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Please enjoy my thoroughly greased biceps!

If you were wondering how many minutes of NBC’s revamped American Gladiators you would have to watch before your overall sense of nostalgia would be dwarfed by your overall sense of shame, well the answer is three. Yes, in three short minutes dreams of Nitro and “The Gauntlet” where murdered at the hands of ridiculous scripted dialogue, cheesy back stories and a James Hatfield circa Ride the Lightening-esque character named Wolf who actually howls when addressed. Most troubling, however, is not the awfulness that is American Gladiators (that was something I’m sure we all could have deduced on our own), but the continued repackaging and marketing of our youth. More after the jump…

I think we all understand that trends are cyclical. Whether it’s skinny ties, keyboards in rock music, or rolling back taxes on the rich, these are things that come and go. No one is complaining about that. My problem is with NBC’s not-so-subtle attempt to score a quick and painless ratings victory by resurrecting a cheesy brand stained with nostalgia, and the perhaps more troubling fact that no one seems to be particularly worked up about this. Perhaps it’s because all of this has been going on for so long. I’m sure there are earlier examples, but the biggest one is probably Happy Days back in the 70s. Not only was the show jumping on the then 50s nostalgia, but I would argue it went a long way to making the reactionary “everything was so much better back then — when minorities didn’t have as many rights” sentiment so pervasive for decades to come. Granted, Happy Days was marketing a better, forgotten lifestyle that never really existed in the first place, whereas American Gladiators is actively trying to resell you your exact youth.

Now, this isn’t to say you can’t make good art out of something that’s already come before. On the contrary, most significant cultural advancements are little more than additions made to well-worn forms. Lord knows the original Ocean’s 11 (the one the Rat Pack) was a near unwatchable film while Soderbergh’s remake is teeming with energy and excitement. There is Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait, or even Gus Van Sant who had the balls to ask the question, “What if Psycho was in color?”

You can even go one step further and find a couple examples of memory-tinged brands and characters whose repurposing might have initially appeared like means to a cheap buck but which actually went to great lengths to satirize their ridiculous subjects. Take, for example, The Brady Bunch films — two of the oddest, sometimes trippiest and often slyly filthy comedies to come along in some time. I’d also include the first of the Charlie’s Angels movies, which for some reason was completely in on the joke before completely losing it in the sequel (I blame the ludicrously named McG).

American Gladiators is absolutely the worst offender. It doesn’t even have the common courtesy to keep the formula intact. The new version of the show is so packed with superfluous character back-stories and perhaps the worst staged-dialogue since the presidential debates the creators (or reanimators) clearly must have forgotten that what they’re putting on the air is a game show in spandex. Even if it hadn’t tinkered with the formula, the idea is offense enough. There has to be a point where we, as a society of media consumers, rise up, go to our windows, open them, stick out heads and yell, “I’m not going to support things I’ve already seen somewhere else before!” And then yell, “Except for this, because this is really more of an homage and not just a blatant rip-off because I couldn’t think of a better way to express my rage!”

Look, I’m all for watching crap. It’s half of what makes television such a fantastic medium. You can go from watching The Wire to watching a bunch of steroid dripping freaks attempting to beat the living hell out of some aerobics instructor from Westchester with an oversized Q-Tip all in a two-hour span, but for the love of god the very least we could request is that the crap we’re watching is original and not simply exploiting our endless desire to relive our childhood. Let’s face it, people, you can’t go back. Just ask Helga.

Tags: American Gladiators, NBC

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under Commentary, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.