Monday, February 05, 2007
Welcome to Surreality
"Reality is a commodity".
So said Stephen Colbert in his now-famous challenge to viewers to attempt to change the definition of reality on Wikipedia.
I'm sure my post-modernist blogger friend Liz will be pleased to hear that I have come to agree...at least in terms of reality television.
First, a bit of a confession. Da missus and I have a guilty indulgence of watching Beauty and the Geek. It's the only reality show I can bear to watch week after week (and, yes, of course the eye-candy has something to do with it.)
For those of you blissfully unaware of this very silly show, the premise of the show is that eight total geeks and eight total dumb-bunny hotties are locked up in a mansion, where they go through Survivor-style eliminations in pursuit of a big cash prize.
The show wields a double-edged sword of found comedy by setting us up to laugh at both the geeks' complete lack of social skills and the beauties' almost surreal stupidity. Plus, there's the usual triumph-over-adversity and why-can't-we-all-just-get-along pablum.
From the start of the second season onward, I've been acutely aware of the various reality TV manipulations used on the show, particularly the use of ringers. Some of the beauties are not real airheads. In fact, in any given season, several are college students or young professionals.
On the geek side, there's always a couple "geeks" who start the season wearing unstylish clothes and goofy beards. Then comes the inevitable makeover episode and, 'Voila!', it turns out the bearded "geeks" are actually hunks in disguise.
Each season, at least one beauty-geek romance develops, but those never involve one of the real geeks, only the shamming pretty-boys. Yet I wonder how many lonely young fellows have been further deluded to think that, if only they buy the right (brand name) clothes and get the right haircut, they too can date a Hooters waitress or a professional bikini model.
But it isn't the reality TV manipulations that have piqued my post-modernist curiosity. This season, the show has surreptitiously added a new element ... the Beauty and the Geek Myspace reality. It turns out that the whole cast of the show now has Myspace accounts. You can become their "friends", if you like. You can watch as the post-broadcast characters exchange comments and mail with one another. You can micro-analyze to your heart's content over the significance of which girls include the despised Cecille Gahr in the Friends list and which don't (in our house, whenever Cecille appears on screen, Mrs. Mentok hollers "She's disgusting!").
And you will hardly even notice the product placements for Hawaiian Tropics, Dentyne and MTV.
What a wonder of marketing! Reality entertainment for the Google generation. The deeper you Google into the "lives" of the Beauty and the Geek stars, the more false they become.
Of course, this is hardly new. Old-timers of the Internet will remember that the Blair Witch Project was allegedly based on a "true story", through Internet gossip and carefully planted Web easter eggs.
Beyond that, isn't that what language is all about? Isn't all of our use of myth, legend and story throughout time just a shabby infrastructure for our beliefs.
Whoa! We're almost getting into Attempts at Profundity area. Sorry!
Long and short: Beauty and the Geek is a silly little show that has gone to ridiculous lengths to create an Internet back-story for themselves.
How about you, dear readers? Any observations on the increasingly fluid worlds of TV and Internet? Any favourite or unfavourite examples of the Internet used to blur reality (whatever that is)?
posted by Mentok @ 12:31 p.m.,
6 Comments:
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At 9:28 a.m.,
FiL said...
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...if only they buy the right (brand name) clothes and get the right haircut, they too can date a Hooters waitress or a professional bikini model.
Er, I bought Tommy Hilfiger jeans and ended up dating a model waitress with hooters. So you see, it works. She did spring a leak, however... -
At 9:42 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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Now that you mention it, I had much more luck with the hotties when I had my Platinum Blonde style hairdo and wore skull rings. Ever since I switched to my current reverse mohawk doo and started wearing a gold ring, that's all ended. So I guess you're right about haircuts and apparrel ;-)
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At 4:19 p.m.,
Elizabeth said...
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Someone actually stumpted my post-modernist brain the other day. Had a student who wanted to write a paper called something like, 'Did the South exist before William Faulkner?' And I had to be all like, 'Errr..that is a wee bit stupid, yes?'
Anyway! Here's to the all powerful audience, the hegemonic overlords! -
At 4:39 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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Stupid? I'll say. Everyone knows Colonel Sanders invented the South.
Perhaps your hapless student meant William CLARK Faulkner, great-grandfather of the famous one. Historically, that might almost work out. -
At 9:27 p.m.,
jamwall said...
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if they put me in that reality show and removed the cowbell, the hair and the beard, they would get a small japanese woman.
i think i'd probably get disqualified... -
At 10:35 p.m.,
mkecurler said...
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HAH! Leave it to you to shut me up about the weather!
I could be reality show material and all. I could do a show where I bring curling to the inner city children. oooooh! Wait, only the Canadians and people from MN and Wi would watch...nevermind.
