What Is This Show?

I'm not sure. I really haven't watched an entire episode. But, when insomnia prescribes Your Charles a latenite dose of TV, naked, and his existential anxiety accelerates the channel-flipping to Mach 10, such that the tv seems like a strobelight in the dark room, he occasionally, momentarily, stops on MTV's Rob and Big show, where he's seen the duo playing with a net gun (like Spiderman), dirt biking with scooters, trying to find an industrial scale to weigh the big guy, and having their likenesses (along with their dog's and mini-horse's likeness) painted in a seascape at the bottom of their pool. It's all very strange. But the show is improbably compelling, no less. So your Charles endeavored to discover why...

There certainly is a Dadaist element to the show, where these two guys, who are opposites in size and race but are identical in personality, only do nonsensical and incongruous things. The producers put these guys in innocuous situations and they (Rob and Big) just exist inside the show's imposed scenarios, remaining perpetually detached and apart from everything but themselves. They chuckle and snort insidejokes and play with things they shouldn't, and everyone else stands back and let's it happen. It's almost surreal because Rob and Big have no ambition and no purpose other than to fuck around with shit. But when they fuck around with shit, they do it passively, nonchalantly, almost innocently.

But, they do have some ambition. My students have shirts and sweatshirts with the back-to-back B's for Big Black, so these guys started a clothing line at some point. Rob is supposed to be a professional skater and Big Black used to be in the Navy and spent time as a bouncer. Yet, we never see them at any skate competitions or signing any endorsement deals or doing anything that signifies collecting income to sustain their big house in LA. So it is calculated (by the producers) that these guys get filmed just hanging around. Why?

There is no gimmick to the show like all those horrendous "competition" reality shows or those sleaze bachelor(ette) shows on the same networks. There is no incentive, no prize, no hook. It's just these two guys amusing themselves as the world around them takes itself so seriously They epitomize postmodernity by showing us that there are no objective realities, only subjective ones. Their own subjective world is enough for them - basically skating around and feeding their mini-horse - and, by being immune to the pretensions of everyone else, Rob and Big render the outside worlds they encounter false.

The rodeo, the bike course, the supermarket, the talent agencies are all exposed for their transparent human constructions by Rob and Big. You can see it in the eyes of everyone they meet - they all want Rob and Big to leave asap and quit making a charade of it all. Rob and Big are nonsense, but in doing so, are exposing everything else as nonsense too. They are the white canvas with the big red streak that for some reason, unknown to you, is hanging in the Met. They are the "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll. They are the monkey to the right of your screen unknowingly, but brilliantly typing out Shakespeare and this post.