This movie was actually released in 2007, so I'm late to the party, but it stuck with me so much for days after watching it that a rant was inevitable.
The plot: Hanna (Kim A-Jung) is an incredibly talented singer, but because of the societal stigma of overweight, she is relegated to the position of "playback singer" for Ami, the hottest new pop princess.
Stuck backstage in a stuffy little booth, Hanna belts it out while Ami, dressed up in typical pop princess stagewear and surrounded by the usual conglomeration of backup singers, dancers and special effects, lip-syncs.
When not recording or lip-syncing for Ami, Hanna moonlights as a phone sex worker, where thanks to her gifts of compassion and patience with her troubled clients as much as her creatitivity and "evocative" skills, she has a loyal following.
Hanna is in love with Ami's producer and boyfriend, Sang-Jun, (played by Jin-mo Ju), who is the only person who is even remotely nice to her.
Western audiences will be shocked by the way BFF Jung-Min (Hyeon-sook Kim) treats Hanna, so much so that the one scene where the girls get matching tattoos and giggle and squeal like actual friends is jarring and out-of-place, and in fact the tattoos are central to a needed plot element, so it is possible that the scene really was "stuck on."
Hanna should face facts and forget about love, Jung-Min tells Hanna, because as far as men are concerned, there are 3 kinds of women in the world, the pretty girls, who is a treasure, the ordinary girl, who is a gift, and then there is the reject. Hanna, of course, is a reject.
Although Sang-Jun's friendliness to Hanna is clearly only that, Ami is jealous of his sincere appreciation for Hanna's talent, and resentful of the fact that she has none herself.
She sets Hanna up with a cruel trick, sending her a dress, supposedly a gift from Sang-Jun, to be worn at his birthday party. Of course the dress is all wrong for Hanna, she looks awful in it, and then Ami shows up in the same dress. She actually looks pretty awful in it too, but that is just my subjective judgment and has nothing to do with the plot.
While a humiliated Hanna hides in the bathroom, she overhears Sang-Jun telling a fretful Ami that they must both be nice to Hanna, or does she want to go back to backup dancer days, because if Hanna walks, Ami's career will end.
In despair, Ami attempts to end her life, but is saved by a call from one of her devoted phone sex clients, who happens to be a famous plastic surgeon.
There follows a funny scene in the surgeon's office, where he is about to throw her out after she asks about getting the miracles he describes done on credit, but quickly changes his mind when Hanna cleverly reveals her "other" identity.
Hanna disappears for a year, during which time Ami's career predictably crashes and burns, and when her Extreme Makeover is complete, she erases her old identity completely, and returns to the world as the slender and beautiful Jenny.
Meanwhile, all the expected drama has been going on behind the scenes as the recording company is losing money by the day, having had to postpone Ami's much-awaited second CD, and a desperate search for a replacement "voice" is underway.
Hanna, as Jenny, auditions, the company (including San-Jun) goes wild, and plans are made to launch Jenny, the new pop princess, while Ami is left out in the failing sitcom pasture of the has-been.
The only person who knows Jenny's secret is Jung-Min, and that only because of the tattoo, which is a big old scoop of artistic license, as it would not have survived a makeover as Extreme as Hanna's, but hey, it's a comedy.
Jung-Min still sucks at being a BFF, though, telling Hanna that women who have had plastic surgery are considered "monsters" by mainstream society, and that even the most forward-thinking men may think it is fine for girls to get work done, "just not MY girl."
When Sang-Jun himself confirms this, using the same words, and her interaction with Sang-Jun continues to be as one-sided and painful for her as it ever was - if his earlier remarks to Ami about only using Hanna were a clue that Sang-Jun is no prize, in his most dramatic scene with Jenny, a raw, tear-your-heart-out moment when Sang-Jun finally understands just how much the woman who stands before him now, the woman who is Hanna, loved his sorry ass, just how sorry an ass that is is brought home to us as as hard as it is to her, and the more hopeful among us may even think we see a clue-stick hovering above the head of Sang-Jun himself.
Jung-Min needed the tattoo to recognize Hanna, but her father, institutionalized due to Alzheimer's or some other non-specified, or at least not understood by me, illness, does not need a tattoo, and when the movie, according to Korean comedy tradition, gets to "the serious part," it is through the scenes involving her father, (Hyon-shik Lim) that we feel the profundity of Hanna's anguish and the extreme emotional effects of the identity crisis in which she now finds herself.
But the one scene that is at once the most Spielbergian wipe-a-tear and bounce-up-and-down-howling-with-delight absurd takes place at Jenny's first concert, where everything hitting her at once, she is unable to perform, and confesses, whereupon the crowd all hold up stick-lights and chant "It's OK! "It's OK" reassuringly as a giant screen behind her fills with the image of Original Recipe Hanna, singing the song that she wrote "while just looking at the stars."
It is during these climactic scenes that Jung-Min finally redeems herself and starts acting like BFF material, and by movie's end, as a new SuperStar is born, and new posters and CD covers that say "Hanna" replace the ones that said "Jenny," even Sang-Jun seems to be trying on a bit of introspection for size, sadly realizing that to the extent his superficial ass may have ever been capable of real feelings, it was to the person Hanna is that his heart has always been drawn, as much as his mind has been drawn to the artist, no matter what she looks like, and that this nascent epiphany is several dollars short and about a year late.
Although especially the first third of the movie contains a lot of frankly offensive lame "fat" jokes and slapstick, as well as plenty of expected standard rom-com content, 200 Pounds Beauty is no ordinary romantic comedy.
Reportedly several famous actresses turned this role down. Maybe they were skittish about donning a "fat suit" Or maybe they read the script.
This would be a difficult role for any actor, but Kim A-Jung steps up, and while she plays nicely off the other actors in the comedic scenes, it is the dramatic moments where she gets the chance to show her chops.
This is an actress who works on her craft, and that someone who is -let's be honest here - NOT a natural comic in the classic sense of the term, nor with decades of experience and training to fall back on - can capture, to any extent, some of the subtleties of "what it would be like" not only to get used to a completely different body - but the instant turnaround in societal attitudes - is pretty impressive.
After a lifetime of being the butt of snickers, cruel jokes and rejection, when she emerges from the seclusion of recuperation from her surgeries, Jenny learns overnight just how different reality is for girls who are considered beautiful. In every situation, from the most casual encounter to potential catastrophe, the treatment she receives, the way people respond to her, is diametrically opposed to everything she has known.
For viewers looking for social commentary, it's there, but the mixed message element nearly obscures it.
I guess if we want to wax philosophical, we could argue that this accurately reflects cultural reality. While on the one hand, lip service about the importance of inner beauty, acceptance and self-love, has become obligatory, a cursory glance at any magazine or screen, large or small, tells a different story.
The wisp-thin girl who conforms to the current standard of beauty, near-universal in the global village that is Modern Today, continues to enjoy a very fat advantage over her older, plumper, different-featured sister, everywhere from the workplace to the lunch counter to the social and dating arena
I know I have just left out whole chunks of this movie, for instance, there is the element of family business drama - Sang-Jun's dad owns the record company, which also employs his brother, and one scene in particular, with a slightly hokey but very effective use of blood as a symbol of, well, blood, is certainly worth a mention, but I have totally failed to praise Hyon-shik Lim sufficiently for his excellent portrayal of Hanna's addled but loving father.
If nothing or no one in 200 Pounds Beauty makes you cry, Hyon-shik Lim will!
If you like pop music, or even if you don't, the songs in this movie will stay in your head for days, and one way or another, find their way to your iPod.
Western viewers will enjoy Kim A-Jung's cover of the old Blondie song "Maria," and a totally new take on Ben E. Hill's R & B classic "Stand By Me" will make you first go "huh?" and then "Yeah!"
Monday, August 3, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
NYC Prep: "Paris Hilton was doing it, so I guess it's cool."
For someone who has, at 17, the spirit of a cartoon 50-something dowager, that Jessie would be so utterly unaware of the nature of fashion industry "intern jobs" awarded to applicants who come with a camera crew gave the First Day at Work segment an almost Chaplinesque, comedy-tinged-with-pathos feel.
But the evidence of the huge disconnect between her perception of her worldly-wise sophistication level and the facts on the ground was a reassuring reminder of the existence of Jessie's only visible teenage girl characteristic.
Except for none of it being quite believable. But then her stated goals do not include a career in acting, so it's all good.
Meanwhile, over at the Jill Stuart show, Taylor disingenuously voices over that the reason Cole doesn't like PC is because he thinks PC was "being mean at Camille's dinner party."
Sorry, Taylor. Nobody's suspension of disbelief bungee stretches that far. Cole doesn't like PC because you talk about him the way my neighbor's 11-year-old talks about the Jonas Brothers. Cole doesn't like PC because, at least for the purposes of the show, you are the Winnie of his Wonder Years, the little red haired girl in his bag of peanuts, his Venus in blue jeans, and no matter how much fun the Keyboard Analyst Posse is having speculating about the tender buds of PC's pullulating sexual preference, Cole doesn't like PC because you so obviously want to tap that.
Watching the fashion show, Taylor realizes that fashion is "like an art."
Watching the models, Cole makes typical teenage-boy-watching-models comments. When one of them succeeds in making Taylor giggle, PC suddenly realizes that his Scornful Aside skills need work, so he tosses a practice one at Cole, advising him to "take notes." The way the sequence was edited, it came off looking like he says this because he is miffed that it is Cole, and not he, who recognizes that one of Stuart's ensembles features a Mary Poppins hat.
Sebastian doesn't really know to which show he has received tickets for. He admits that he's not really into fashion, he's just psyched about hanging out with Kelli.
We are treated to a delightful scene where Sebastian clumsily mumbles to Kelli the glorious tidings that since Taylor has wisely declined to hook up with him, he is prepared to confer upon Kelli all the benefits of First Runner-Up, and Kelli deftly but politely slices him up for sandwiches, and just in case we missed it, declares in her Confessional that "I'm not his backup girl."
