Honey Boo Boo: Mocking rednecks for laughs

last updated 8 January 2015

The show makes viewers cringe, but millions of Americans still can’t take their eyes off Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, said Maria Puente in USA Today. This reality series about a self-described “crazy redneck” family from tiny McIntyre, Ga., and their “chubby little beauty-pageant princess” is drawing more than 2 million viewers a week; last week, it scored higher ratings than Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican convention. In the show, cameras follow 6-year-old Alana Thompson, known to her family as Honey Boo Boo Child; her 300-pound mother, June (already a grandmother at 32); and the rest of the backwoods clan as they dine on roadkill, roll in a mud pit, eat cheese puffs off the floor, fart and burp, and laugh when the pet pig defecates on the kitchen table. To get Alana amped for her pageant performances, June feeds her daughter “go-go juice”—a mixture of Mountain Dew and Red Bull.

“Welcome to the latest lowering of a bar that was already deep in the mud,” said Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free Press. With mouths agape, we have witnessed Honey Boo Boo in full pageant mode, shaking her hips seductively and squealing, “A dollah make me hollah,” while wearing so much makeup that she looks like a mini-mannequin. This train wreck of a show “makes Jersey Shore look like Masterpiece Theatre.” How can anyone watch this in good conscience? said Tim Goodman in HollywoodReporter.com. Honey Boo Boo is pure exploitation—a “green light to laugh at rednecks and fat people.”

Please spare me the ritual outrage, said Michelle Dean in Slate.com.America has a long tradition of “white trash” entertainment, and no one expressed horror at the success of The Beverly Hillbillies and Hee Haw. Laughing at hicks allows more-upscale Americans “to offload the venality and sin” of our culture onto people we can safely look down on. So while the critics clutch their pearls, the nation has adopted this proud redneck family, said Rich Juzwiak in Gawker.com. And the Thompsons are laughing right along with us. Honey Boo Boo is “speckled with self-awareness,” especially from June, who scratches her head on camera and says, “Hold on, I’m scratching my bugs,” with a twinkle that lets us know she’s in on the joke. In postmodern pop culture, “we mock what we love and love what we mock. Get with the program.”