Posted on 04/26/2002 12:42:19 PM PDT by denfurb
April 26, 2002, 12:30 p.m. The Homeys Ozzy and his, um, Harriet.
By Thomas Hibbs .
he VH-1 occasional series Behind the Music is essentially the same plotline with different characters and a varied soundtrack. We begin with the story of a struggling, makeshift band, playing obscure small-time locales. Then come the surprising breakthroughs, the record contracts, the hit songs, and the big-time concert gigs. These are the years of success and excess that inevitably generate internal bickering over money and fame, drug-induced near-death experiences, time in rehab, and the break-up of the group. Band members move on to pursue solo careers and eventually decide to get back together for a reunion tour. With the surprisingly successful The Osbournes — a show that has made the latest covers of Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone — MTV has added a new twist to this standard rock biography: the real-life exploits of an aging and addled rocker, raising a family in Beverly Hills.
Equal parts reality TV, comic-book sitcom in the tradition of The Simpsons, and Behind the Music documentary, The Osbournes, airing Tuesdays at 10:30 pm, gives us a window on the family life of Ozzy Osbourne, former lead singer of Black Sabbath and now organizer of Ozzfest. There's a bizarre quality to this zany collection of family members. But nothing is more odd than watching Ozzy attempting to operate the TV remote or discussing "vagina doctors" with his daughter or complaining about having to clean up the dog's "plutonium turds."
In the early 70s Black Sabbath embodied the dark side of rock. Of course, by the time Sabbath came along Satanism had already become part of rock lore: The Stones sang "Sympathy for the Devil" and Jimmy Page, lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin, dabbled in black magic. The 70s also witnessed the popularity of the bands KISS with its makeup and fake blood spewing guitarist, Gene Simmons, and Alice Cooper, draped in his famous boa constrictor. But these were innocuous, Halloween figures in comparison to Black Sabbath and its relentless, driving, acid rock, which helped define heavy metal and inspired a sort of Dionysian frenzy in its audience. The group's most well-known album, "Paranoid," released in 1971, includes the famous title cut as well as "Iron Man," songs that portend a demonic apocalypse.
A lot of the comedy of The Osbournes comes from the incongruity between Ozzie's rock persona and his pathetic ordinariness at home. In a Homer Simpson sort of way, Ozzy is endearing. He's a physical wreck, walks like E.T., and mumbles incoherently, except when saying "f***k." His kids treat him with an indiscriminate mixture of affection and derision, while his wife, Sharon, runs not only his life but also his career. In response to her suggestion that bubbles should become a regular part of his concerts, all he can muster is the feeble objection: "I won't have f***ing bubbles! I'm the Prince of f***ing Darkness, Sharon!''
But how many viewers know the history of Black Sabbath and its dark prince? The strange thing about the success of the show is that it has reached MTV's coveted youth audience, for whom Sting and Madonna represent the remote origins of contemporary music. The popularity of the show has little to do with music itself or even with the lifestyle of a rock star.
The Osbournes mirrors the trajectory of MTV over the years, a cable network that was originally all about music videos, but is increasingly about anything but the music. Beavis and Butt-Head has given way to reality TV and the adolescent narcissism of The Real World, whose participants are physically more attractive but less humorous and infinitely more pretentious than Beavis. Ozzy, at least, is not pretentious. Neil Young urged rockers, "it's better to burn out than fade away." At a time when one wishes that most geriatric rockers would just go away, Ozzy (already burnt out) has found a way to fade away while remaining in the public eye, to be a star living down and out in Beverly Hills.
The success of The Osbournes has much to do with the apparent authenticity of what is captured on camera, with the sense that these are "real" lives, not actors. (So great is the appetite for authenticity that MTV has established a website for characters in The Real World to describe the real stories behind their edited, reality TV show.) This is of course the ever-elusive goal of all reality TV: the direct, unmediated confrontation with unscripted reality. Or at least something that feels really real. And what could feel more real than the scene where Sharon finds a bottle of Jack Daniels, thinks it's Ozzy's, and runs off to the bathroom to "piss in it" to teach him a lesson?
American viewers may in part be drawn to the show's reversal of the ugly American syndrome, with the British Osbourne family exhibiting such degrees and kinds of dysfunction that, by comparison, the most low-down, redneck American family might revel in its own superiority.