Poor Sebastian. Just last week, he was all excited because he scored a date with a Real Live Senior (who thought it would be fun to have a walk-on part with lines in a reality show) who not only talked to him as if he were the little brother of a friend that she had agreed to entertain for an evening, but turned out to actually speak French. And if that weren't enough, his hair was looking a little droopy, and wouldn't even flip right.
Hair-flipping and a very basic vocabulary of heavily accented French comprise Sebastian's surefire panty-dropper repertoire in its entirety, and he knows this. His Fashion Week prospects are looking mighty grim. He is reduced half-heartedly Confessing that he thinks Kelli must be bi-polar.
"There's just protocol"
PC apologizes to Kelli for accusing her of being younger than 16. If what you need is a good, old-fashioned nostalgic sigh, reach back far enough to remember just what a Grievous Offense that is.
Kelli does not accept the apology. Instead, she retaliates by accusing PC of fighting like a girl.
At the Pamela Roland show, PC greets Devorah of Social Life Magazine with a kiss and a compliment. Jessie scurries off and installs herself and Cat The Friend in PC's front row seats. It is the cruelest punishment she could impose on PC, and before he knows it, he is Making a Scene. At Fashion Week!
Humiliated, he Confesses that Jessie is a fat bitch. From his disgraceful second row seat, he leans over and hisses an epithet at her. After the show, Jessie and PC continue bickering, pecking at each other like fretful chickens. Cat the Friend is over it, and bails.
Jessie Confesses that people in the fashion industry are sometimes not who they say they are, and informs us that she is not like that.
Kelli and Camille go shopping. Kelli admires some boots. "I like them - for you," says Camille, skillfully dripping equal amounts of condescension on both boots and Kelli.
Undeterred, Kelli tells Camille that her singing teacher wants her to have an Edge and an Image. "That's funny, thinking that she doesn't think you are, you know, put together enough," Camille sneers delicately, looking Kelli up and down.
Kelli tries to save face in her voiceover. "I think Camille is confused about what an Image is."
Camille confesses that she thinks Kelli was "taken aback" by her "questioning."
Jessie gets another faux intern job with Carmen Marc Valvo. She arrives late, but the camera crew is on time, and Jessie is forgiven and even permitted to hand out press kits.
Kelli meets with the stylist, and inexplicably takes Camille along. Camille continues her "questioning" with the stylist.
Camille Confesses that even though they all go to fancy dinners, it is ridiculous for a teenage girl to have a stylist.
"You can tell when someone's not from New York, and just like, not like a real person."
Jessie decides to kill two birds with one stone: make up with PC and show off her new job at Carmen Marc Valvo, so she invites him to the show, but is upset when he shows up with a full court posse in tow - and if that weren't bad enough, Jessie Confesses, he brought people who were "(meaningful pause)different (pause redux) from everybody else that was there." PC, she informs us, knows better.
And the hits just keep on coming. Not only does PC bring one, possibly two gay men to a fashion show (a stylist and a photographer, shrugs PC in voiceover)but which Jessie considers "just not right," but he also invites Devorah the magazine editor.
"Why is she talking to PC?," Jessie wails. It grosses her out. PC should get to know people before he hangs out with them. She doesn't know them well enough to know if they are good people or not. They are 20-something.
She tells PC she is hurt, and she doesn't think he should go out with them after the show. He has time to do that in the future. PC tells Jessie that he isn't going out.
"What's her drama?" asks a bewildered Devorah. PC says he doesn't want to talk about it, and off he goes with Devorah to Buddah Bar, gallantly holding an umbrella over her head, leaving Jessie forlorn and alone in the Carmen Marc Valvo tent.
Things are looking up for Sebastian after all! He has a date "with this really hot girl I met at a party." When he agrees with her that "flambe" means "like on fire," she asks him if he is French.
"Wee," he replies, with a toss of head and hair. Sebastian has high hopes for this one, but is visibly horrified to discover that she attends public school, and immediately declares that the date is over.
This girl not only wanted a reality show walk-on, she really wanted to hook up with Sebastian, and asks if she can at least touch his hair. (It's doing much better today. He must have remembered to volumize). He refuses, and later Confesses that he thought that was weird. For once, he's right.
After gushboasting to a singularly unimpressed friend about her heady experiences at the fashion show and what an impressive manho PC is rumored to be, starstruck Taylor Confesses that she "isn't sure if it's cool to be bisexual, but it's cool that PC is bisexual."
Jessie returns to Carmen Marc Valvo, and is sent to a warehouse in New Jersey to match pictures to clothes and pull accordingly. She is thrilled to be trusted with such an important task.
But she's not thrilled with PC!
There is a really long-ass segment of her variously berating him, interspersed with Confessional, voiceover, back to harangue, and I Confess that I sort of tuned it out shortly after I heard the word "heartbreaking."
While all we saw was a couple of polite inquiries about whether she and her friend had enjoyed the show, to hear Jessie tell it, both Carmen Marc Valvo and his press dude are so consumed with the terrible awfulness of the disgusting, subhuman vermin that PC brought to the fashion show that they can think of nothing else, because "Guests of guests do not bring guests," and now Jessie's job is in jeopardy, and Carmen and the press dude have lost all respect for her, at the very thought that she might possibly know such wretched creatures, but despite all that, her only concern is to protect PC from predators who only want to use him for his money.
Jessie begins to cry and asks that the Confessional stop.
PC confesses that he loves Jessie to death and would do anything for her. He offers to send Carmen Marc Valvo a note, even personally go to the office, which finally shuts her up.
Well played, PC! Check, and mate!
Jessie hands over her queen without a fight, and mumbles something about really wanting the job. Since the last thing we heard they were telling her what she would be doing next week, this appears to be something of a non-issue, and thus the perfect note on which to end the episode.
But the evidence of the huge disconnect between her perception of her worldly-wise sophistication level and the facts on the ground was a reassuring reminder of the existence of Jessie's only visible teenage girl characteristic.
Except for none of it being quite believable. But then her stated goals do not include a career in acting, so it's all good.
Meanwhile, over at the Jill Stuart show, Taylor disingenuously voices over that the reason Cole doesn't like PC is because he thinks PC was "being mean at Camille's dinner party."
Sorry, Taylor. Nobody's suspension of disbelief bungee stretches that far. Cole doesn't like PC because you talk about him the way my neighbor's 11-year-old talks about the Jonas Brothers. Cole doesn't like PC because, at least for the purposes of the show, you are the Winnie of his Wonder Years, the little red haired girl in his bag of peanuts, his Venus in blue jeans, and no matter how much fun the Keyboard Analyst Posse is having speculating about the tender buds of PC's pullulating sexual preference, Cole doesn't like PC because you so obviously want to tap that.
Watching the fashion show, Taylor realizes that fashion is "like an art."
Watching the models, Cole makes typical teenage-boy-watching-models comments. When one of them succeeds in making Taylor giggle, PC suddenly realizes that his Scornful Aside skills need work, so he tosses a practice one at Cole, advising him to "take notes." The way the sequence was edited, it came off looking like he says this because he is miffed that it is Cole, and not he, who recognizes that one of Stuart's ensembles features a Mary Poppins hat.
Sebastian doesn't really know to which show he has received tickets for. He admits that he's not really into fashion, he's just psyched about hanging out with Kelli.
We are treated to a delightful scene where Sebastian clumsily mumbles to Kelli the glorious tidings that since Taylor has wisely declined to hook up with him, he is prepared to confer upon Kelli all the benefits of First Runner-Up, and Kelli deftly but politely slices him up for sandwiches, and just in case we missed it, declares in her Confessional that "I'm not his backup girl."
Poor Sebastian. Just last week, he was all excited because he scored a date with a Real Live Senior (who thought it would be fun to have a walk-on part with lines in a reality show) who not only talked to him as if he were the little brother of a friend that she had agreed to entertain for an evening, but turned out to actually speak French. And if that weren't enough, his hair was looking a little droopy, and wouldn't even flip right.
Hair-flipping and a very basic vocabulary of heavily accented French comprise Sebastian's surefire panty-dropper repertoire in its entirety, and he knows this. His Fashion Week prospects are looking mighty grim. He is reduced half-heartedly Confessing that he thinks Kelli must be bi-polar.
"There's just protocol"
PC apologizes to Kelli for accusing her of being younger than 16. If what you need is a good, old-fashioned nostalgic sigh, reach back far enough to remember just what a Grievous Offense that is.
Kelli does not accept the apology. Instead, she retaliates by accusing PC of fighting like a girl.
At the Pamela Roland show, PC greets Devorah of Social Life Magazine with a kiss and a compliment. Jessie scurries off and installs herself and Cat The Friend in PC's front row seats. It is the cruelest punishment she could impose on PC, and before he knows it, he is Making a Scene. At Fashion Week!
Humiliated, he Confesses that Jessie is a fat bitch. From his disgraceful second row seat, he leans over and hisses an epithet at her. After the show, Jessie and PC continue bickering, pecking at each other like fretful chickens. Cat the Friend is over it, and bails.
Jessie Confesses that people in the fashion industry are sometimes not who they say they are, and informs us that she is not like that.
Kelli and Camille go shopping. Kelli admires some boots. "I like them - for you," says Camille, skillfully dripping equal amounts of condescension on both boots and Kelli.
Undeterred, Kelli tells Camille that her singing teacher wants her to have an Edge and an Image. "That's funny, thinking that she doesn't think you are, you know, put together enough," Camille sneers delicately, looking Kelli up and down.
Kelli tries to save face in her voiceover. "I think Camille is confused about what an Image is."
Camille confesses that she thinks Kelli was "taken aback" by her "questioning."
Jessie gets another faux intern job with Carmen Marc Valvo. She arrives late, but the camera crew is on time, and Jessie is forgiven and even permitted to hand out press kits.
Kelli meets with the stylist, and inexplicably takes Camille along. Camille continues her "questioning" with the stylist.
Camille Confesses that even though they all go to fancy dinners, it is ridiculous for a teenage girl to have a stylist.
