ANTM: being green is not equal to easy, and issues of reality television in general
Q: So Nora, do you ever get tired of picking apart the "green" cycle of ANTM for its general half-assery?
A: Not when they're jetting off to China with nary a mention of "carbon footprint."
No no, y'all--China, like Old Navy, gets a pass when it comes to the larger questions of sustainability and general environmental consciousness. Oh, La Banks, why did you open up a can of worms that you could never hope to...consume? Put back in the can? Utilize? (What does one do with an opened can of worms? You probably shouldn't store them in the can, so you'll need to transfer the surplus worms to a plastic or glass container before you put them in the fridge...). I accept that the "green" commitment of this cycle is less, ah, of a commitment. My feelings make the following part of the episode even more delicious: our Hopefuls drive out into the desert and are left behind by their biodiesel van in a landscape that is likely to become more familiar and common as the "light green" actions like the things in which ANTM is dabbling fail, and weather patterns become more extreme due to climate change exacerbated (at best...) by human activity. Get used to the heat, friends, because we're all in this kitchen together.
In panel, our guest judge from the design school challenge offers that Lisa isn't the freshest of faces, the youngest or dewiest of the lot. Tyra fires back, musing "why is the modeling industry so obsessed with women looking like children?" Like her chastisement of the poor misguided man-judge/robot (he was a little metallic, no?) would ever make us forget the way they threw Renee under the bus last cycle on account of her not-so-fresh feeling! I'm not saying Banks and her hangers-on have to pick one line and stick with it, I'm just saying they should at least show a little bit of reflection about the things they say, cycle after cycle. Though it is this lack of reflection that gives us one of my favourite things about ANTM: the completely contradictory critiques from one girl to another! We haven't stumbled into it yet this cycle, but I hold out hope. Two cycles ago, the Panel chastised one girl for not ignoring how sick she felt, not pushing through to deliver the shot. Only a handful of eps later, they berated a different Hopeful for ignoring what her body was telling her, for pushing to hard to get the shot. Are girls supposed to sacrifice their health or not? Are they supposed to lose the weight or not? Are they supposed to look "men's magazine" or just regular sexy/available? It's only a taste of the contradictory messages that all women get all the time from all media, but it's stark as hell on ANTM.
Speaking as we were of worms, maybe Tyra et al should have opened up a can of those red worms, for composting. That would have been green. Composting isn't even that hard--and surely, given the amount of food I've seen the Hopefuls eating, there must be some scraps of not bread, not meat, not fat to churn up into some rich, dark compost. In fact, tonight's ep showed Bianca and Heather breaking bread, possibly pasta, together. Sometimes I almost buy the normalcy, you know? Thank the lo' for yet another (shamefully thrilling! I am ashamed by my cheap, cheap thrills!) shower scene. Unfortunately, we are on the receiving end of a dramatically edited, possibly fabricated fight between the previously docile Heather and Bianca. Now, I have it on good authority that it *is* all in the edits, and it's not like we actually get--or expect--reality in our reality television. We like broadly drawn conflict; we want good girls, bad guys, bad girls, good guys, familiar stories, and situations in which we can imagine ourselves and what we'd do differently and better. With reality television in general--and ANTM in particular, filled as it is with young people still learning how they fit in the world--all of the analysis that the "characters" (who are real people, actually) do about their actions and themselves is externalized: the viewer takes part in review, judgment, assessment. Reality television highlights the inability of its participants to immediately and correctly perceive their situations while they are in them and invites the viewer to engage in the introspection that the participant does not or cannot. We get the gift of edited vignettes that give us all we need to make the right decision; we get to instantly compare characters' reactions to similar things, picking them apart for inconsistency. We get many opportunities in this ep, as Bianca (again) gets to go on about how Heather (again) just needs to get over something or other, when just recently we've seen Bianca's inability to get over something. We can see the things she cannot, grow in a way that she seems to not, and use those judgments to feel superiour. It's the same all over reality television and is, I think, what lies at the core of its endurance: we're all comparing ourselves to the participants and coming out ahead. Since they are real people, we think, we're demonstrating our superiority over our peers, and this makes us feel pretty good about ourselves. This is the danger of reality television--this false comparison--because the people aren't people. They are the pastiche of people, people that make good entertainment. This should remove them from the reasonable range of people to whom we, the viewers, should contrast ourselves and ought to keep us humble when we think "I totally could have done that. I totally would *not* have fux0red that Cover Girl commercial. I completely understand this situation and I would have come out of it with much more self knowledge." This comprises my emergent Theory of Reality Television and Viewer Identification and Transference. It is possible that I missed my calling.
So.
On a reality show that's not all that real, with an environmental commitment that isn't all that committed, sending messages as mixed as they are absolute, lead by Tyra's conceit that she might make changes in an industry that has been as unchanged as any in its continual and continuous need for younger, thinner women: what kinds of analysis, what sorts of self-discovery, what critical thinking at all can we make or find, should we expect, might we demand?
None. That's where I come in.
+ + +
Tune in for China next week where, if you all clap your hands very very hard, Ms. J. (runway coach extraordinare) might treat the viewership to some race caricaturization not seen on my television since PBS played "Breakfast at Tiffany's" that weekend this summer! "Miss-ha Go-Rightry, I Must-ah Plro-tesht!"
