Popular Reality TV

The cast contract for MTV’s seminal reality show The Real World has been obtained and published by The Village Voice . It is remarkably similar to those I’ve published recently: the Survivor cast contract and the Big Brother houseguest contract , which are signed by those who reach the finals casting process. For example, cast members agree to be portrayed “in a false light,” agree to hold the producers’ responsible for nothing, and hand over control of their lives and life stories to the producers. Perhaps most horrifying part of The Real World contract is the clause that refers indirectly to rape: Cast members agree to this statement: “I understand there are risks in any such interaction, including but not limited to, the possibility of consensual and non-consensual physical contact, which could result in my contracting any type of sexually transmitted disease….” Of course, “non-consensual physical contact” could include physical assault, sexual assault, or rape. So if you go on t...

Russell Hantz has firmly denied leaking information about his first two seasons of Survivor, but now the person he leaked to has sold e.mail message evidence to TMZ. TMZ published seven e.mail messages from Russell to Jim Early , which were sent between “hantztankering” (the name of Russell’s company) to “thegamesurvivor” (an alias of Jim Early) in late September and early October 2009. They aren’t very conversational, as Russell often replies in short, error-ridden phrases to long passages of speculation and/or information from Early. (TMZ didn’t bother to mention the original story or attribute it to The Daily Beast, but because they are awful people and awful journalists, they did manage to cobble together an exclusive graphic for the messages, even though I already previously reported on one of them.) Of those messages, I saw one of these as part of my story on the lawsuit that revealed Russell was leaking information , and that’s the only one in which Russell reveals eliminatio...