"You can tell when someone's not from New York, and just like, not like a real person."
Jessie decides to kill two birds with one stone: make up with PC and show off her new job at Carmen Marc Valvo, so she invites him to the show, but is upset when he shows up with a full court posse in tow - and if that weren't bad enough, Jessie Confesses, he brought people who were "(meaningful pause)different (pause redux) from everybody else that was there." PC, she informs us, knows better.
And the hits just keep on coming. Not only does PC bring one, possibly two gay men to a fashion show (a stylist and a photographer, shrugs PC in voiceover)but which Jessie considers "just not right," but he also invites Devorah the magazine editor.
"Why is she talking to PC?," Jessie wails. It grosses her out. PC should get to know people before he hangs out with them. She doesn't know them well enough to know if they are good people or not. They are 20-something.
She tells PC she is hurt, and she doesn't think he should go out with them after the show. He has time to do that in the future. PC tells Jessie that he isn't going out.
"What's her drama?" asks a bewildered Devorah. PC says he doesn't want to talk about it, and off he goes with Devorah to Buddah Bar, gallantly holding an umbrella over her head, leaving Jessie forlorn and alone in the Carmen Marc Valvo tent.
Things are looking up for Sebastian after all! He has a date "with this really hot girl I met at a party." When he agrees with her that "flambe" means "like on fire," she asks him if he is French.
"Wee," he replies, with a toss of head and hair. Sebastian has high hopes for this one, but is visibly horrified to discover that she attends public school, and immediately declares that the date is over.
This girl not only wanted a reality show walk-on, she really wanted to hook up with Sebastian, and asks if she can at least touch his hair. (It's doing much better today. He must have remembered to volumize). He refuses, and later Confesses that he thought that was weird. For once, he's right.
After gushboasting to a singularly unimpressed friend about her heady experiences at the fashion show and what an impressive manho PC is rumored to be, starstruck Taylor Confesses that she "isn't sure if it's cool to be bisexual, but it's cool that PC is bisexual."
Jessie returns to Carmen Marc Valvo, and is sent to a warehouse in New Jersey to match pictures to clothes and pull accordingly. She is thrilled to be trusted with such an important task.
But she's not thrilled with PC!
There is a really long-ass segment of her variously berating him, interspersed with Confessional, voiceover, back to harangue, and I Confess that I sort of tuned it out shortly after I heard the word "heartbreaking."
While all we saw was a couple of polite inquiries about whether she and her friend had enjoyed the show, to hear Jessie tell it, both Carmen Marc Valvo and his press dude are so consumed with the terrible awfulness of the disgusting, subhuman vermin that PC brought to the fashion show that they can think of nothing else, because "Guests of guests do not bring guests," and now Jessie's job is in jeopardy, and Carmen and the press dude have lost all respect for her, at the very thought that she might possibly know such wretched creatures, but despite all that, her only concern is to protect PC from predators who only want to use him for his money.
Jessie begins to cry and asks that the Confessional stop.
PC confesses that he loves Jessie to death and would do anything for her. He offers to send Carmen Marc Valvo a note, even personally go to the office, which finally shuts her up.
Well played, PC! Check, and mate!
Jessie hands over her queen without a fight, and mumbles something about really wanting the job. Since the last thing we heard they were telling her what she would be doing next week, this appears to be something of a non-issue, and thus the perfect note on which to end the episode.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
More To Love Does Not Get A First Impression Rose
Predictably, this show is being pimped as some kind of At Long Last! Inspiring Ray of Hope for the world's 98 or so % of women who are not size 0-2.
It's really just a Chubby Chaser version of the Bachelor. The Grand Prize is Luke, one of those dudes.
What, exactly, would be the difference in someone who didn't want you because of your size and someone who did want you because of your size?
It's pretty much a zero-sum game (pun not intended but left there anyway).
That said, if you loves you some trashy reality show (and who among us does not?) then Yay! Here's a new one!
In the parade of contenders, we were treated to such inspiring and hopeful jewels of self-love as "I'd like to lose 50 pounds" and "I prefer to think of myself as 'big-boned'"
The main thing to me that stuck out about these hamsters compared to the average Bachelor selection is that there is a much higher % of beauties. Now I know that's a subjective judgment, but it's still true. A few of them are weapons grade beautiful - Turn-around-in-the-street-and-stare-even-if-you're-a-straight-woman gorgeous, which I haven't seen on The Bachelor or any other reality show, and only one of Luke's choices is plug-ugly, which I have seen quite a lot of on other reality shows, including the Bachelor, and no, I will not name names.
I heard one girl whimper that she finally loves herself. Maybe one day the thought won't make her cry. Oh well, it's a journey, I guess. Baby steps.
Anna-The-Goddess and Sandy both say that they think they intimidate people, but the one who should really worry about that is Arianne, who might want to consider changing the pronunciation of her name. And I would make the same recommendation even if she were five feet tall and weighed 90.
And just in case anyone needs to be told this, a woman who is 5'7" and weighs 180 is "plus size" in the same way that she is "short."
Just as most women in, for example, the US, are size 14 and up, most women are also 5'4" and under.
Somebody tell me if I missed it, but I counted a total of 1 hamster on this show who was 5'4", and 0 under that. Most of them appeared (coincidentally, I'm sure) to be at least or above the minimum height for fashion models, plus size or otherwise.
Which, by the way, is fine with me. I hope they get work. And I guess the fact that even a couple who are "too short" to model made the final cut is remarkable.
It's really just a Chubby Chaser version of the Bachelor. The Grand Prize is Luke, one of those dudes.
What, exactly, would be the difference in someone who didn't want you because of your size and someone who did want you because of your size?
It's pretty much a zero-sum game (pun not intended but left there anyway).
That said, if you loves you some trashy reality show (and who among us does not?) then Yay! Here's a new one!
In the parade of contenders, we were treated to such inspiring and hopeful jewels of self-love as "I'd like to lose 50 pounds" and "I prefer to think of myself as 'big-boned'"
The main thing to me that stuck out about these hamsters compared to the average Bachelor selection is that there is a much higher % of beauties. Now I know that's a subjective judgment, but it's still true. A few of them are weapons grade beautiful - Turn-around-in-the-street-and-stare-even-if-you're-a-straight-woman gorgeous, which I haven't seen on The Bachelor or any other reality show, and only one of Luke's choices is plug-ugly, which I have seen quite a lot of on other reality shows, including the Bachelor, and no, I will not name names.
I heard one girl whimper that she finally loves herself. Maybe one day the thought won't make her cry. Oh well, it's a journey, I guess. Baby steps.
Anna-The-Goddess and Sandy both say that they think they intimidate people, but the one who should really worry about that is Arianne, who might want to consider changing the pronunciation of her name. And I would make the same recommendation even if she were five feet tall and weighed 90.
And just in case anyone needs to be told this, a woman who is 5'7" and weighs 180 is "plus size" in the same way that she is "short."
Just as most women in, for example, the US, are size 14 and up, most women are also 5'4" and under.
Somebody tell me if I missed it, but I counted a total of 1 hamster on this show who was 5'4", and 0 under that. Most of them appeared (coincidentally, I'm sure) to be at least or above the minimum height for fashion models, plus size or otherwise.
Which, by the way, is fine with me. I hope they get work. And I guess the fact that even a couple who are "too short" to model made the final cut is remarkable.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Southern Belles Louisville: The Belles Toll a Toneless Farewell
So this uncomfortable little Real Housewives Lite knockoff has come and gone like the slightly queasy morning after a night spent consuming a surfeit of questionable seafood.
I did get a small chortle when one of them accidentally alluded to their not having known each other from Adam's old fox before the show.
Shea will, and should, end up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.
I have known about 8 dozen versions of Shea over the years, and she always ends up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.
Her obligatory post-emotional trauma drastic hair change is an object lesson for fair-complected brunettes everywhere: No matter what anybody tells you about how lightening your hair will make you look soft and youthful, do NOT do it without first experimenting with a wig to make sure that it does not totally ERASE you!
If we cared to dig deeply enough, which I don't, the "real dirt" we would probably uncover is that they were all recovering from unsuccessful attempts at modeling careers, or unsuccessful attempts at thinking about one, and that Julie is the only one who owns up to it. And will probably be the only Belle who, as a result of the show, achieves it.
I loved her nail polish at the dinner in the opening segment!
It was this really pretty dark burgundy color, which means that while it is perfect on cinnamon-dusted Julie, it probably wouldn't work on dirty mustard-dusted Weimeraner me. Burgundy clothes work fine, but every burgundy nail polish I have tried just makes my hands look sickly, especially now that both sun exposure and melanin production have been discontinued.
But I digress.
I also really liked Hadley's silver necklace at the going-away party, and I hate her for having a big ass enough head to be able to wear a wide headband like that, especially a tacky silver lace one. But I would do one that was silver lace all around, not lame elastic in the back. What was she thinking?
So captivated was I by that silver lace, that while Shea was strolling around Jeff's Dream House, I developed a love-hate relationship with that over-Bedazzled prostitution whore of a black and silver car coat.
I was glad to see that Kellie came to her senses, but I am still so annoyed by the very existence of that butt-fugly gray sweater of hers with that enormous turtleneck. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic. Come to think of it, that whole enveloped in giant folds of bulkachunk wool seems to be a sort of sartorial leitmotif for her. Is it that cold in Louisville?
If you can get past all that supersize knitting, Kellie is a sort of Modern Today version of a classical Dutch Baroque beauty, and it's a shame that at her age, she still doesn't know what to do with it.
Speaking of people standing around holding giant lumps of beauty, turning it over and over in their hands and looking puzzled, I would really like to get a hold of Hadley's mama. Although that haircut has become ubiquitous and tiresome, it's the only thing she's doing right. It also appears to be the only thing she's doing.
But she did make me spend several minutes wondering if I should ask my hair designer if she thinks I should add spiky bangs to my own copy of the ubiquitous and tiresome haircut.