A: Not when they're jetting off to China with nary a mention of "carbon footprint."
No no, y'all--China, like Old Navy, gets a pass when it comes to the larger questions of sustainability and general environmental consciousness. Oh, La Banks, why did you open up a can of worms that you could never hope to...consume? Put back in the can? Utilize? (What does one do with an opened can of worms? You probably shouldn't store them in the can, so you'll need to transfer the surplus worms to a plastic or glass container before you put them in the fridge...). I accept that the "green" commitment of this cycle is less, ah, of a commitment. My feelings make the following part of the episode even more delicious: our Hopefuls drive out into the desert and are left behind by their biodiesel van in a landscape that is likely to become more familiar and common as the "light green" actions like the things in which ANTM is dabbling fail, and weather patterns become more extreme due to climate change exacerbated (at best...) by human activity. Get used to the heat, friends, because we're all in this kitchen together.
In panel, our guest judge from the design school challenge offers that Lisa isn't the freshest of faces, the youngest or dewiest of the lot. Tyra fires back, musing "why is the modeling industry so obsessed with women looking like children?" Like her chastisement of the poor misguided man-judge/robot (he was a little metallic, no?) would ever make us forget the way they threw Renee under the bus last cycle on account of her not-so-fresh feeling! I'm not saying Banks and her hangers-on have to pick one line and stick with it, I'm just saying they should at least show a little bit of reflection about the things they say, cycle after cycle. Though it is this lack of reflection that gives us one of my favourite things about ANTM: the completely contradictory critiques from one girl to another! We haven't stumbled into it yet this cycle, but I hold out hope. Two cycles ago, the Panel chastised one girl for not ignoring how sick she felt, not pushing through to deliver the shot. Only a handful of eps later, they berated a different Hopeful for ignoring what her body was telling her, for pushing to hard to get the shot. Are girls supposed to sacrifice their health or not? Are they supposed to lose the weight or not? Are they supposed to look "men's magazine" or just regular sexy/available? It's only a taste of the contradictory messages that all women get all the time from all media, but it's stark as hell on ANTM.
Speaking as we were of worms, maybe Tyra et al should have opened up a can of those red worms, for composting. That would have been green. Composting isn't even that hard--and surely, given the amount of food I've seen the Hopefuls eating, there must be some scraps of not bread, not meat, not fat to churn up into some rich, dark compost. In fact, tonight's ep showed Bianca and Heather breaking bread, possibly pasta, together. Sometimes I almost buy the normalcy, you know? Thank the lo' for yet another (shamefully thrilling! I am ashamed by my cheap, cheap thrills!) shower scene. Unfortunately, we are on the receiving end of a dramatically edited, possibly fabricated fight between the previously docile Heather and Bianca. Now, I have it on good authority that it *is* all in the edits, and it's not like we actually get--or expect--reality in our reality television. We like broadly drawn conflict; we want good girls, bad guys, bad girls, good guys, familiar stories, and situations in which we can imagine ourselves and what we'd do differently and better. With reality television in general--and ANTM in particular, filled as it is with young people still learning how they fit in the world--all of the analysis that the "characters" (who are real people, actually) do about their actions and themselves is externalized: the viewer takes part in review, judgment, assessment. Reality television highlights the inability of its participants to immediately and correctly perceive their situations while they are in them and invites the viewer to engage in the introspection that the participant does not or cannot. We get the gift of edited vignettes that give us all we need to make the right decision; we get to instantly compare characters' reactions to similar things, picking them apart for inconsistency. We get many opportunities in this ep, as Bianca (again) gets to go on about how Heather (again) just needs to get over something or other, when just recently we've seen Bianca's inability to get over something. We can see the things she cannot, grow in a way that she seems to not, and use those judgments to feel superiour. It's the same all over reality television and is, I think, what lies at the core of its endurance: we're all comparing ourselves to the participants and coming out ahead. Since they are real people, we think, we're demonstrating our superiority over our peers, and this makes us feel pretty good about ourselves. This is the danger of reality television--this false comparison--because the people aren't people. They are the pastiche of people, people that make good entertainment. This should remove them from the reasonable range of people to whom we, the viewers, should contrast ourselves and ought to keep us humble when we think "I totally could have done that. I totally would *not* have fux0red that Cover Girl commercial. I completely understand this situation and I would have come out of it with much more self knowledge." This comprises my emergent Theory of Reality Television and Viewer Identification and Transference. It is possible that I missed my calling.
So.
On a reality show that's not all that real, with an environmental commitment that isn't all that committed, sending messages as mixed as they are absolute, lead by Tyra's conceit that she might make changes in an industry that has been as unchanged as any in its continual and continuous need for younger, thinner women: what kinds of analysis, what sorts of self-discovery, what critical thinking at all can we make or find, should we expect, might we demand?
None. That's where I come in.
+ + +
Tune in for China next week where, if you all clap your hands very very hard, Ms. J. (runway coach extraordinare) might treat the viewership to some race caricaturization not seen on my television since PBS played "Breakfast at Tiffany's" that weekend this summer! "Miss-ha Go-Rightry, I Must-ah Plro-tesht!"
Labels: ANTM, gender, pop culture, reality television, television
posted by Nora Rocket at 10:25 PM
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