Seeing Honey Boo Boo In A Different Light

Pamela Chan

CTCS 412 Blog 

To be perfectly honest, I was more than appalled by the screenings that were shown in class last Monday—never before had I seen such crass, improper, and downright shameful behavior being acted out so clearly on public television, and it was shocking to learn that what I had just witnessed on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was the exact spectacle-filled circus that many Americans had been raving about since the show’s 2012 debut. I mean sure, the network is TLC—which is known for airing shows with controversial nature with no educational purpose whatsoever. And we can all admit that little Alana Thompson is chock-full-of-attitude and surprisingly cute. But other than that, there is no context. There is no story. There is no point to having a show like this except for providing viewers with an in-depth look at classlessness, outrageousness, and offensive familial life. It gives what many view as the ‘American’ lifestyle an extremely bad name, and I was really struggling to see the point in watching these screenings—not to mention sitting through an entire couple episodes of horrible reality television.

However, it’s funny how different things can become when looked at from a different perspective—and after our in-class examination of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding in class this morning (as well as the readings we had over this past week), I was able to look at the show as something more than an exploitative and degrading exhibition of what Forbes Magazine called a “lice-picking, lard-eating, nose-thumbing” horde of hooligans “south of the Mason-Dixon line” – a horror story posing as reality television programming.

Reality television, as discussed in class, serves as a visual rhetoric to better understand various aspects of feminism. They also have an ability to make us forget about the systematic erosion of our uptight worlds, relieving us of the constant constraints of our normal middle-class American lives. By distancing their focuses from the normal public sphere, shows such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo provide access to lifestyles that are filled with freedom and no restraint—of otherness and diversity. We are introduced to a world of people who live free of the everyday pressures and confines that plague the world we live in. And in a way, their less-than-urbane living patterns, poor manners, foul mouths, and not very socially-accepted body types can actually be seen as something hopeful and positive—not just something completely negative.

Throughout this course we have discussed what feminism is, what we think it should be. In many ways, it all comes down in the end to acceptance, freedom, and gender equality—being able to love and be loved as who you truly are--to create a society that is unfamiliar to prejudice and oppression. The crude actions of Mama June and her girls have obviously been criticized by more than a number people. The entire Thompson family can be seen as nothing more than a Southern mess to point and snicker at. But what’s incredibly interesting is that they don’t seem to care. They are completely content with who and what they are—farting and all. There may be some editing and manipulation done by TLC, but in the end, the Thompsons are, in more ways than one, comfortably embracing their authentic selves—far away from the status quo. Rather than judging the show from just the obnoxious behaviors exhibited on the screen, our class discussion helped me realize that there is actually a point in showing these more ‘alternative’ representations of American life—it not only helps us grasp a better understanding of feminism but ourselves as well.