I so miss the squillion different length layers hairdo that looked like it had been done with a Weed-Whacker. When is that one coming back in style? I didn't even have to comb it. Plus if you have very coarse, straight hair like I do, it will naturally stick out in all directions, giving the illusion of volume.
I would be very surprised if funding is found for a season 2 of this forlorn thing. The hamsters were spectacularly unremarkable, and failed to produce enough sensation or drama to compensate for that.
I did get a small chortle when one of them accidentally alluded to their not having known each other from Adam's old fox before the show.
Shea will, and should, end up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.
I have known about 8 dozen versions of Shea over the years, and she always ends up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.
Her obligatory post-emotional trauma drastic hair change is an object lesson for fair-complected brunettes everywhere: No matter what anybody tells you about how lightening your hair will make you look soft and youthful, do NOT do it without first experimenting with a wig to make sure that it does not totally ERASE you!
If we cared to dig deeply enough, which I don't, the "real dirt" we would probably uncover is that they were all recovering from unsuccessful attempts at modeling careers, or unsuccessful attempts at thinking about one, and that Julie is the only one who owns up to it. And will probably be the only Belle who, as a result of the show, achieves it.
I loved her nail polish at the dinner in the opening segment!
It was this really pretty dark burgundy color, which means that while it is perfect on cinnamon-dusted Julie, it probably wouldn't work on dirty mustard-dusted Weimeraner me. Burgundy clothes work fine, but every burgundy nail polish I have tried just makes my hands look sickly, especially now that both sun exposure and melanin production have been discontinued.
But I digress.
I also really liked Hadley's silver necklace at the going-away party, and I hate her for having a big ass enough head to be able to wear a wide headband like that, especially a tacky silver lace one. But I would do one that was silver lace all around, not lame elastic in the back. What was she thinking?
So captivated was I by that silver lace, that while Shea was strolling around Jeff's Dream House, I developed a love-hate relationship with that over-Bedazzled prostitution whore of a black and silver car coat.
I was glad to see that Kellie came to her senses, but I am still so annoyed by the very existence of that butt-fugly gray sweater of hers with that enormous turtleneck. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic. Come to think of it, that whole enveloped in giant folds of bulkachunk wool seems to be a sort of sartorial leitmotif for her. Is it that cold in Louisville?
If you can get past all that supersize knitting, Kellie is a sort of Modern Today version of a classical Dutch Baroque beauty, and it's a shame that at her age, she still doesn't know what to do with it.
Speaking of people standing around holding giant lumps of beauty, turning it over and over in their hands and looking puzzled, I would really like to get a hold of Hadley's mama. Although that haircut has become ubiquitous and tiresome, it's the only thing she's doing right. It also appears to be the only thing she's doing.
But she did make me spend several minutes wondering if I should ask my hair designer if she thinks I should add spiky bangs to my own copy of the ubiquitous and tiresome haircut.
I so miss the squillion different length layers hairdo that looked like it had been done with a Weed-Whacker. When is that one coming back in style? I didn't even have to comb it. Plus if you have very coarse, straight hair like I do, it will naturally stick out in all directions, giving the illusion of volume.
I would be very surprised if funding is found for a season 2 of this forlorn thing. The hamsters were spectacularly unremarkable, and failed to produce enough sensation or drama to compensate for that.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Southern Belles Louisville: Lord, this show makes me preachy!
Mercifully, subsequent episodes of this show have not been quite as "raw" as the "premiere," maybe it was just a learning curve thing, with the 1st couple of airings taking viewers along for the ride - an extra bonus layer of "reality" as the producers figure out just how much of that commodity viewers should be asked to stomach.
To atone for past sins, the last couple of episodes have featured some frankly comical overstaging - like the "slumber party," but it's Julie's "babysitting" sequence that, for all its hilarity, gives our suspension of disbelief a serious workout!
First, we are asked to accept the idea that Julie, in the 35 years she has been alive, has never spent so much as an hour or two alone with any children.
From there we glide into the idea that her first-ever conversation with her father on the subject of whether she might one day wish to be a parent occurred last week, and then it is just a hop-skip to Julie's grand Epiphany that in order to find out how becoming a mother would change her life, she should spend an afternoon babysitting - not one, not two, not even three - but FOUR small children!
Enter two of Julie's good friends - each with two daughters of about the same age - two sets of extremely telegenic sisters, one pair blonde, one pair brunette, all completely at ease with lights, crew and camera.
Of course we only see what makes it out of the editing room, but it does not appear that the two sets of sisters have ever played together before. All the interaction between the children that we are shown involves sister playing with sister. Kids who know each other would be much more likely to pair off according to age, kids who have never met will tend to interact with their respective sibling.
This show just might be a contender for the Mostest.Audrinage.Ever reality show tradition award - if some, even most, of the cast of the various Real Housewives shows were only glancingly acquainted with each other prior to the first day of shooting, the Belles' lack of shared "history" is glaring.
Nevertheless, as I continue to watch it, I find that it provides as much fodder for sober refection as for helpless giggling fits.
Kellie's situation, for example, is heart-rending, a grim reminder that whether it feels awkward, weird, even inappropriate, the time for the "Do You Want Kids?" talk (or more kids, if one of you has, like Kellie's Jeff, already obtained offspring) is preferably the second, but no later than the third date, BEFORE either party has had a chance to become "emotionally invested" enough to cause serious damage should there be a wide variance in their respective views on this subject.
It's a thought-provoking illustration that no matter how trashy the show, how stupid the script, or how inane the hamsters, even the lamest and most superficial television shows can educate, even illuminate, and this is something that every one of the "single ladies" - and their single brothers - who watch this show can "take away" from it, and receive the huge benefit of saving themselves from the kind of agony Kellie is suffering, an agony that would be even more emotionally eviscerating, even more causative of permanent harm, if Jeff were not such a tool.
At least when it is all over, she will have the comfort of relief that she did not make a permanent committment to a total asswipe.
Shea, who also has a Jeff, is confronting basically the same issue, at least in my view, since I don't make a large distinction on the basis of species.
Even if we lay aside their housing preferences - while Jeff dreams of mulching and mowing as proud handyman and householder, Shea's notion of the ideal home involves maid service and a spa on the premises - the real non-negotiable, potential deal-breaker is that Jeff comes with what is, for all practical purposes, a child.
The well-being of dependent family members who share one's home, whether human or not, can be neither relegated to the status of non-essential "extra," nor swept aside entirely, and anyone who would even consider such a thing is presenting empirical evidence that they are NOT husband material.
If they are capable of, much less willing, to renege on their committment to that being or beings, what could one expect who considers choosing such a person as life partner? And this goes both ways. If Shea can so easily dismiss the needs of Jeff's dog - well, in the case at hand, Shea has already been pretty upfront with Jeff about just what kind of living hell he could expect, and indeed the internet buzz is that he has wisely delivered himself - and his pupdog - from such a grisly fate, and empowered Shea to return to the garden to seek a more suitably crushable flower.
That this match was doomed was pretty much foretold in every frame of Shea-and-Jeff footage that made it to air, and in case there were any doubts, it was writ large in big red flags in the scene where Shea takes Jeff for a pre-marital counseling session with an gentleman who looks eeriely like Emily's creepy dad. Shea believes that the counseling will prevent her from ending up divorced like her parents.
"I have changed so much for you," Jeff blurts. Shea asserts that she has seen no change, but whether she has or not, whether it is even objectively true or not, if such a sentiment is in the heart of either party, that relationship is dead in the water.
Ideally, true love does change us, in that it makes us want to be, and become, better people, the best version of ourselves, but that's several galaxies away from Jeff's orbit.
As always, even as we keep in mind that the footage of each hamster is deliberately edited for the purpose of drawing a particular "character," we are also obliged to recognize the flip side of that: no matter what they leave out, no matter how they change or remove from context entirely - if the hamster doesn't say or do it, they won't have it to leave in.
Although it may be that Shea's footage is edited frame by frame in order to paint for us a portrait of a woman completely devoid of substance, if we assess the footage that she has given them to work with, we can come to no other conclusion that she is either a talented actress or that there really is no "there" there.
Internet personality aklein has called Emily "painful to watch." She has, aiklen remarks sadly, "emotional maturity of a 12 year old."
It's hard to come up with a credible rebuttal to that.
I am so not the appropriate person to defend any of these hamsters, but in fairness, there was a scene where Emily's Xtreme Cage Match Creepy dad was ragging on her about her hair, while Mama just sits there and says nothing, and there was something about it that looked like it was one of the more natural and effortless bits of footage we are likely to see on any reality show. I got the distinct feeling Emily heard that song with dismal regularity, just another number in CreepyDaddy's extensive repertoire of Pick on Emily showstoppers.
Whether Emily's dad is "for real" or not is a tough call. On the one hand, we have all known people with the misfortune of having parents like that. If it's a role and he is an actor, he has certainly "committed" to the character. He has it down, down to the teensiest creepy nuance.
This is probably born more of wishful thinking for Emily's sake than concrete perception, but a couple of times he has appeared to be mugging for the camera in an almost SpencerPrattian cartoon villain face mode.
I would be willing to bet that there is a connection between Emily's emotional development issues and having grown up with a father who considers his daughter having physically "matured too early" as a sort of inexpiable indiscretion, an unforgivable transgression for which he is still reprimanding her even as her thirtieth (or 30-something) birthday approaches.
Emily is presented to us as the classic damaged bird, her plumage dulled by a lifetime of stern reproaches for having ever had any plumage, without an ally, reviled in the nest which should have nurtured her, and which she now fears to leave, torn between what remaining shreds she has of natural, healthy instincts to go forth and be a person, pitted against the sheer terror of displeasing the father she has never, can never please, who has devoted himself to steadily and relentlessly breaking her down, convincing her that she is essentially incapable of personhood, and her female role model appears to conform to that ideal. Emily's mother is painted as a non-entity, an empty cipher who silently accepts Ogre Dad's condemnation of her daughter.
