Queer Eye for the Naked Chick
The beauty and genius of reality TV has always been how it launches relatively normal people … which is to say petty, conniving, weak and tantrum-prone … into utterly unreal situations and pits them against each other like lab rats. Subcategories include career-launch reality TV and socially responsible reality TV.
The latter is today’s subject. The genre began near as I can tell with the relentlessly and unwatchably maudlin “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and continues with “Biggest Loser,” which is actually a great show that gets you inside the hell of obesity and shows people fighting to get out of it with a high-degree of success.* I guess “Beauty and the Geek” has to be counted as socially responsible in the way it teaches disparate groups of people to find value in each other, though the program benefits greatly from self-mocking ridiculousness. Fill in the blank in comments if I missed any key programs in the genre’s evolution. I really don’t get to watch that much TV. “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” was arguably an exercise in social responsibility as an effort to liberate basement-dwelling trolls from their mullets, even if the results ultimately had a square-peg-round-hole quality as it attempted to mold troglodytes into gay hipsters.
Now Queer Eye’s Carson Kressley wants to help large or otherwise off-type women feel good about themselves in “How to Look Good Naked.” Laudable goal gets relatively good Herald review, points off for naked commercialism. Haven’t seen it, suspect it will suffer from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s saccharine sentimentality.
Pop do-goodism is great, but I think what American reality TV right needs now is something like “Queer Eye for the Ultimate Fighter: Chain Match.” Cast of Queer Eye gets chained to cast of Ultimate Fighter, and they have to stay that way until the ultimate fighters turn the makeover artists into muscle-bound kick-boxing knuckleheads and the Queer Eye crowd successfully makes over the steroid set. Follow-on Battle Royale season chains in half a dozen beauties and geeks for four-way action, drops them all in the Mojave Desert, where they have to cooperate to survive, discover that they all are real people with real feelings and something to contribute, and also spruce the place up a little.
Your proposals for making America a better place through televised humiliation and absurdity in comments, please.
* You may want to check the Boston Herald’s own biggest loser project on YouTube here: it started with our tabloid coverage of Tiger Stockbridge’s plans for an epic pig-out binge, a steakhouse crawl before stomach-stapling surgery a year and a half ago. That was met with his surgeon’s subsequent refusal to cut and a local gym’s offer to take Tiger on as a client. The saga continues with the latest on Tiger’s post-workout plans for skin-tightening surgery here.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:01 am on Thursday, January 3, 2008
6 Responses to “Queer Eye for the Naked Chick”
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January 3rd, 2008 at 11:45 am
There was an episode of [i]I Love Lucy[/i], where Lucy concocted a scheme whereby the Murtz’ played her hillbilly parents for a television game show that demanded a sad story to even get to play the game. The most pathetic story won, of course. That’s what [i]Extreme Makeover, Home Edition[/i] reminds me of. Sticky treacle turns to shoe stealing goo as we walk through the program, and the pitiable story of the family or group is told and retold throughout the program. It is unwatchable.
There’s that wife swapping program. I’ve never watched more than the adverts, but that was enough to tell me I don’t want to watch any more. I’m not sure where the nanny program comes in, except one wonders where they find the families willing to subject themselves to national exposure. I can see it with the dog training programs; who wants a rioting, growling dog around?
I don’t mind the occasional story of a person or family that is going through something extraordinary, not of their own making. But we have become a society that feeds on sores, without the balancing stories of the heroism of someone who pulled themselves up by their own effort and wit. Instead it is always someone who comes along and, like a lottery offering a fairy god mother who waves a monied wand and sets the world aright once again, and magically saves the day. Give me a story like [i]Cinderella Man[/i], or [i]The Pursuit of Happyness[/i], that shows what it really takes to make a success.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:47 am
Well shoot. I’ve been having problems remembering which code goes with which blog. It’s the multitude of pills they have me on right now. I have trouble remembering how to tie my shoes (but I don’t really care).
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:51 am
Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards and 4 marines in Survivor Darfur, where the reality is real.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I absolutely refuse to watch any reality game show. Mr. H is addicted to “Survivor - Whatever”, and after a few episodes of that found me writhing with the homicidal wish to choke the contestants, I decided it wasn’t for me. Give me scripts and well-acted drama.
But if I were thinking up one, it would be to put the producers who think up these execrations on a small raft anchored in a shark-infested bay, say Sydney Harbor, and tell them the fastest swimmer wins.
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I must admit that I am an Ultimate Fighter addict. Having said that, this last season sucked. Bad.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm
My idea for a reality show: how’s about we drop off a bunch of moonbats on a desert island with a goal of creating a Gaia sustainable Marxist society and see how long they last? Lefty academics and media types could provide color commentary (for free of course, because profit is theft). Show sponsors could buy advertsing space on the body bags!
Now that would be entertaining! Short lived, but entertaining.