No one has their finger on the pulse of the GenX mindset like The Onion, as with this week’s story, "Entertainment-History Buffs Re-Enact Battle of Network Stars." It’s funny cuz it’s true... or at least it could be true. I know when I bitch about "reality shows," I call them game shows, which usually leads to a reference to those cheesy Battle of the Network Stars "events" we loved as kids, which I’m sure none of us realized were merely giant advertisements for the networks’ own products. All I knew was, it was a chance to see Dirk "Starbuck" Benedict in shorts and making a fool out of himself.
And since Xers and geeks don’t merely consume pop culture but play with it, analyze it, and regurgitate it in ways that ends up serving as commentary on it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that some wacky gang of 30-somethings were reenacting Battle of the Network Stars somewhere.
But if The Onion has already done the self-deprecating, recursive re-digestion of this bit of pop culture for us, they’ve saved us the bother, and we can move on to restaging episodes of Land of the Lost.