Her determination to move to Las Vegas may not be the shrewdest move, nor her aspirations of becoming a high profile broadcast journalist the best match for her aptitudes and abilities, but that she has enough "oomph" left into her to recognize and follow the self-preservation instinct to get the hell away from her toxic Daddy is a positive and hopeful sign.
Ironically, while it is Emily who dreams of becoming a TV star, it is Hadley the Flounderer who has the face for it, though she, too, appears to suffer from an extreme case of arrested emotional development, in some ways even more fundamental and deep-seated. So much so that if I were obliged to bet on which of the two would "succeed," in terms of growing into a whole and functional person, I would put my money on Emily.
The character of Hadley is as materially empty and vacuous as Shea, at least as she is presented to us, and as always with the understanding that she could be acting, playing a role that was assigned to her.
Lord, this show makes me preachy!
To atone for past sins, the last couple of episodes have featured some frankly comical overstaging - like the "slumber party," but it's Julie's "babysitting" sequence that, for all its hilarity, gives our suspension of disbelief a serious workout!
First, we are asked to accept the idea that Julie, in the 35 years she has been alive, has never spent so much as an hour or two alone with any children.
From there we glide into the idea that her first-ever conversation with her father on the subject of whether she might one day wish to be a parent occurred last week, and then it is just a hop-skip to Julie's grand Epiphany that in order to find out how becoming a mother would change her life, she should spend an afternoon babysitting - not one, not two, not even three - but FOUR small children!
Enter two of Julie's good friends - each with two daughters of about the same age - two sets of extremely telegenic sisters, one pair blonde, one pair brunette, all completely at ease with lights, crew and camera.
Of course we only see what makes it out of the editing room, but it does not appear that the two sets of sisters have ever played together before. All the interaction between the children that we are shown involves sister playing with sister. Kids who know each other would be much more likely to pair off according to age, kids who have never met will tend to interact with their respective sibling.
This show just might be a contender for the Mostest.Audrinage.Ever reality show tradition award - if some, even most, of the cast of the various Real Housewives shows were only glancingly acquainted with each other prior to the first day of shooting, the Belles' lack of shared "history" is glaring.
Nevertheless, as I continue to watch it, I find that it provides as much fodder for sober refection as for helpless giggling fits.
Kellie's situation, for example, is heart-rending, a grim reminder that whether it feels awkward, weird, even inappropriate, the time for the "Do You Want Kids?" talk (or more kids, if one of you has, like Kellie's Jeff, already obtained offspring) is preferably the second, but no later than the third date, BEFORE either party has had a chance to become "emotionally invested" enough to cause serious damage should there be a wide variance in their respective views on this subject.
It's a thought-provoking illustration that no matter how trashy the show, how stupid the script, or how inane the hamsters, even the lamest and most superficial television shows can educate, even illuminate, and this is something that every one of the "single ladies" - and their single brothers - who watch this show can "take away" from it, and receive the huge benefit of saving themselves from the kind of agony Kellie is suffering, an agony that would be even more emotionally eviscerating, even more causative of permanent harm, if Jeff were not such a tool.
At least when it is all over, she will have the comfort of relief that she did not make a permanent committment to a total asswipe.
Shea, who also has a Jeff, is confronting basically the same issue, at least in my view, since I don't make a large distinction on the basis of species.
Even if we lay aside their housing preferences - while Jeff dreams of mulching and mowing as proud handyman and householder, Shea's notion of the ideal home involves maid service and a spa on the premises - the real non-negotiable, potential deal-breaker is that Jeff comes with what is, for all practical purposes, a child.
The well-being of dependent family members who share one's home, whether human or not, can be neither relegated to the status of non-essential "extra," nor swept aside entirely, and anyone who would even consider such a thing is presenting empirical evidence that they are NOT husband material.
If they are capable of, much less willing, to renege on their committment to that being or beings, what could one expect who considers choosing such a person as life partner? And this goes both ways. If Shea can so easily dismiss the needs of Jeff's dog - well, in the case at hand, Shea has already been pretty upfront with Jeff about just what kind of living hell he could expect, and indeed the internet buzz is that he has wisely delivered himself - and his pupdog - from such a grisly fate, and empowered Shea to return to the garden to seek a more suitably crushable flower.
That this match was doomed was pretty much foretold in every frame of Shea-and-Jeff footage that made it to air, and in case there were any doubts, it was writ large in big red flags in the scene where Shea takes Jeff for a pre-marital counseling session with an gentleman who looks eeriely like Emily's creepy dad. Shea believes that the counseling will prevent her from ending up divorced like her parents.
"I have changed so much for you," Jeff blurts. Shea asserts that she has seen no change, but whether she has or not, whether it is even objectively true or not, if such a sentiment is in the heart of either party, that relationship is dead in the water.
Ideally, true love does change us, in that it makes us want to be, and become, better people, the best version of ourselves, but that's several galaxies away from Jeff's orbit.
As always, even as we keep in mind that the footage of each hamster is deliberately edited for the purpose of drawing a particular "character," we are also obliged to recognize the flip side of that: no matter what they leave out, no matter how they change or remove from context entirely - if the hamster doesn't say or do it, they won't have it to leave in.
Although it may be that Shea's footage is edited frame by frame in order to paint for us a portrait of a woman completely devoid of substance, if we assess the footage that she has given them to work with, we can come to no other conclusion that she is either a talented actress or that there really is no "there" there.
Internet personality aklein has called Emily "painful to watch." She has, aiklen remarks sadly, "emotional maturity of a 12 year old."
It's hard to come up with a credible rebuttal to that.
I am so not the appropriate person to defend any of these hamsters, but in fairness, there was a scene where Emily's Xtreme Cage Match Creepy dad was ragging on her about her hair, while Mama just sits there and says nothing, and there was something about it that looked like it was one of the more natural and effortless bits of footage we are likely to see on any reality show. I got the distinct feeling Emily heard that song with dismal regularity, just another number in CreepyDaddy's extensive repertoire of Pick on Emily showstoppers.
Whether Emily's dad is "for real" or not is a tough call. On the one hand, we have all known people with the misfortune of having parents like that. If it's a role and he is an actor, he has certainly "committed" to the character. He has it down, down to the teensiest creepy nuance.
This is probably born more of wishful thinking for Emily's sake than concrete perception, but a couple of times he has appeared to be mugging for the camera in an almost SpencerPrattian cartoon villain face mode.
I would be willing to bet that there is a connection between Emily's emotional development issues and having grown up with a father who considers his daughter having physically "matured too early" as a sort of inexpiable indiscretion, an unforgivable transgression for which he is still reprimanding her even as her thirtieth (or 30-something) birthday approaches.
Emily is presented to us as the classic damaged bird, her plumage dulled by a lifetime of stern reproaches for having ever had any plumage, without an ally, reviled in the nest which should have nurtured her, and which she now fears to leave, torn between what remaining shreds she has of natural, healthy instincts to go forth and be a person, pitted against the sheer terror of displeasing the father she has never, can never please, who has devoted himself to steadily and relentlessly breaking her down, convincing her that she is essentially incapable of personhood, and her female role model appears to conform to that ideal. Emily's mother is painted as a non-entity, an empty cipher who silently accepts Ogre Dad's condemnation of her daughter.
Her determination to move to Las Vegas may not be the shrewdest move, nor her aspirations of becoming a high profile broadcast journalist the best match for her aptitudes and abilities, but that she has enough "oomph" left into her to recognize and follow the self-preservation instinct to get the hell away from her toxic Daddy is a positive and hopeful sign.
Ironically, while it is Emily who dreams of becoming a TV star, it is Hadley the Flounderer who has the face for it, though she, too, appears to suffer from an extreme case of arrested emotional development, in some ways even more fundamental and deep-seated. So much so that if I were obliged to bet on which of the two would "succeed," in terms of growing into a whole and functional person, I would put my money on Emily.
The character of Hadley is as materially empty and vacuous as Shea, at least as she is presented to us, and as always with the understanding that she could be acting, playing a role that was assigned to her.
Lord, this show makes me preachy!
16 & Pregnant: Making a Way Out of No Way - The Miracle, The Mirror
For most of the world, a girl of sixteen - or even younger - having a baby is an everyday occurrence, as it has been throughout human history.
But in the US, due to a variety of factors, over the last few decades it has become the exception rather than the rule, although some statistics indicate a reversal of the trend.
At the moment, however, it is noteworthy enough to get a reality show, whatever that means, and MTV has obliged.
The first episode was notable only for its extreme predictability.
Featuring the same demographic as Engaged & Underage, the girl steps up, the sullen boy sulks, and we can see that this is going to be one of those kids whose contact with his biological father, if there is any at all, will be infrequent, and the best case scenario will be the girl finding a new partner who is willing to help her raise the child.
The second episode took an uncharacteristic step up from the lower socio-economic tier, though barely. This girl was a cheerleader whose babydaddy never appeared, nor was his presence desired by the girl or her piece-o'-work mother, who was able to provide all the additional tribulations that the pregnant teen required.
Unable to afford housing of her own, and coming to rapid grips with the financial reality of parenthood, I got the sense that this young mother's best hope at salvaging her life would be to apply the advantages of the education she had enjoyed and place the baby for adoption.
In Episode 3, the producers returned to their usual demographic pool and selected a plump young couple remarkable in that the babydaddy not only appeared able and willing to be a father, but not utterly miserable about the prospect, and even professed love for the young girl and asked her to marry him, down on one knee, proffering a pink sapphire ring from Wal-Mart that cost $21.34.
The scene where he calls the same Wal-Mart to inquire about returning the expensive video game he had purchased was strangely moving.
Maci, the subject of the first episode of the series, is probably the most representative of what usually happens, and not just with 16-year olds.
She just sort of instantly grew up, and set about doing whatever she had to do. Of course finding out the boyfriend was a worthless crumb o' dung who didn't really give a politician's ass about her or the baby will have been as horribly painful for her as for anybody who has their heart broken, but being a mom, she no longer has the luxury of grieving about it, receiving comfort and support from friends who will stay up all night with her eating ice cream and letting her talk it all out, doing something new and fabulous with her hair, slowly getting herself back into the social scene, being convinced by those supportive friends to accept the invitation from that really nice guy who has always liked her, etc.
