Crowds fill Pell City Civic Center
as show cast comes to promote
Global Championship Wrestling
Story by Loyd McIntosh
Photos by Jerry Martin
Every generation has one of those cultural touchstones where they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news and were forced to take stock of the world around them.
The dates are etched, to borrow a phrase, in infamy: Dec.7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Nov. 22, 1963, the day Lee Harvey Oswald changed the course of history from the third floor of a Dallas office building; Oct. 18, 1987, the great stock market crash otherwise known as Black Monday, when the New York Stock Exchange lost over one-third of its value wiping out billions of dollars in wealth and assets.
But those were tragic events upon which all can agree. In Pell City, depending upon your vantage point, the date to remember was Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012 – the day Honey Boo Boo came to town.
The Fallout
The “stars” of the The Learning Channel reality series, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, made an appearance at the Pell City Civic Center that evening as part of a cross-promotion with Global Championship Wrestling. It was one of the weirdest events to be held in Pell City in many years — and it was one of the most polarizing. Since the moment the announcement was made almost two weeks prior to the event, opinion on the event ran the gamut from frantic anticipation to outright revulsion. All one had to do was check out Facebook on the day of the announcement to take in the citywide freak-out. “Honey Boo Boo and professional wrestling – let the madness begin,” read one Facebook post along with a photo of the Civic Center’s marquee sign. “Surely this is a sign of the apocalypse,” said another post. “Honey Boo Boo and wrestling? Heck yeah, I’m going,” read another.
For the uninitiated, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo focuses primarily on the life of Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, a grade-schooler and beauty-pageant participant, her coupon-clipping, relatively uneducated mother June Shannon, and their life in the poor, rural town of McIntyre, Georgia. Honey Boo Boo gained a following on another controversial TLC program, Toddlers and Tiaras, before getting her own show which debuted in August. It was an immediate hit. For instance, the show’s fourth episode drew more eyeballs than Fox News’ coverage of the Republican National Convention among viewers ages 18-49.
Critics of the show have been loud and harsh, largely due to its portrayal of poor, rural Southerners. A review of the show in Forbes Magazine slammed Here Comes Honey Boo Boo for attempting to portray the family “as a horde of lice-picking, lard-eating, nose-thumbing hooligans south of the Mason–Dixon line.” Even fans of the show admit it can be crude, stereotypical and not the most appropriate show in the world for small children. Combined with GCW — a small, independent wrestling circuit operating throughout Alabama and other parts of the Southeast – this event, believe it or not, had the potential to ruin friendships. “I actually had one person unfriend me on Facebook, and I had another person make some ugly comments about it,” says Jennifer Hannah, a lifelong Pell City resident, elementary school teacher and mother of three.
Hannah says she learned about Honey Boo Boo through her oldest child, Hallie Kate, 12, and, despite its questionable taste, can see how it can be addictive. “You watch it once, and you really can’t quit. It’s like a train wreck.” Hannah also has a pretty wicked sense of humor – not a secret to those who know her well – but is also smart enough to know that the show is likely to be yet another cultural flash-in-the-pan that gets under the skin of the decency police. “I think in a lot of ways, we’re over analyzing the importance of Honey Boo Boo,” says Hannah. “She’s like everything else. She’s here, she’ll come, and she’ll go, and it’ll be over with.”
The Event
Hannah took her daughter and her two elementary-school-age boys, Ty and Cason, to the Civic Center to see Honey Boo Boo and her family and to get an autograph or two, even though she doesn’t allow her sons to watch the show – not that they care about it to begin with. She joined several hundred people from all over the Birmingham area who crammed into the Civic Center for a momentary interaction with the latest reality TV star. “It was fun, and that’s all it was. It’s over and that’s that. I just can’t believe so many people have gotten bent out of shape about Honey Boo Boo coming to town,” Hannah says. “They were very kind and they said Ty was cute.”
