October 11, 2004
Squaring The OC Fantasy With Reality (updated)
Alex Williams is as befuddled as I am about how Orange County has become pop culture's new ground zero for teen hipness. From yesterday's New York Times:
- But such are the realities in the new, rebranded Orange County. Particularly since "The O.C." a Fox drama, became a pop-culture phenomenon last year, the formerly quiet patchwork of planned communities and insular beach towns south of Los Angeles has become recognized worldwide, however improbably, as the embodiment of all things hip, youthful and glamorous.
To those of us with roots in Orange County, that is bizarre. It is as if the organizers of New York Fashion Week had pulled up stakes in Bryant Park and relocated their tents to Bergen County, N.J., the newly discovered capital of cool.
To me, offerings like Fox's The OC and MTV's Laguna Beach are probably a counter-reaction to a popular culture that now overwhelmingly favors a stylistic and aesthetic ethos toward all things urban. It's also fueled by a certain kind of nostalgia for a lilly-white California, that, well, frankly does not exist anymore -- especially in light of last week's report that Orange County no longer possesses a white Anglo majority. Jon Wiener nails it here:
- Jon Wiener, a writer for The Nation and a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, believes this region's flawless new television image echoes cultural impulses akin to the county's historic political conservatism. "It's an attempt to hold onto that California of the 50's and 60's, that paradise for middle-class white people," Mr. Wiener said. "The sun, the beach, the healthiness, the happiness of being young. I see this as a nostalgia for the California of yesteryear."
In light of the OC's new demographic and cultural reality, urban guru Bill Fulton has the best money quote pitching a new reality-TV series set in Orange County:
- If any rival producers from CBS or HBO are listening, here's one idea for a "real Orange County" show for next fall:
"What I want to see is the sitcom about the Latino family that moves into a Vietnamese neighborhood," said William Fulton, a senior scholar policy planning and development at the University of Southern California. "When you see that, you'll know that the perception of Orange County has finally caught up to reality."
Yeah, I'd definitely watch that. Read all of "The County Formerly Known as Squaresville".
UPDATE: Another related piece -- this one far harsher: "Latino Youth Talk About the Real 'O.C.'"