She had to go to work and take care of her baby, just like millions of other moms in her same situation - just like many moms of people who are reading this!
There are many shows that take cameras into delivery rooms, and there is a moment, when the baby is placed in its mother's arms, that is so private and so personal that we should so not be seeing it, but see it we do, in show after show.
Something happens in that moment, we look at the mother's face, at her eyes, and we see magic. We see a real live miracle happen right before our eyes, much bigger than the biological miracle of reproduction, of birth itself, a miracle, it has been suggested, that, along with art, is the closest we will get in this life to seeing our Creator.
That light that comes into the eyes of that new mother, when she holds her child in her arms for the first time, is tinged with the divine. It is in that moment that she ceases to be whoever she was, and becomes something much more - it is in that moment that she becomes what she will be for the rest of her life - a mother.
From that moment on, everything she does, everything she thinks, everything she feels, will be about her child. There is nothing she will not do to provide for that child, protect him from harm, comfort and care for him, today, when he is a tiny, helpless infant, and in 60 years, when his hair is gray and hers is white.
That Maci's story was the most "real" is at once a reflection of that totally awesome miracle, and commentary on the sorry way society treats that miracle.
In many ways, we have not progressed a whole lot from the days of the prevailing cultural mores so poignantly illustrated in Rizzo's song in Grease.
(For those unfamiliar, the thinking at that time was that it was the height of selfishness for a girl who "got herself in trouble" to "try to bring the boy down too" by telling him about it. Her life was ruined, of course. That was a given, but why, society "reasoned," should his life be ruined and his future destroyed too? After all, it was the girl who had "made the mistake." He was just doing what came naturally.)
Today, in one way we have gone in the opposite direction, with most people thinking that the girl absolutely MUST tell the boy she is pregnant, and there is more lip service paid to issues of child support and whatnot, but the reality is that in the US, some 90 odd per cent of people living in poverty are mothers and their children in situations where the father opts out of participating financially. Some of those mothers were married to the fathers, some receive token sums of court-mandated money, but the main societal message remains that it is the female's "problem," and the most likely answer to any statistics on the subject will be some variation of the sentiment that she should not have had the children if she didn't have the money to take care of them.
Ironically, in an age where more girls - and more women - have (at least in theory) more reproductive choices available to them than ever before, there has been an interesting trend among the US mainstream demographic in recent years, a sort of regression, if you will, to the pre Roe vs Wade days.
Terminating an unwanted pregnancy has reclaimed a level of stigma and taboo that it had not enjoyed since the 1950s, even in cases where it is obviously the only sane option - for example, in the case of women - and little girls - who do not have the resources, financial or emotional, to care for a child, nor any realistic chance of acquiring them in 9 months.
Ologists hold forth on a variety of fascinating reasons and theories about why this is so, and it is an intriguing subject for debate and discussion.
What's not up for debate and discussion, however, is the reality of those girls, those women, who decide not only to deliver, but keep, their babies, and while all those ologists and hangers-on are enjoying all those delicious theories and lively discussions, those mothers are rushing to get dressed, feed their babies, pack their diaper bags, hurrying to catch pre-dawn buses, drop their babies off, and run to catch another bus, probably several, praying that they will not be late for their first job, whose wage, even when put together with the wage for the second or third job, is still not enough to purchase the basics of survival.
Not one of the girls on the 16 and Pregnant series chose to end her pregnancy.
We have no way of knowing whether this is because so few girls today make that choice, that there were just no candidates who met other casting and production criteria, whatever those may have been, or whether because of the great stigma of abortion, MTV felt that it would just be too controversial.
In fact, all the girls but one elect to raise their babies themselves.
The season finale features a heart-rendingly sweet and together little couple, flowers who have somehow managed to grow up into strong and loving young people despite both having come from dysfunctional train wreck homes.
They are determined that their child will know a different life, and being smart enough to realize that they cannot give her anything more than what they have, which is, it bears repeating, a train wreck, they wisely arrange to have the baby adopted by a a couple who can give her what they want for her, what they are, in fact, determined to get for themselves - one day.
But recognizing that 1) their baby will need it before "one day" occurs, and 2) "one day" is not going to occur if they set out to try to raise a baby at 16, with their only support consisting of their dysfunctional train wreck parents, "All that baby needs is love" insists the boy's fresh-out-of-prison father.
When I mentioned to a neighbor that I was going to blog about this show, her mother offered an interesting perspective.
"I don't like that show," she said. "It romanticizes it too much. That first girl had a hard time, but you look at some of them, their parents are helping them out, a couple of them got to go move in with their boyfriends, it shows them having these baby showers, they have all the cute little clothes, and then they show them in the delivery room, shows their face when they see the baby."
While her view is directly opposed to most of the comments I have read and heard about the show - including those of many teens who assert that the show has made them much more aware of the difficulties of having a baby while still in high school - I was struck by the kingpin of her argument - "it shows their face when they see the baby."
She was talking about that miracle.
Being a parent is the most important job in the world. We hear a lot of lip service paid to that, but we do not put our money where our mouth is. In actual practice, we do not give that miracle the respect, the awe, that it deserves.
The real "reality" is that as a society, that miracle is Maci making a way out of no way, and we are her no-account boyfriend.
But in the US, due to a variety of factors, over the last few decades it has become the exception rather than the rule, although some statistics indicate a reversal of the trend.
At the moment, however, it is noteworthy enough to get a reality show, whatever that means, and MTV has obliged.
The first episode was notable only for its extreme predictability.
Featuring the same demographic as Engaged & Underage, the girl steps up, the sullen boy sulks, and we can see that this is going to be one of those kids whose contact with his biological father, if there is any at all, will be infrequent, and the best case scenario will be the girl finding a new partner who is willing to help her raise the child.
The second episode took an uncharacteristic step up from the lower socio-economic tier, though barely. This girl was a cheerleader whose babydaddy never appeared, nor was his presence desired by the girl or her piece-o'-work mother, who was able to provide all the additional tribulations that the pregnant teen required.
Unable to afford housing of her own, and coming to rapid grips with the financial reality of parenthood, I got the sense that this young mother's best hope at salvaging her life would be to apply the advantages of the education she had enjoyed and place the baby for adoption.
In Episode 3, the producers returned to their usual demographic pool and selected a plump young couple remarkable in that the babydaddy not only appeared able and willing to be a father, but not utterly miserable about the prospect, and even professed love for the young girl and asked her to marry him, down on one knee, proffering a pink sapphire ring from Wal-Mart that cost $21.34.
The scene where he calls the same Wal-Mart to inquire about returning the expensive video game he had purchased was strangely moving.
Maci, the subject of the first episode of the series, is probably the most representative of what usually happens, and not just with 16-year olds.
She just sort of instantly grew up, and set about doing whatever she had to do. Of course finding out the boyfriend was a worthless crumb o' dung who didn't really give a politician's ass about her or the baby will have been as horribly painful for her as for anybody who has their heart broken, but being a mom, she no longer has the luxury of grieving about it, receiving comfort and support from friends who will stay up all night with her eating ice cream and letting her talk it all out, doing something new and fabulous with her hair, slowly getting herself back into the social scene, being convinced by those supportive friends to accept the invitation from that really nice guy who has always liked her, etc.
She had to go to work and take care of her baby, just like millions of other moms in her same situation - just like many moms of people who are reading this!
There are many shows that take cameras into delivery rooms, and there is a moment, when the baby is placed in its mother's arms, that is so private and so personal that we should so not be seeing it, but see it we do, in show after show.
Something happens in that moment, we look at the mother's face, at her eyes, and we see magic. We see a real live miracle happen right before our eyes, much bigger than the biological miracle of reproduction, of birth itself, a miracle, it has been suggested, that, along with art, is the closest we will get in this life to seeing our Creator.
That light that comes into the eyes of that new mother, when she holds her child in her arms for the first time, is tinged with the divine. It is in that moment that she ceases to be whoever she was, and becomes something much more - it is in that moment that she becomes what she will be for the rest of her life - a mother.
From that moment on, everything she does, everything she thinks, everything she feels, will be about her child. There is nothing she will not do to provide for that child, protect him from harm, comfort and care for him, today, when he is a tiny, helpless infant, and in 60 years, when his hair is gray and hers is white.
That Maci's story was the most "real" is at once a reflection of that totally awesome miracle, and commentary on the sorry way society treats that miracle.
In many ways, we have not progressed a whole lot from the days of the prevailing cultural mores so poignantly illustrated in Rizzo's song in Grease.
(For those unfamiliar, the thinking at that time was that it was the height of selfishness for a girl who "got herself in trouble" to "try to bring the boy down too" by telling him about it. Her life was ruined, of course. That was a given, but why, society "reasoned," should his life be ruined and his future destroyed too? After all, it was the girl who had "made the mistake." He was just doing what came naturally.)
Today, in one way we have gone in the opposite direction, with most people thinking that the girl absolutely MUST tell the boy she is pregnant, and there is more lip service paid to issues of child support and whatnot, but the reality is that in the US, some 90 odd per cent of people living in poverty are mothers and their children in situations where the father opts out of participating financially. Some of those mothers were married to the fathers, some receive token sums of court-mandated money, but the main societal message remains that it is the female's "problem," and the most likely answer to any statistics on the subject will be some variation of the sentiment that she should not have had the children if she didn't have the money to take care of them.
Ironically, in an age where more girls - and more women - have (at least in theory) more reproductive choices available to them than ever before, there has been an interesting trend among the US mainstream demographic in recent years, a sort of regression, if you will, to the pre Roe vs Wade days.
Terminating an unwanted pregnancy has reclaimed a level of stigma and taboo that it had not enjoyed since the 1950s, even in cases where it is obviously the only sane option - for example, in the case of women - and little girls - who do not have the resources, financial or emotional, to care for a child, nor any realistic chance of acquiring them in 9 months.
