Oscar Wilde certainly had reality television in mind when he wrote, ‘Nothing succeeds like excess.’ Though this season signals the entry of many new scandalous reality TV shows that practically strangle you with headline-worthy concepts (the unforgivable ‘Joe Millionaire’ comes to mind), no other show on television, network or cable, succeeds quite like E!’s ‘Anna Nicole Smith Show,’ a fabulous half-hour trip down the rabbit hole that follows the life of Texas-sized blonde bombshell Anna Nicole Smith and her entourage. Despite savage reviews and a severe dip in initial ratings, the ‘ANS Show’ proved to be E!’s biggest hit and has been renewed for a second season.
The ‘Anna Nicole Smith Show,’ a touchstone in the ‘Are they in on the joke?’ celebrity reality TV departmentcurrently spearheaded by ‘The Surreal Life,’ which throws washed up celebrities like Corey Feldman and MC Hammer into a house to see what happens when people stop being famous and start getting desperatepicks up where MTV’s ‘The Osbournes’ leaves off. If the latter makes fame into a cuddly, familiar state of being where incredibly wealthy, high profile celebrities look just like you and me, then the ‘ANS Show’ deconstructs fame and reveals it to be as a hideous, unstoppable institution. If Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne remind you of Ozzy and Harriet, then Anna and her dysfunctional possecomposedof her attorney and ‘best friend,’ Howard K. Stern; her purple haired assistant, Kim Walthers; her 16-year-old son, Daniel; and her mood-tranquilized dog, Sugar Piewill make you cry yourself to sleep at night.
Just about every Arts ‘ Entertainment publication and television show in the country, along with millions of at-home critics, regularly pass unsympathetic judgment on Anna and her clan. No one, though, wants to acknowledge that the problem might be what the show reveals about us as a culture. More than anything else, ‘The Anna Nicole Smith Show’ offers an unwavering, often harsh look into the life of a monster we have inadvertently created. The ex-stripper/model/actress and soon-to-be heiress and her wacky show act as a hilarious satire of our bizarre national obsessions with celebrity and the trappings of fame. Trashiness notwithstanding, the ‘ANS Show’ probably provides the most honestand valuableview of the celebrity mindset out of all celebrity reality TV shows.
The show is postmodern in the absolute worst (and most entertaining) sense of the word. Anna Nicole is a parody of a celebrity in a parody of a reality television show. Snicker as Anna, a cartoon pastiche of the ditzy blond bombshell act perfected by Marilyn parody Jayne Mansfield, gets her mile-wide ass stuck between the legs of a table. Watch in horror as she coddles the ambiguously oriented Walthers (who sports a massive tattoo of Anna’s face on her arm), eats food from the refrigerators of strangers and tells the cameras that she must return home immediately to masturbate. Ask yourself: Isn’t Anna everything we want in a sensational celebrity? She’s untalented, not particularly bright and extremely marketable. What more could you ask for?
And don’t think that being the butt of the joke ever, for a second, enters Anna’s realm of possibilities. Though her professional peak is clearly behind her, Anna still dreams in hot pink and envisions a world where everyone adores her. Even the head honcho, Executive Producer Jeff Shore, makes no mistake about ‘fessing up to the nature of his own show. When describing potential storylines to EntertainmentWeekly.com, he commented, ‘Anna has a lot of ideas for next season and we’ll be following her to the next stage of her life. For instance, she may go to acting class, and needless to say it will be hilarious.’
Whether you consider her antics terribly amusing or a concrete sign that the apocalypse is upon us, one thing is certain: Anna Nicole is outrageous and here to stay. Oscar Wilde, no stranger to celebrity and scandal himself, surely had E!’s buxom reality darling in mind when he wrote, ‘My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other peoples’.’ No one’s business is more jaw-droppingly hilarious or disturbingly insightful than Anna Nicole Smith’s.
