The New Val Image Is, Like, Totally Worse

For everybody out there who, like, hears the term Valley Girl and totally thinks, omigod, gag me with a stereotype, here’s a couple of bulletins from the pop culture front.

First, the good news. Love it or loathe it, that familiar Val image is getting a remake.

Now, the bad news. The new image might be worse.

The old Val archetype, popularized by the musical Zappa family, was an affluent, materialistic, image-conscious teen queen who hangs out at the Galleria. The new Val archetype, now being peddled by the production offices of Aaron Spelling, is a grungy bad boy who lives life on the edges of the law.

I know this because I sat through the two-hour TV pilot of “Malibu Shores” last Saturday night on NBC. That morning, Howard Rosenberg, The Times’ TV critic, had warned readers that one “can lose IQ points just from watching.” He may be right, but I didn’t see his review until it was too late.

Don’t let the title fool you. “Malibu Shores,” a spiritual spinoff of Spelling’s “Beverly Hills 90210,” is as much about the Valley as it is about Malibu. It’s another updating of “Romeo and Juliet.” This time, Romeo comes in the form of Zack, a skateboard thrasher from one of the grittier provinces of the Valley flatlands.

The story begins the night that Zack and his grungy pals head for a night of partying on the beach. When they spot a private property sign, a member of Zack’s crew suggests that they spray-paint over it. They don’t, perhaps because Spelling and NBC don’t want to be accused of encouraging graffiti. There is less circumspection, however, about portrayals of teenagers drinking brewskis on the beach.

On the beach, Zack encounters Chloe, she of the golden tresses. Their eyes meet.

Zack: “Where you from?”

Chloe: “I’m from here. You know, Malibu. And you?”

Zack: “Not here, that’s for sure. . . . I’m from the Valley. The deep, dark Valley, where everything can happen, but nothing ever does.”

Oh, the angst. Maybe it’s not so much “Romeo and Juliet” as “Rebel Without a Clue.” But at any rate, Chloe--decent despite her looks, wealth and privilege--gives Zack her phone number before heading back to her snooty Malibu friends.

“Forget it,” one of Zack’s pals warns him. “She’s out of your league.”

Now, some local viewers may be so incensed that they’ll form the Valley Anti-Defamation League (VAL) and soon be staging hunger strikes outside the gates of Spelling’s Beverly Hills mansion. Or at least they’ll write letters saying, “Why don’t you make positive shows about nice Valley kids, like the Academic Decathlon champs from El Camino Real High?”

The answer, of course, is that Spelling wants to make money. Besides, there’s no denying the Valley’s “deep, dark side.” Zack and his crew pale in comparison to those teenagers who were arrested recently after videotaping themselves doing drive-by paint-ball shootings and even swinging baseball bats at bystanders in the West Valley. That video made “CBS Evening News” on Monday night.

There’s also a kernel of truth to the class attitudes depicted in “Malibu Shores.” Just as the song “Valley Girl” satirized the genuine article, there’s a history of regional snobbery and reverse snobbery between the Westside-Malibu turf and the Valley. A couple of Topanga Canyon teens told me last year how they relate more to the beach because, as these girls put it, the Valley wasn’t really “with it.” Some Valley residents laugh off the put-downs--and some bear grudges.

Nobody should be surprised that Spelling and company exaggerate and exploit the rivalries for dramatic effect. Hollywood--the entertainment industry, that is, not the lines on the map--has been doing this to Los Angeles for years, since it’s the turf Hollywood knows best. And Hollywood knows the Valley better than, say, the South Bay or the San Gabriel Valley, because the Valley is the home to so much of “the biz.”

The downsized economy--the factory closures and aerospace layoffs--help explain the evolution of the Val image. The Zappas’ “Valley Girl” was a child of the ‘80s, when deficit spending juiced the economy. You got the sense that the Val who hung out at the Sherman Oaks Galleria lived south of Ventura Boulevard, but she came to represent the whole region. Now that the poor are getting poorer, we have Zack and his crowd. If their blue-collar blues aren’t bad enough, along comes an earthquake that closes down “South Valley High” and requires them to be bused to “Pacific Coast High” where the rich kids go.

Valley residents who despair of this new teen stereotype may take heart in knowing that the reviews for the “Malibu Shores” pilot were more entertaining than the show itself. “Beach Blanket Stinko,” declared the Washington Post. And there may be some provincial satisfaction in knowing that the Malibu brats are far more loathsome than the Vals. Here’s how John J. O’Connor of the New York Times summed it up:

“The uberwitches of Malibu, obsessed with their hair and clothes, are walking attitudes, the snottier the better. One young thing moans, ‘Nice people give me caries.’ The Valley, or Val, gang shoots hoops in deserted lots and occasionally ventures over to the private playgrounds of the Malibuites, muttering with bravado that ‘beaches belong to the people.’ ”

*

This stopped me. “Caries?” I thought. “What does he mean caries?” I swear, as Aaron Spelling is my witness, that she actually said: “Rich people give me cavities.”

Caries, according to my Webster’s, refers to “death, destruction,” or “decay of bones or, especially, of teeth.” So it’s kind of like cavities.

Truth is, I probably wouldn’t call attention to O’Connor’s error if it wasn’t in the New York Times, that snob of a newspaper. Don’t you just hate the East Coast media elite? That superior attitude, it seems, even affects their hearing.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Please include a phone number.

The new Val archetype, now being peddled by the production offices of Aaron Spelling, is a grungy bad boy who lives life on the edges of the law.