Ologists hold forth on a variety of fascinating reasons and theories about why this is so, and it is an intriguing subject for debate and discussion.
What's not up for debate and discussion, however, is the reality of those girls, those women, who decide not only to deliver, but keep, their babies, and while all those ologists and hangers-on are enjoying all those delicious theories and lively discussions, those mothers are rushing to get dressed, feed their babies, pack their diaper bags, hurrying to catch pre-dawn buses, drop their babies off, and run to catch another bus, probably several, praying that they will not be late for their first job, whose wage, even when put together with the wage for the second or third job, is still not enough to purchase the basics of survival.
Not one of the girls on the 16 and Pregnant series chose to end her pregnancy.
We have no way of knowing whether this is because so few girls today make that choice, that there were just no candidates who met other casting and production criteria, whatever those may have been, or whether because of the great stigma of abortion, MTV felt that it would just be too controversial.
In fact, all the girls but one elect to raise their babies themselves.
The season finale features a heart-rendingly sweet and together little couple, flowers who have somehow managed to grow up into strong and loving young people despite both having come from dysfunctional train wreck homes.
They are determined that their child will know a different life, and being smart enough to realize that they cannot give her anything more than what they have, which is, it bears repeating, a train wreck, they wisely arrange to have the baby adopted by a a couple who can give her what they want for her, what they are, in fact, determined to get for themselves - one day.
But recognizing that 1) their baby will need it before "one day" occurs, and 2) "one day" is not going to occur if they set out to try to raise a baby at 16, with their only support consisting of their dysfunctional train wreck parents, "All that baby needs is love" insists the boy's fresh-out-of-prison father.
When I mentioned to a neighbor that I was going to blog about this show, her mother offered an interesting perspective.
"I don't like that show," she said. "It romanticizes it too much. That first girl had a hard time, but you look at some of them, their parents are helping them out, a couple of them got to go move in with their boyfriends, it shows them having these baby showers, they have all the cute little clothes, and then they show them in the delivery room, shows their face when they see the baby."
While her view is directly opposed to most of the comments I have read and heard about the show - including those of many teens who assert that the show has made them much more aware of the difficulties of having a baby while still in high school - I was struck by the kingpin of her argument - "it shows their face when they see the baby."
She was talking about that miracle.
Being a parent is the most important job in the world. We hear a lot of lip service paid to that, but we do not put our money where our mouth is. In actual practice, we do not give that miracle the respect, the awe, that it deserves.
The real "reality" is that as a society, that miracle is Maci making a way out of no way, and we are her no-account boyfriend.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Nurse Jackie: A New Jewel Appears in My All-Time Favorites Crown!
Nurse Jackie is my new favorite show. She has also become one of my All Time Favoritest TV Characters With Whom I Secretly Identify - right up there with Emily Gilmore, Barnabas Collins and Gregory House.
It's just one of Those Shows, and she's just one of Those Characters, that come along only once in a great while - a kind of TV Love at first sight.
Within minutes, even seconds, you just Know.
It shoots right up there into that rare stratosphere of favoriteness where watching re-runs is like re-reading a beloved book, a show that, if you could afford an external hard drive, you would save every episode just so you could watch them whenever you wanted to, and you keep them on your hard drive until you are so absurdly low on space that you are faced with the impossible task of deciding which episodes you absolutely cannot be without.
I've always suspected that the first utterance of that old saying about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts was inspired by an ensemble cast.
It's something that the shows we love the most tend to have in common, and usually what happens is we get to watch the actors' journey, watch them feel and fumble their way to that Golden Ideal.
Nurse Jackie viewers get to witness an even rarer phenomenon - the magic of an instant ensemblization - they just sort of miraculously click themselves into a whole greater than the sum - and do so at least to our eyes - effortlessly.
With the exception of Jackie herself, the other characters, whether taken separately or as a boxed set, are pretty much predictable, standard issue, stock supporting roles, but set into orbit around the sun of Jackie, something cosmic happens.
We'll probably never know an exact percentage credit breakdown for the character of Jackie as we see her - how much of her was first committed to paper by Liz Brixius, how much of her is fleshed out and layered and nuanced by the fabulous Miss Edie Falco, but the result is genius enough to qualify for yet another Miracle Ensemblization Award - another whole that exponentially exceeds the sum of its parts!
Independent of cultural context, and I will dare to predict, historical period, Jackie is first and foremost a kind of SuperMarySue. Through her, we are able to do all kinds of things that we wish we could do, that we would do if we had the opportunity.
Jackie lets us imagine being the person sitting there with the organ donor card in front of us, and no one paying us the slightest bit of attention, through her we can enjoy the wish-fulfillment of getting to slip the wad of cash into the bag of the sleeping single mother, packing up a big bag of medicine for the little girl with the sick mom whose "insurance is shit."
This is not to cast the show in the role of some kind of aid for mental health through vicarious living.
Jackie's choices are by no means always the ones I would make - like yanking the catheter out of the alleged pedophile - or using physical intimacy with a co-worker as a strategy for managing the gargantuan stress-load of job and personal health issues under which she somehow manages not only to function, but excel.
The show is first and foremost just plain old good entertainment, and does a great job of maintaining the right mix of comedy, pathos, and drama. Dialogue is simple but snappy, and story arcs are meaty enough to intrigue but simple and universal enough to be "accessible" to a wide audience.
Granted, my perception is that of a viewer who loves the show and has bestowed upon it - and Jackie - a place in my personal All Time Favorite Hall of Fame.
No TV program is going to be for absolutely everybody, but the good news for critics of the show and particularly of the Jackie character, is that today, what we used to call "the airwaves" are populated with such a wide variety of programming that there is something for everyone.
People who don't like Nurse Jackie simply need to watch a different show!
It's just one of Those Shows, and she's just one of Those Characters, that come along only once in a great while - a kind of TV Love at first sight.
Within minutes, even seconds, you just Know.
It shoots right up there into that rare stratosphere of favoriteness where watching re-runs is like re-reading a beloved book, a show that, if you could afford an external hard drive, you would save every episode just so you could watch them whenever you wanted to, and you keep them on your hard drive until you are so absurdly low on space that you are faced with the impossible task of deciding which episodes you absolutely cannot be without.
I've always suspected that the first utterance of that old saying about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts was inspired by an ensemble cast.
It's something that the shows we love the most tend to have in common, and usually what happens is we get to watch the actors' journey, watch them feel and fumble their way to that Golden Ideal.
Nurse Jackie viewers get to witness an even rarer phenomenon - the magic of an instant ensemblization - they just sort of miraculously click themselves into a whole greater than the sum - and do so at least to our eyes - effortlessly.
With the exception of Jackie herself, the other characters, whether taken separately or as a boxed set, are pretty much predictable, standard issue, stock supporting roles, but set into orbit around the sun of Jackie, something cosmic happens.
We'll probably never know an exact percentage credit breakdown for the character of Jackie as we see her - how much of her was first committed to paper by Liz Brixius, how much of her is fleshed out and layered and nuanced by the fabulous Miss Edie Falco, but the result is genius enough to qualify for yet another Miracle Ensemblization Award - another whole that exponentially exceeds the sum of its parts!
Independent of cultural context, and I will dare to predict, historical period, Jackie is first and foremost a kind of SuperMarySue. Through her, we are able to do all kinds of things that we wish we could do, that we would do if we had the opportunity.
Jackie lets us imagine being the person sitting there with the organ donor card in front of us, and no one paying us the slightest bit of attention, through her we can enjoy the wish-fulfillment of getting to slip the wad of cash into the bag of the sleeping single mother, packing up a big bag of medicine for the little girl with the sick mom whose "insurance is shit."
This is not to cast the show in the role of some kind of aid for mental health through vicarious living.
Jackie's choices are by no means always the ones I would make - like yanking the catheter out of the alleged pedophile - or using physical intimacy with a co-worker as a strategy for managing the gargantuan stress-load of job and personal health issues under which she somehow manages not only to function, but excel.
The show is first and foremost just plain old good entertainment, and does a great job of maintaining the right mix of comedy, pathos, and drama. Dialogue is simple but snappy, and story arcs are meaty enough to intrigue but simple and universal enough to be "accessible" to a wide audience.
Granted, my perception is that of a viewer who loves the show and has bestowed upon it - and Jackie - a place in my personal All Time Favorite Hall of Fame.
No TV program is going to be for absolutely everybody, but the good news for critics of the show and particularly of the Jackie character, is that today, what we used to call "the airwaves" are populated with such a wide variety of programming that there is something for everyone.
People who don't like Nurse Jackie simply need to watch a different show!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Real Housewives of New Jersey: Bravo Gets Its Discovery Channel On
Two things I doubt we will ever know: 1) what transpired between Dina and Danielle, and 2) What role Bravo played in the structure of the finale, including the "big family dinner" and the presence of Danielle and the book.
Both Dina and Danielle have made repeated references to a falling out between them, conflict that pre-dates and is unrelated to the book.
That the date of the big family dinner would coincide with the show's season finale could have been a post-production decision, or it could reflect routine, run-of-the-mill reality show "collusion" between producers and cast, but as was the case with the famous Salsa Night event, the idea that the decision to invite Danielle originated with the family strains "suspension of disbelief" to the breaking point.
The Manzos all have some relationships with non-family members, with whom they are on good terms, yet the only non-family member invited to this family dinner was Danielle.
That Danielle might seize a gathering of all the Manzos to confront the family about their reaction to the book, and to her, with or without prodding and/or logistical assistance from Bravo is believable. Whipping the book out and plopping it onto the table smells, at least to me, of a closer, more familiar relationship with and knowledge of production values than Danielle's modeling experience would have provided.
I have not been able to watch a single episode of this show without being involuntarily shifted into Discovery Channel mode, and I think the finale may have done that to a lot of viewers who don't even watch the Discovery Channel.
