Is this new "reality show" Rollergirls good or bad for women?

[Up2Late]

Or is it just exploitation? And does the fact that it's on A&E make it any better or more respectable?

I know it might not be "PC", but I have to admit, I kind of like Roller Derby, and so far in this show, it seems like these women are really into the "Sport" aspect of Roller Derby, so is this show a bad thing?

The last "reality show" I watched was MTV's original "The Real World," and so far, this one almost seems like a Roller Derby version of "Flash Dance," so if I do get hooked on this show, does that make me a "Pig?" :shrug:

And is Roller Derby sort of the female version of Professional Wrestling?

[tatertop]

1. very very bad for humanity

[jmm]

2. A&E lost any respectability they had when

they aired Growing Up Gotti.

[leeroysphitz]

15. This thing is on A&E????? Really?

I'm a liberal. I honestly believe that there are two sides to every issue. I don't see the world in black and white, I "get" that there is a Grey area to almost every issue and that finding solutions to problems means working through that area with an eye towards achieving the maximum benefit, and minimal detriment for all involved.

So my intellectual reaction to the ads I've seen for this show are disinterest and live and let live etc... but my knee-jerk and ultimately most honest "gut" feeling is that it is CHEAP SHAMELESS EXPLOITATION. Not that that is illegal or unique on American television.

Good or bad, right or wrong I have no desire to watch the show. (I do not say this from some puritanical square of either liberal or religious "high ground" or "Moral Snobbery" , both of which I disdain, I just don't enjoy watching ANY sports or "sports entertainment" sexist or otherwise (is there a NON sexist form of sports entertainment?) and would rather read, listen to Asha Bolse or Radiohead music, watch a DVD (WILLFULLY pirated off of usenet) or play, stacking BLOCKS, with my boy Johnny (AKA "Stinkypete"), who is CLEARLY the best 1 yr. old boy in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE and who will be raised to understand that women are, just like him, an ESSENTIAL , EQUAL and WONDERFUL HALF of the Human species.and are, like him, OWED respect, and awe)

We all smile. We all sing.

[tjwash]

27. I thought they lost it with "Dog the mullet headed bounty hunter" nt

[ohio_liberal]

3. You're definitely going to hell

Take a number and get in line :evilgrin:

[Oldtimeralso]

14. Hell

I would rather miss it by a mile than a fraction of an inch.

[madeline_con]

4. I say, if you like it, watch.

No network can please everyone.

I use my TV as an entertainment medium, and watch all kinds of stuff. :shrug:

[Up2Late]

7. "...TV as an entertainment medium?" Hummm, that's an interesting...

...thought. I seem to remember enjoying Television some time before the November 2001 election...

You might be right, I might be over thinking this, that's what books are for.

[madeline_con]

16. Yes, but "Jackass" is SO much better on screen than in print. n/t

[Fla Dem]

35. I'm with ya......if I like it, I watch it..if I don't,.. I won't. As for

this show, it was kinda hard to follow at first. Couldn't keep one person straight from the other. Sound quality bad too; lots of extraneous noise so missed a lot of dialogue. But in the end it was OK. Venus Envy, rookie Roller Derby skater breaks into big time league. Her mother is not totally supportive, in fact clearly doesn't understand the game. But ends up going to her daughter's first real "bout", and seems to be proud of her....ahhhhh.

Scale of 1-5 3.5

[MADem]

5. Well, if the show involves grown females, and they are calling them

'girls'--just the title of the effort seems a bit off-putting, without even delving into the other aspects.

[madeline_con]

17. No one's holding a gun to these "grils'" heads. eom

[MADem]

20. Of course not

But perhaps when they signed up, they didn't know the program title. It's like that wedding show, with the brides, that ended up being called BRIDEZILLA or something like that--I understand a lot of the featured ladies were unhappy when they tuned in and discovered they were touted as monsters (deserving or not!) because the producers gave no inkling during the production phase that the tack to be taken was their demanding attitudes.

[BoneDaddy]

32. your right

Correct, Bridezilla's should have been more sensitive to these obnoxious, elitist, mean spirited bizatches who epitomize the meaning of "ugly Americans" steeped in whoring consumerism and materialism.

[MADem]

36. But that was not my point--AT ALL

Regardless of the greedy elitism of those brides, they did NOT sign up to be on a show of that title, or with that slant, and the producers essentially deceived them in a quest for ratings. Who in their right mind would agree to that? Making fun of people sells, I guess.

