We've done this recession/depression thing before. Remember the 1930s? Kind of a shitty time to be a human being needing cash money to get through life. And here we are again, entering something that looks quite similar, if not much worse. But America weathered The Great Depression — not with aplomb, but with mass entertainment that let everyone escape their tribulations. And it appears we'll do the same some 80 years later. Except it won't be The Wizard of Oz distracting us from life's woes, but Gossip Girl and The Real Housewives. But why, when we've got our own economic strife to resolve, are we so caught up in the lives of real and imaginary, rich white people? We won't bother with postulating what it says about our society that Whitney Port and Bethany Frankel are our new heroes, but let's at least make sure we're aware of what the hell we're letting happen.

BACK WHEN THINGS REALLY SUCKED: The Great Depression, 1929-1939

The Oscars
This has happened before. During the Great Depression, Hollywood's movies made a gigantic leap forward, both technologically and how they were received by the public. The first Academy Awards were held in 1929, right around the time that the banks failed and America was thrown into turmoil by a shitty day we've come to know as Black Tuesday. Coincidence? The dovetailing of America's biggest financial tragedy and the rise of our celebrity obsession happened at almost the exact same moment: when DeMille and Fairbanks stood at the Roosevelt Hotel and gave out the first statuette to a room of less than 250 guests.

The Great Escape
The biggest films of the Depression depicted fantasies beyond the reach of the everyman. The Wizard of Oz told a story of a bleak and dreary Kansas transformed into a world of literal gold roads, ruby slippers, and emerald cities. The original Scarface was a ripped-from-the-headlines morality tale that just happened to include the dream of a hard-luck con man growing up to have it all, only to lose it all again in a giant final blowout. (Scarface is perhaps the darker equivalent of Chaplin's Modern Times.) That the story was loosely based around Chicago mobster Al Capone's life made it all the more salacious. Robin Hood (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), and King Kong (1933) were all escapist films that helped people forget their dreary lives of bread lines and inflation as they spent what little money they had on a darkened theater and 90 minutes of living outside themselves.

Zelda and F. Scott: The Depression-Era Brangelina?

Living on the Ritz
Ford and Rockefeller didn't become household names after the fact. These were men who made headlines every day not by stimulating the economy with their millions, but because they were haves and everyone else was a have-not. Were we obsessed with Zelda Fitzgerald because she did anything extraordinary, or because she was the crazy flapper equivalent of Princess Diana or Tricia Walsh-Smith? She was someone who married into fame and fortune, and whose life we watched descend into tragedy with the grim glee of rubberneckers on the highway.

WHEN THINGS REALLY STARTED TO SUCK, AGAIN: The Today Show, 2008-present

The Red Carpet
Though the ratings for the Academy Awards (and in fact, most award shows) have been on the decline in the past several years, America's obsession with celebrity culture has done nothing but increased. The red carpet, where stars show off their disgusting amount of wealth in the form of designer dresses and borrowed jewelry, now comes at us in HD. We tune in to see what Angelina is wearing, who Joan Rivers is mocking and whoever is squeezing their gigantic pregnant selves into a $50,000 Versace gown. This year forecasters are calling for the death of red carpet events and more focus on the awards themselves, which makes sense on a logical level, but in reality will probably destroy the last vestige of interest anyone has in these shows.

It's a Gossip Girl World, We Just Live In It
We might not have our ears glued to the radio anymore, and movies might be more Holocaust-memorials than Dorothy and Toto, but there is still nothing Americans love more than a good fairy tale. Take a look at some of the biggest teen shows out there: 90210, a series about rich Beverly Hills brats screwing and putting the charge on daddy's card; Gossip Girl, the same but with an East Coast zip code; MTV and VH1's plethora of dating shows, giving way to the extreme I Love Money, the ultimate endgame in white trash getting paid; and The Real Housewives/The Hills brands, which focuses on "real" rich people, gaily living their privileged, ridiculous lives. Are these shows out of touch with the struggles of average Americans? Sure, unless you can honestly relate to Chuck Bass' plight of being too rich and tortured, and getting laid too often. But isn't that the point? We're still looking for a fantasy, we just digest it differently. To wit …

The Internet Without Pity
As much as we might love our shows about the problems of rich, white people, we also find them a guilty pleasure. Luckily, the Internet is around to keep us from ever considering the fact that we watch these shows for enjoyment's sake. Rather, we watch them with snarky removal, and quickly run to our message boards on Best Week Ever, Videogum or Television Without Pity, where bloggers point out the ridiculousness of our favorite programs, and we are even quicker to agree — just as soon as the program cuts to commercial break. Television characters (and most celebrities) are no longer people to look up to or admire for their lavish lifetstyle, but to mock. There is a whole online industry based around making fun of Alex McCord and her fey husband. Why? So we can continue to gawk at opulence while maintaining an ironic detachment and saying, "Look at those sad, pathetic people." Meanwhile, how we communicate about shows like Lost or Battlestar Galactica, the real fantasy/escape shows, invoke the more reverent tones of those still in the nickelodeon theaters, transported to another world for only a moment before returning to the mundane banality of our own lives.