Gone With The Wind: “Very Cavallari” is currently television’s best kept secret
Why E!’s new hit show is a high-water mark for modern American Conservatism
If you haven’t had the chance to watch it yet, check out Very Cavallari, your standard reality TV show that follows the lives of Kristen Cavallari and her immediate circle of family and friends. Fans of pop culture may remember that Kristen Cavallari was a main character on Laguna Beach, a reality TV show from a previous generation.
Since those American Eagle wearing days, Kristen has gotten married, started a family, and founded her own fashion line; the first few episodes of the show explain all this in more detail. Like any reality TV show, Very Cavallari contains a healthy dose of following the show’s main characters, confessional monologues and manufactured drama. Overall, the show is genuinely entertaining, even to someone like myself who generally isn’t a fan of reality TV.
Beyond the relationships and interesting setting, the reason why Very Cavallari succeeds is because of how the show frames conservative values, values that are very much under scrutiny as of late given the political landscape. Breaking through on this hidden gem of a television show, unwittingly buried in E! Entertainment’s late night Sunday lineup, are the tentpole ideals of American Conservatism, brought into 2019. On this show, you’ll find your muddy trucks and country music set alongside country stables and good manners, all for the purpose of providing the viewer a timeless glimpse of the simple life.
Currently in much of the Western hemisphere, the dominant political ideology is liberalism. Grown from the Age of Enlightenment, liberal thought was the ship in which the centuries-old system of European monarchies toppled one-by-one. Thus, culturally in the United States it is more appropriate to have conservative subjects, like Fox News or Presidents Bush and Trump, as the butt of a joke than it is for liberal subjects such as NBC or President Obama. At New Game+, we aim to provide our readers with the freshest ideas, and therefore advocating the underdog philosophy of the most powerful nation on Earth is right up our alley.
The battle between liberals and conservatives has strong roots. They are simply modes of thought regarding the decision-making of a collective society. It is bound to come and go in waves; when liberalism is taken too far, conservatism is there to reign it back in, and likewise when conservatism has grown stale, liberalism is there to move it forward. Because liberalism is the ideology of the majority in the United States, people who subscribe to conservatism are often misunderstood. People living in the conservative regions of the United States are often portrayed in the media as uneducated, poor and lower class. Very Cavallari is a show however, that turns this perception on its head and provides curious viewers a window into what modern Southern living is like. (it’s really not all that different!)
nostalgie de la boue : literally “nostalgia for mud”, a French term for romanticizing base pleasures
A common theme of this publication and my writing overall is that of “East meets West”. Growing up, I often felt puzzled being at the interface between conflicting cultures and ideologies. As I’ve grown older, I still find myself there, struggling to choose. Politically, my ideas are liberal; I love watching late-night Trump skits and identify with all of the issues being brought forward in our country. At home however, my traditional upbringing lends to a conservative lifestyle.
The most common metaphor for political views is that of a political compass. Directionally, left stands for liberalism, and right represents conservatism. If we assume that the axis is one-dimensional, every step towards one direction is the equivalent of taking a step away from the other. In other words, arguing politics is zero-sum, which is the reality of our landscape today, where political candidates increasingly tear each other apart with more and more personal attacks. Is there a world in the future where politics can be win-win? I don’t have that answer. Perhaps the only way to move forward without fighting is to simply learn a little more from both sides, and Very Cavallari is the perfect place to start :)
Watch the first two episodes of Season 2 on Youtube for free!
