No one sees The Hills

In Don DeLillo's 1985 novel, "White Noise," two characters visit a tourist attraction billed as "The Most Photographed Barn in America." Once there, one of them declares, "No one sees the barn... once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn." In other words, when confronted with the now-omnipresent images of advertising and popular culture, it becomes impossible to tell which of your emotions are genuine and which are contrived.

At Christmas, this seems especially relevant. Good cheer and the desire to go shopping are expected come December, no matter what your personal tastes or religious beliefs are. This is particularly nauseating this time of year, but the confusion of sincerity and prescribed emotions, as DeLillo points out, is a problem fundamental to modern society. And this is what makes me love MTV's "The Hills."

"The Hills" is fascinating, but people are skeptical when I tell them that I watch the show because it is interesting and not "as a joke." They think I must be watching either out of pure escapism or out of a desire to watch it and condemn the cast as fake, superficial and dumb.

Most of this sentiment stems from the fact that the show is technically "reality television," a classification that is only slightly more respected than child pornography. Watching television of any kind is generally seen as a waste of time-the only shows that get any sort of intellectual respect are well-written dramas like "The Wire" or "Mad Men." The rest is fluff. The logic behind this is that, supposedly, a show has to be smart to be interesting to smart people. Anything else is a guilty pleasure.

But this is only intellectual laziness. "The Hills" is not a "smart" show-a transcript of the dialogue probably reads like an anthology of small talk. It is not "well-written" or "well-acted" and the people on it do not come off as very intelligent. And yet it is more relevant than a lot of much better shows.

The complaint most often lodged against "The Hills," however, is that it isn't "real." It seems like every discussion of the show always hinges on how the show is staged, how unreal it is, how MTV sets up every encounter. When the villainous Heidi and Spencer got married last week, and several Web sites reported that they had actually failed to obtain a marriage license, this was supposed to be some perfect example about how their relationship is all fake. And all of this is supposed to detract from the worth of the show-it is apparently very important to people that they not be lied to about the lives of people whom they shouldn't really care about anyway.

This focus, however, is completely misguided. Today, as DeLillo points out, sincerity is overrated-the fact that it is not "real" is the point. Certainly this show is not unique in trying to pass off a concocted situation as "reality," but the show is different from other reality programming in that the "stage" being set is actually the lives of its characters. In other words, the people featured on "The Hills" are not whisked away to some island or mansion to participate in some competition or tape confessionals-they are merely living their lives and allowing MTV's producers to control a large part of it.

One of Lauren's "best friends," for example, is Audrina. The fact that the two were actually introduced by the show's producers and that their friendship was largely enabled by the filming of the show might seem to undermine the sincerity of their friendship. But they still lived together for two years, and Lauren really did cry when their friendship was in danger earlier this season. Their friendship is certainly staged, but that doesn't make it any less real.