The Monitor: ‘The Buried Life’ and ‘World of Jenks’

How porous are our borders? Consider the four Canadian stars of MTV’s “The Buried Life.” This season, they’ve streaked at a pro soccer game (and gone to jail for it) and infiltrated the Country Music Television Awards by filching passes. All of this in the name of demonstrating the power of positive thinking, “The Secret” as executed by the choirboy version of “Jackass.”

They presumably are still welcome in this country, further demonstration of the power of the self-determined-living philosophy espoused on their show, one of two MTV programs specializing in cultural tourism and divebomb immersion. The other is “World of Jenks,” a docuseries in which a filmmaker, Andrew Jenks, embeds himself with a different young person on each episode, in hopes of experiencing life through the lens of the other.

Both Jenks and the “Buried Life” four — Ben Nemtin, Duncan Penn, Dave Lingwood, Jonnie Penn — display genuine and winning curiosity and manage to make their earnestness only sometimes insufferable. And they’re in keeping with the recent philanthropic bent to MTV’s reality lineup. But while this is inspiring stuff, it’s also grossly misleading: Can-do attitude is nice, but having a TV show helps too.

Furthermore, both shows are premised upon the invisibility of whiteness. On “The Buried Life,” the stars gain access to spaces where they shouldn’t be because they blend in. In choosing his subjects, Jenks usually picks someone with a radically different background: His own whiteness allows him flexibility and a certain chameleonic quality. On these shows, the presence of the stars — young, tall, handsome white men — is always welcome, benevolent accompaniment and not an incursion.

Jenks’ whiteness is less explicitly a factor, and in the episode where it’s most important, it’s used against him. In the series opener, he spent what appeared to be an extreme amount of time with the rapper Maino, a minor star who spent 10 years in jail. Jenks is a game study, trying to pick up Maino’s gestures and fashion but mostly trying to listen.

But Jenks’ quick-strike immersion has its limitations, which Maino, a skeptical subject, is happy to remind him about. After a minor dust-up between the two, Maino punches Jenks (it’s hard not to sympathize). As Maino is exercising his aggression on Jenks’ face, one of his compatriots is trying to get him to stop, saying over and over again: “Let him live. Let him live.” Later in the episode, Jenks solemnly recalls the moment, suggesting his life was genuinely in danger, when in fact that’s a common idiom that means, roughly, “let him be.” An outsider just passing through, Jenks couldn’t know that. What else doesn’t he know then?

In other episodes, he spends time with an autistic teenager and a mixed martial artist. His most complicated work comes when he spends time with a homeless woman, whom Jenks continually refers to, irritatingly, as “houseless.” There’s an undercurrent of smugness when he brings her to visit her parents and interrogates them about the choices they made that led their daughter to this situation.

At the same time, it’s brave work, even if it is premised upon privileged access. And the recent episode in which he rode along with a young woman involved in animal rescue activities was unnerving to watch, less for Jenks’ own blundering approach than for the sheer intensity of his subject. If letting a clueless filmmaker tag along is a way to draw attention to this work, so be it.

Rarely, though, does it feel like Jenks is trying to impart universal truths. Mostly, he’s seeking self-improvement, a widening of his scope, something he has in common with “The Buried Life” stars, who, even though they pair their own stunts with small acts of charity on each episode, mostly are out for a good story, and good footage to go with it.

They certainly got it in the episode where they infiltrate the CMT Awards, all in the name of Duncan getting to ask out Taylor Swift. It is genuinely thrilling to watch him slip past security and approach Swift, apparently taking her by surprise, and ask her out — though how much of a surprise is an issue, given that a camera was there filming, albeit from a distance and in grainy fashion. Reba McEntire, seated next to her, does her best to keep a straight face. Swift takes the note he prepared and coolly slips it into her dress, probably wondering which security staffer she’s going to get fired. Of course, she ends up saying yes, though the date doesn’t appear on the show, if it ever happened.

Good for him, right? Maybe. Not all the guys’ dreams are so benign. Last season, amid participating in a krump competition and telling a joke on late-night television, the “Buried Life” foursome attempted to play basketball with President Obama, though there was a naivete to how they spoke of the opportunity: “Play ball with Obama” is how they referred to their quest, said with the casualness of people who fail to grasp that the president should, in fact, be out of reach to a bunch of scallywags with cameras.

They failed on the show but eventually succeeded on a subsequent visit to Washington, which demonstrates that access to even the most tightly controlled corridors of power can be pried open if you commodify your privilege enough.

calendar@latimes.com