’d say this, but this Real World fiasco almost makes me yearn for the days of Austin Stories. Even if it was a mediocre show, at least it attempted to embrace the same iconoclast underbelly that infused Slacker with its underachieving counter-culture. Both Slacker and Austin Stories took something authentic about Austin and used it as a canvas for stylized portraits that were uniquely intertwined with the setting.

Time waits for no one, especially in the herty gerty world of television and film. The hipsters in Slacker are now approaching middle age, and Austin Stories quickly became roadkill on the entertainment superhighway. There are remnants of their independent spirit still floating around town, but hardly enough to satisfy the media trolls at Viacom. To them, Austin is just different window dressing on the same parade of indulgence and insecurities.

There’s an odd symmetry that The Real World is finally visiting Austin. The show wrote the book for Reality TV, but has since become a cliche based on the entertaining conflicts and romances of the first few seasons. Both the players and viewers now have built-in experience and expectations that serve as an unwritten script, bringing each successive season closer to parody than reality. In those same 15 years, Austin has also grown into a parody of its former self. Weirdness and live music are now slogans to be bought and sold, living on in bumper stickers as much as the culture. The slackers either made it rich or moved out of downtown to make room for those who did.

If the Real World had taken place in the Austin of 1991, it would have been a truly innovative experience. But in 2005, their presence is only indicative of Austin’s status as a party town, which sadly enough rates below Philly and San Diego in the Real World Order. After 15 years of parallel development, Real World Austin provides a new low-water mark of both subjects’ decline into mediocrity.

I love my town, because it is not the disposable locale envisioned by Real World producers or real estate developers. I suppose the marginalization of Austin is inevitable when there’s so much money to be made from it, but I don’t have to like it. So nothing personal Real World, but stay outta my way while you’re here. And don’t let the door smack you in the ass on the way out of town.