At first glance, the combination of professional wrestling and Honey Boo Boo makes a whole lot of sense. Even though there is a lot of low-brow fun inherent in both entertainment choices, the reality is they are very different. First, professional wrestling has a very old-fashioned male audience, albeit, not exclusively. The wrestling fans in the audience enjoy the old-school, flamboyant action, and colorful personalities of the GCW wrestlers. Many of them are senior citizens, and they take their wrestling seriously. Throughout the night, the wrestlers were heckled continuously by an older man in a plaid shirt and camouflage hat screaming at them as though the eventual winner was anything but predetermined.
The fans of Honey Boo Boo, on the other hand, are mostly girls not at all shy about sporting their beauty pageant tiaras as they walk around the gymnasium, signed posters in hand, all but oblivious to the mayhem of a wrestling match going on inside the ropes. For the most part, the two fan bases don’t mix and basically tolerated each other throughout the night. “We love Honey Boo Boo,” says Jodie Phillips of Pell City. She and her preschool-age daughter watch the show together every week. “My daughter loves her, she’s 4, so we can relate. My daughter’s kind of sassy and acts a lot like her, so we had to come see her.”
Phillips says she understands the criticism of the show, but she believes much of it is unfounded and doesn’t believe the show’s young star is being exploited, as many critics have suggested. “I think June does the right thing. They don’t push her, they let her be who she is,” says Phillips. “They don’t try to make her into anybody else.”
Vestavia Hills resident Anita Gray made her first trip to Pell City along with her daughter, Rebekah, and her teenage friend, Emily Capra. Fans of Honey Boo Boo, the trio made the trek up Interstate 20 just to check out the scene and to see the pint-sized TV star. “It’s just funny. She’s hilarious, and we think she’s really smart,” Anita says. “Their family is just kind of a caricature of the South. We’re not from the South originally, so just seeing the caricature is funny to us, because we live in Birmingham, and it’s really not quite like that. I don’t really think there’s anything to criticize, it’s just entertaining.”
Dustin Whittey, a 16-year-old from Gardendale, stands on the far side of the gymnasium away from the door leading into the room where Honey Boo Boo sits with her family, signing autographs. Taking it all in he says, “I would rather watch wrestling than to see Honey Boo Boo any day.” A fan of GCW for about a year, Whittey looks around at the crowd, adding the reality star made amazing business sense. “There are not this many people here, ever. Even though this is probably the biggest arena they have, it’s never this busy. Tonight’s the night. They’re going to make a killing.”
Even though Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is one of TLC’s highest rated programs, there are a few people in the audience who have no clue who Honey Boo Boo is exactly. Take for instance Devan Edward Lee Hunt, a fun-loving, outgoing 23-year-old wrestling fan from Center Point. Being the ever-so-good big brother, he drove his little sister and her friend to Pell City from Springville to see Honey Boo Boo. He believes he was convinced to come to Pell City under false pretenses. “I thought Honey Boo Boo was a wrestler. No joke. I had no idea. I don’t watch TLC,” he says with a huge laugh.
“I was sorely disappointed. So disappointed,” he adds with a big dose of humorous sarcasm. “I was so sure that she was a wrestler. My dad convinced me she was a 7-year-old girl wrestler.”
The Final Verdict
A couple of weeks after the event, Hannah still can’t help but laugh at what she saw the night of Sept. 29. She recalls that GCW wrestling has been coming to her hometown since she was in elementary school, but this was something else entirely. And to those people in her social network who didn’t approve of her taking her own children to see Honey Boo Boo, Hannah says “relax.” As long as your children are grounded, and you’re doing your best to raise your family, you can survive the latest pop culture brouhaha. “For a long time, it was Miley Cyrus. What a stellar role model that turned out to be. Then it was John and Kate, and what a great example of how you want your marriage and family to be.
“The bottom line is this. They’re not like me; they’re not like anyone I know, but whether we’re raising our children the way I think is best, the way you think is best, or the way Mama June thinks is best, we’re still all God’s children. So for us to sit there and judge them really isn’t our place,” Hannah adds. “You can go or not go, or you can watch or not watch. The town survived, and it was an evening of fun that my kids talked about for a good week.”