It would be the same sort of deal if you were asked to appear on a show about some aspect of your life, be it your work, your hobby or your politics, believing that was to be the focus, and then discovering that the program was carefully and heavily edited and slanted with a main goal to ridicule you and make you look like a total jerk. I see that as playing unfairly. It's why I am not a huge fan of those shows.

[Up2Late]

41. You might be over thinking that show "Brizilla," I'm not a fan of ...

..."reality T.V." shows, and I never even heard of "Bridzilla" before, but I have struggled to work in the Independent T.V./Movie industry, and can tell you from experience that, sometimes the production starts out a one thing, like a show about a guy looking for a bride, but with out a good script, something like that could end up as giant Turd, floating in a huge cesspool of stupidity.

Then, after the Director quits or is fired, it's up to the editor or another producer to put some Lipstick on that Pig, (by re-editing it and changing it to a workable premise) and then seeing if it will sell as something different.

Seeing how this thing didn't get much publicity, that could be what happened with "Bridzilla."

[MADem]

43. No, I saw an interview with the brides--they said they were conned

from start to finish, and were contemplating a lawsuit. (The show was called BRIDEZILLAS, a take off on Godzilla, I imagine.)

This happened some time back--not all that recent, fwiw. It was supposed to be called MANHATTAN BRIDES. One gal took revenge, thusly: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/06/18/bridezilla/index_np.html

...About that same time, Silver, then 30, got engaged to her stage manager boyfriend, Matt, and two months before their wedding the couple was approached to be part of an eight-part documentary television series called "Manhattan Brides." Produced by September Films, the project was to chronicle the pre-wedding lives of couples living in high-priced, high-octane, high-strung New York City. Silver, an actress hungry for a break, sold herself to producers in a speech reenacted in her script: "I'm perfect for your show. I'm the downtown bride, the antithesis to the Plaza Hotel bride. I'm artsy, I'm cutting edge, I'm chic, I'm a theater actress running the production department of an off-Broadway acting school ... You need me." And when a dubious Matt expressed his reservations about participating, Silver writes that she cooed back to him, "Hon, listen ... this is not that cheesy TLC wedding story crap. It's not going to be corny, it's going to be real ... It's a documentary ... We'll have every wedding memory forever. We can show it to our kids." Their whole misty-eyed family will no doubt enjoy the segment titled "Life's a Bitch and Then You Marry One" for years to come.

You may remember "Bridezillas," the hourlong reality TV special shown on Fox last January. If you don't -- or if you do and have been aching ever since to see more tulle-draped women shrieking hysterically at passersby -- the WE (Women's Entertainment) network is currently airing the full, eight-part series, also called "Bridezillas," on Monday nights at 10. "Bridezillas" is the retitled result of what was supposed to have been "Manhattan Brides." Cynthia Silver has now been married for almost two years, and, given that WE repeats "Bridezillas" episodes every Sunday, that the series was in rotation on local New York cable stations last year, as well as in Australia, England and Hong Kong, she has actually appeared on television a lot. Of course, since much of Silver's screen time involves the last-minute rejection of her $3,000 wedding dress and a lot of sobbing on the sidewalk, she hasn't become revered or cuddly with Oprah so much as she's been reduced to a caricature of spoiled urban femininity. But these days, while she is being featured nationally as a bridal harridan who has her designer hack away at the neckline of her dress with shears while she's wearing it, Silver is also putting finishing touches on her one-woman performance piece "Bridezilla Strikes Back."

...Silver's script isn't as much of an attack as its title would imply. It's a look at how easily she was seduced by the instant fame factory of reality television, and how some admittedly out-of-control event-planning moments got skillfully trimmed into something monstrous, just as easily as the show business bait-and-switch that transformed some Manhattan brides into stars of horror television.

...In "Bridezilla Strikes Back," Silver recounts just how she got nailed. She writes of the two British documentarians, Matt and Juliet, who followed her to every fitting, tasting and hair appointment. She had cameras at her facialist and eyebrow-styling appointments. She and Matt became friends and drinking buddies with the two-person crew, and she recounts in her show how Juliet gushed after her first fitting, "That was the fastest fitting we've been to. Usually they take hours! You're the easiest bride I've ever seen!" ...

They said the production team worked closely with them and the stated goal of the show was to show the details of putting together upscale weddings for career women, time management, details, or some such crap. But the focus of the show was almost exclusively on their temper tantrums...I suspect if they were routinely that awful, they wouldn't be marrying anyone other than a masochist. But hey, I don't know them; ya never know...