There was a time when rock, drawing upon resources of blues and folk, was genuinely about something. Whatever one thought of its politics, much of 60s rock was about the communication of stories and ideals through the medium of music. The hunger for stories endures but it is now fed by the most banal forms of exhibitionism, by the endless pablum confessions of the daytime talk shows, and by the perverse familiarity and hollow intimacy communicated through the invasive and omnipresent camera of the reality shows. (In this respect, 9/11 seems to have had a negligible impact on our popular culture.) The Osbournes is the latest in what seems to be an endless list of these vacuous reality shows. The pointless contests of Survivor (such as who can stand on a log in water the longest) have given birth to the gross-out competitions of Fear Factor.
The Osbournes is different, however, not of course that it's more elevated — this week's episode featured a close-up of the family dog vomiting. What is peculiar about The Osbournes is that it is a real-life sitcom, a reality-TV farce of an imaginary rock'n'roll life. Providing strong evidence for the elasticity and near bankruptcy of family values, The Osbournes manages in its own way to put family first. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ozzy complains that his neighbors "play music until 4 in the morning." "People think they buy a house and they own Beverly Hills. You don't — you live in a community." In one episode, the Osbournes enforce community standards by throwing a ham into their neighbor's yard.
Like Marge Simpson, Sharon is the protective maternal figure. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she defends Ozzie, saying, "He's not fried. He's just wasted. People wonder why they can't understand him? Well, you'd be hard to understand too if you drank two vats of coffee, two vats of wine, and took 25 Vicodin a day. I can't stop him. The only thing I can do is make sure he's not on the street and make sure he sleeps in a way that he won't choke to death in his vomit."
— Mr. Hibbs is a professor of philosophy at Boston College & author of Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from the Exorcist to Seinfeld.
Exactly!!! I'd hope that this show would be required viewing for pre-teens and teens, just to show what years of drug and alcohol abuse do... Sometimes it's painful to watch Ozzie... I really do feel bad for the guy. If not for Sharon, he would have been dead a long time ago.
Mark
He told his kids that pot was a gate way drug. That message and his deplorable condition will hopefully make an impression on young people.
I love the show and my favorite episode was when Sharon threw the ham at the neighbors and Ozzy threw a piece of firewood through their window. Their neighbors are obnoxious.
Bwhahahaha!! I really need to see this show. Sounds like a Married Man/College Buddy skit. Please tell me the Oz doesn't drive around in a mini-van!!!
Wasn't that hillarious!! He's looking right at the camera too...hahah.. This show is so funny. I saw him in concert years ago.....I would never had dreamed he is like he actually is.
Most of the time he isn't really talking anyway...the camera just shows ozzy doing things around the house...mumbling. It's great.
He does. He was telling his kids once how they're just guests in this country and must obey the laws. He was upset when his daughter got a very small tattoo and told the audience to be unique and not get tattoes because everyone has them.
I know what could be more “real” – a New England college professor totalling missing the point of what he is looking at.
Sharon thought the “Jack” was her son Jack’s, not Ozzy’s.
In fact, it belonged to that hipster-doofus, hanger-on-leech "Dills". I hope they show that loser trying to get back into the house. What a repulsive sponge he is.
I love Ozzy and his music (his latest album was excellent), and the rest of his family is great too. Talk about funny and real. Ozzy reminds me of my dad so much :-)
One reason I think this show is a hit (and with FR types) is that Ozzie and his family don't get preachy. They aren't smug celebrities. It's kind of a breath of fresh air not have a star --and especially one from England --think celebrity status gives them some special insight that the rest of us must sit and listen to.
I read something that MTV is thinking of having more celebrity shows like this ---and right away I thought what a drag that would be ----we get enough of Cher, Julia Roberts, Bono of U2, Alec Baldwin thinking we need their views on politics. The Osbornes were talking about Jacks camping trip with some hippie types, the way they talked about them feeding the trees before they feed themselves was very funny, or when Ozzie asked about the water pressure and Sharon said it was some environmental law in California and suggested they change the plumbing and Ozzie said no, they were guests here and would obey the law ----not because they believe in the reasons for the law---but because they're basically just regular law-abiding people.
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