One of the guys starring in MTV's new sexploitation “reality” show, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, gazes at the mansion where it all takes place.
“Like, holy crap!”
Well, he's half right. There's nothing holy about MTV's latest attempt to seduce kids into orgiastic partying and homosexuality.
The show, which debuted Tuesday night, is, in a word, what the other guy said.
The premise is 16 young men and 16 “lesbians” competing for the right to “love” Tila Tequila, a no-talent media creation known mainly for having 2 million “friends” listed on MySpace.com.
Tila first entertains the men, interviewing some of them and making out with others. Then she does the same with the women. The dialogue is beyond inane, loaded with double entendres and politically correct “arguments” such as the one between the Southern hick and the urban black dude over who is “homophobic.”
Like all reality shows, this one suffers from noticeable scripting, which must have been done by drooling old men in raincoats. One idiot tries to impress Tila by handing her a pair of drumsticks, saying, “Only two things make me sweat – sex and drums.” Another guy, an Italian who presents Tila with a plate of pasta and meatballs, makes a lame pass about being “your hot sausage for the night.” That's about as sophisticated as it gets.
One lunkhead sums it up while dialoguing with Tila in front of the other morons: “We're all here for the same reason, which is to get your fine a--!” Tila, who shows plenty of aforementioned posterior and other assets throughout the show, smiles sweetly.
After the guys are done making fools of themselves, the “lesbians” prance in, most of them looking like they just came from a photo shoot for Maxim or some other skin magazine. It isn't your average lesbian bar crowd. One babe earnestly emotes, “Just to be part of something so groundbreaking is, like, an honor.”
The ground you hear breaking is
Another girl insists that she is a virgin, to which Tila proclaims, “My prayer has been answered!” Which would be news to the Almighty, who is invoked in various unholy ways and is probably not exactly indifferent about it.
The most exploitative scene is on the runway, when the girls dress in male porn fantasy outfits and parade in front of Tila. One of them is dressed as a Girl Scout (this is the alleged “virgin”) and her line is: “I'm sweet and innocent, can I interest you in my cookie?”
A few bimbos later, Tila dispenses with the innocence stuff, and takes a whip to a blonde on all fours in a leather sadistic sex outfit. The whippee tells the camera afterward, “Tila totally whipped me when I went out there, which is totally what I wanted.” This is so educational, I wonder if some perv at PBS will be interested in syndicating it, right after
Another tart comes out in an American flag bikini outfit, prompting Tila to say, “God bless
The episode ends in a pool party in which the guys and girls allegedly are shocked—shocked!—to learn the show's bisexual premise and that Tila herself swings both ways. Did I mention that everyone was shocked?
One girl takes a look at the dolts across the pool and exclaims, “There are guys there, and they're all staring at me, like a piece of meat!” Yet this same nuclear scientist didn't have a problem dressing like a “naughty nurse” and parading herself “like a piece of meat” in front of Tila earlier in the show.
The show promises more to come, with previews of a “Sin” room with a giant bed and bodies of both sexes entangled in an MTV variation on Twister.
At the end, someone summed up the new show: “This house is The Real World on crack.”
For MTV, it doesn't get any better than that.
Robert Knight is director of the Culture and Media Institute [1] at the