[tkmorris]

34. No one puts a gun to Springer's guests either

But it's STILL crap, and it's still harmful.

[comradebillyboy]

6. I want to see it

I enjoy lots of gratuitous sex and violence. Nudity too. Been a roller derby fan since the 50's. It was pretty sleazy and real low budget back then.

[Up2Late]

12. Well there was some violence...

...and some "implied nudity" but no sex. And the violence seemed less fake than the 1950-70's version, but who knows, it could all be fake? What some call "Acting."

[madeline_con]

18. How does a network "imply nudity"?

[Up2Late]

19. Fast, MTV style video editing...

...and lot's of close ups of naked backs or clothing adjustments.

[priller]

8. I liked it

And my girlfriend did, too. Good trashy fun!

[roguevalley]

9. they used to show roller derby on the san fran channels and I

watched as a kid. it was fun then. I don't know about now. You had to be made of steel to play it then. Those women could really, really skate.

[soothsayer]

10. Damn I wanted to be a roller derby queen. Grew up with the

Washington Cats, but roller derby fell out of favor for years, and now here's this kitschy show I would have been GREAT on!

The show looks fun, so I'd say don't worry about anyone being exploited. They all seem to be freethinking adults.

[driver8]

21. I grew up with the Los Angeles T-Birds...they had some tough but sexy

women on that team! I always wanted to be in the roller derby because they got to skate on a banked track. That looked like a lot of fun!

[soothsayer]

37. yes indeedy!

On edit: I can't believe I said the Washington Cats, I totally meant Baltimore (watched it on a Washington tv station).

I believe I saw the T-birds doing their roller derby than at the Capital Center in SX the late 70's early 80's. I later tried to contact 'em (to see how to enlist) but I never did find 'em. Sooooo silly!

[Ilsa]

11. I don't mind the roller derby. I just wish they'd stop advertising it

every two minutes on A&E.

[cantstandbush]

13. Just more violence in my opinion. n/t

[Up2Late]

22. Good point.

I'm rather sicked all the violent films in the Theaters and on T.V. these days, and the Video games continue to get more violent too.

What fun. :sarcasm:

[Loonman]

23. So they held a gun to their heads on the first episode

...and forced them to be rollergirls? Musta missed that part when I tuned in.

[Mountainman]

24. What gets me is the better video equipment gets the worse the offerings

to see on it get.

I'm not buying any more tv equipment until they return to the kind of shows that teach me something.

[ShaneGR]

25. Empowered, athletic, scantilly clad women.....

Wearing roller skates and beating the crap out of each other.... what more can we ask for in life?

woohoo!

[tjwash]

29. Xena, warrior princess...

..."big, half dressed, moon faced amazon beating on people with a stick? What god did I please?"

That's not mine, that's Patton Oswalt.

[Matariki]

26. TV, in general, is BAD for everyone

[AlCzervik]

28. I don't think A&E made Bounty hunting more respectable. I don't

anything about this new series but i'm guessing it's yet another show i won't be watching.

[BoneDaddy]

30. Horrible

What a horrible, shameless, exploitive, sexist show that i am going to criticize every time I masturbate to it.

[noonwitch]

31. I'm sure it's well-liked by that crucial 15-40 year old male market.

It seems like something that teenaged boys would enjoy.

[BoneDaddy]

33. that's right

yep... while all the 15-40 girls/women are watching American Princess, Growing up Gotti, Bridezilla's and Desperate Housewives. I think the boys will have more fun.

[noonwitch]

40. It's not something I'm going to watch, but I have no objections to it

I'd rather see a women's NHL, but it is far less exploitative of women than porn or tittie bars.

[AZBlue]

38. It has nothing to do with women's issues.

It is, however, another low-brow assault on American culture.

[Scout]

39. looks stupid and boring, from the previews I've seen....

A & E has been going downhill for a loooong time ... Bravo too.

[Spazito]

42. My opinion, it is simply T $ A for the perpetually dumb

and it is bad television all the way around. A&E sucks lately, unfortunately.

[Nikia]

44. I haven't seen it so I don't know if I can make a judgement

From what I do know, I'd put in the same category as beach vollleyball, a sport where the female athletes wear less than would be most appropriate to the sport. My grandfather participated in roller derby. Some people considered it as much of a sport as football.