What Happens When People Stop Being Polite: The Real World

Pop Literacy

“Video Killed the Radio Star,” as the song and video that launched MTV in 1981 told us, and Millennials, among other pop culture deaths they have been accused of, killed the music video star at the end of the TRL era. It was replaced by reality series on MTV … though many current viewers may not know that before reality TV was the thing on MTV, it was most definitely athing – thanks to The Real World. The granddaddy of all MTV reality shows, and a seminal series in all of American reality TV, The Real World began in 1993 with seven strangers picked to live in a New York City loft together, and find out what would happen “when people stop being polite and start getting real.” The show ran for more than 30 seasons, filled with fights, tears, hookups, and copious amounts of alcohol at its worst and most embarrassing moments. But then there were moments of pure grace, where the cast took the chance to understand people unlike anyone they’d ever met before. And for one very special season, the audience was riveted by a heroic young man named Pedro, who charmed, educated, and truly showed just how the real world, and The Real World, could be. Almost 30 years after the MTV series premiered, the Paramount+ streaming service is reuniting The Real World: New York cast in that same NYC loft, when we see Eric, Kevin, Norman, Julie, Heather, Becky, and Andre get real again.

This week on Pop Literacy, we talk with Amanda Ann Klein, the author of the fantastic new book Millennials Killed the Video Star: MTV’s Transition to Reality Programming, about The Real World’s place in MTV history, why Pedro and that third season of the show changed reality TV, and what she, like us, her fellow Gen Xers, can’t wait to see what the New York cast shares about 30 years of reality television fame.

Our guest this week:

Millennials Killed the Video Star: MTV’s Transition to Reality Programming by Amanda Ann Klein

Read more about The Real World and the history of MTV:

I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution by Ron Tannenbaum and Craig Marks

VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave – by Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, and Gavin Edwards

Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes by Saul Austerlitz