It was a continuous anvil-drop, flattening the heads of the viewing audience with the message that 1) The Manzos are a closed society, and 2) Intruders are not welcome and will be ejected.
So who really "took the book through the town?" The whole point of the show was that it does not matter.
If one Manzo did it, they all did it, and Caroline, as the tribal chief, will "take the blame" on the tribe's behalf.
Just as kings and chieftains of old rode out to battle in front of their clansfolk, so Caroline assumed responsibility for her tribe.
That is the "real" reality, and it trumps and renders irrelevant the minutiae of individual actions on the part of those who ride behind her.
The most interesting Discovery Channel Moment was of course when one of the tribe stood in opposition to the rest.
The principle that loyalty to a group, family, tribe or nation takes precedence over any and all other values, mores or moral code so permeates our human family, today as yesterday, in the glittering modern city as in the most isolated mountain hamlet, that many of us don't even notice it, or if we do, we simply take it for granted, and consciously or unconsciously seat it firmly at the head of the table at our own "family dinner" of attitudes, opinions and beliefs, above tenets or doctrines of our faith tradition, even our own personal notions of "right" or "wrong."
If a group with which we have a strong association, with which we identify, does it, it is right, even though we might be the first to call it "wrong" when the same thing is done by a different group.
Group members who diverge from this take a big risk. Historically, they would most likely be set upon and killed outright by the other group members, or physically banished from the group, which historically would mean death, as a matter of practicality, since once humans had established tribes and communities, we became dependent on them for survival. They were, after all, established in order to enable us to survive.
Today the banishment is more likely to take a less literal form.
Banishment of a primal dissenter - meaning one who places some other principle or value above the primal and unassailable rule of "if my group does it, it's right," in modern times frequently involves banishment by dismissal - the dissenter is labeled as one version or another of a harmless fool, and any potential threat to the group - or to decisions made by the chief on the group's behalf - is removed.
That threat, of course, the danger being averted by this action, is that other group members might follow suit, stand up with the dissenter, divide the group and reduce its power.
This very thing has, of course, happened in the course of our history, so many times that today it has become commonplace for another group to initiate the tactic, by encouragement of an existing potential dissenter, or by outright placement of a "ringer" to act as dissenter with the aim of dividing the group, and conquering the two resulting weaker groups, thus the expression "divide and conquer."
Caroline - with the help of her brother, in the role of lieutenant - deftly averted the possibility of anything like that happening to the Manzos, shrewdly dismissing Jacqueline's dissent by attributing it to the latter's "good heart," and magnanimously forgiving her, including her in the fold even as she is effectively banished from holding any real power within it.
It's unlikely that she realized that she was also delivering, in the approximate words of a popular sacred text "a lesson for those with eyes to see."
Both Dina and Danielle have made repeated references to a falling out between them, conflict that pre-dates and is unrelated to the book.
That the date of the big family dinner would coincide with the show's season finale could have been a post-production decision, or it could reflect routine, run-of-the-mill reality show "collusion" between producers and cast, but as was the case with the famous Salsa Night event, the idea that the decision to invite Danielle originated with the family strains "suspension of disbelief" to the breaking point.
The Manzos all have some relationships with non-family members, with whom they are on good terms, yet the only non-family member invited to this family dinner was Danielle.
That Danielle might seize a gathering of all the Manzos to confront the family about their reaction to the book, and to her, with or without prodding and/or logistical assistance from Bravo is believable. Whipping the book out and plopping it onto the table smells, at least to me, of a closer, more familiar relationship with and knowledge of production values than Danielle's modeling experience would have provided.
I have not been able to watch a single episode of this show without being involuntarily shifted into Discovery Channel mode, and I think the finale may have done that to a lot of viewers who don't even watch the Discovery Channel.
It was a continuous anvil-drop, flattening the heads of the viewing audience with the message that 1) The Manzos are a closed society, and 2) Intruders are not welcome and will be ejected.
So who really "took the book through the town?" The whole point of the show was that it does not matter.
If one Manzo did it, they all did it, and Caroline, as the tribal chief, will "take the blame" on the tribe's behalf.
Just as kings and chieftains of old rode out to battle in front of their clansfolk, so Caroline assumed responsibility for her tribe.
That is the "real" reality, and it trumps and renders irrelevant the minutiae of individual actions on the part of those who ride behind her.
The most interesting Discovery Channel Moment was of course when one of the tribe stood in opposition to the rest.
The principle that loyalty to a group, family, tribe or nation takes precedence over any and all other values, mores or moral code so permeates our human family, today as yesterday, in the glittering modern city as in the most isolated mountain hamlet, that many of us don't even notice it, or if we do, we simply take it for granted, and consciously or unconsciously seat it firmly at the head of the table at our own "family dinner" of attitudes, opinions and beliefs, above tenets or doctrines of our faith tradition, even our own personal notions of "right" or "wrong."
If a group with which we have a strong association, with which we identify, does it, it is right, even though we might be the first to call it "wrong" when the same thing is done by a different group.
Group members who diverge from this take a big risk. Historically, they would most likely be set upon and killed outright by the other group members, or physically banished from the group, which historically would mean death, as a matter of practicality, since once humans had established tribes and communities, we became dependent on them for survival. They were, after all, established in order to enable us to survive.
Today the banishment is more likely to take a less literal form.
Banishment of a primal dissenter - meaning one who places some other principle or value above the primal and unassailable rule of "if my group does it, it's right," in modern times frequently involves banishment by dismissal - the dissenter is labeled as one version or another of a harmless fool, and any potential threat to the group - or to decisions made by the chief on the group's behalf - is removed.
That threat, of course, the danger being averted by this action, is that other group members might follow suit, stand up with the dissenter, divide the group and reduce its power.
This very thing has, of course, happened in the course of our history, so many times that today it has become commonplace for another group to initiate the tactic, by encouragement of an existing potential dissenter, or by outright placement of a "ringer" to act as dissenter with the aim of dividing the group, and conquering the two resulting weaker groups, thus the expression "divide and conquer."
Caroline - with the help of her brother, in the role of lieutenant - deftly averted the possibility of anything like that happening to the Manzos, shrewdly dismissing Jacqueline's dissent by attributing it to the latter's "good heart," and magnanimously forgiving her, including her in the fold even as she is effectively banished from holding any real power within it.
It's unlikely that she realized that she was also delivering, in the approximate words of a popular sacred text "a lesson for those with eyes to see."
Friday, May 22, 2009
Southern Belles Louisville - Not Suitable for Sensitive Viewers
May all applicable deities, djinns and spirits be invoked, and my household instructed to inform visitors, in hushed tones, that I am laid upon the bed!
I have watched the "Real Housewives," in all its various ghastly iterations. I have squee!ed and shuddered in delighted disgust with the best of them in the unspeakably lurid parade of the majestic oeuvre of Chris Abrego, each more grandiloquently repellent than the last.
So what is it about the seemingly innocuous-by-comparison Southern Belles Louisville that makes my flesh crawl?
It took me a while to figure it out, but I think, to put it as politely as possible, that it is the diminished suspension of disbelief requirement.
With all due respect to DiVello, Abrego, et al, their creations give the senses an "out." The much-decried obviously scripted and totally UN-real nature of the reality shows to which we have become accustomed permit us to emerge from our viewing experience comforted, even if subconsciously, by the knowledge that it is "just a show," a work of fiction no different from Ong Bak or Original Recipe Exorcist.
But somehow, Southern Belles Louisville, whether due to artistic intent on the part of the director or exceptional dramatic talent on the part of the cast, fails to provide that cooling spray of reassurance.
These hamsters, this reality show, cranks the realness up a couple of notches past my viewing pleasure center.
Maybe it is just the unavoidable damning by faint praise of calling these characters "better drawn" than the typical Rock of Love skank, a sort of superficial pseudo-documentary version of Arendt's banality of evil.
Or maybe it's because that banality hits a little too close to home in ways that at least for most of us, Bikini Corrie and Heidi Montag do not.
While relatively few of us can make such a claim about Saaphyri or Brittanya, if we are to be brutally honest, and leaving aside any and all distinctions of geographical or cultural context, most of us have, at some point in our lives, known these Belles.
And even more poignantly, most of us will have, at some point in our lives, faced the sad task of comforting their hapless Beaux.
The Belles' grisly payload of skeeve is not about just another gaggle of bimbos "suckin back" on the glorified screwdriver whose current popularity has no doubt caused the descendants of that crafty old imperialist Lauchlin Rose to ceaselessly bless his crusty old opportunistic soul, nor is it yet another stream of glittering scenes of yet another charity event where the total sum of funds raised is slightly less than price paid by most of the attendees for their gowns.
If we are tempted to gasp at the incogitant cruelty of Hadley, as she describes her dream wedding standing two feet from the man who has just declared himself and been spurned, what really gets us is the look on his face. That's just a smoosh realer than I like my reality, thanks just the same.
Hadley actually breaks two hearts in the course of the first episode. Her best friend, who, though presented to us as a "ladies man," has the words "quintessential nice guy" painted all over his every word and gesture, is also in love with her, and meets the same sad fate as his rival.
If we can manage to move past the cringeworthy pathos of those sorry little scenes, we are obliged to acknowledge that it would be disingenuous, not to mention impossible, to completely divorce the show's zeitgeist from cultural context.
On the contrary, we are hit in the face with the social costs of a culture in which some of the children remain children until they are well into their thirties.
If Hadley displays the emotional nescience of a teenaged girl, Emily seems similarly oblivious to the gilded cage from which she acts out "her dream."
Thanks to parents depicted as annoying salt of the earth folksy folks who dine at a card table adorned with a bottle of supermarket salad dressing, whose down-home working class ethos belies their inherited millions, in return for some relatively mild belittling of her unremarkable hairstyle choices, Emily receives the safety net that permits her to eschew a seat in the family boardroom in favor of a low-wage fun job at the local TV station.
The Belles' blondetourage is rounded out by Kellie, the obligatory divorcee "waiting for her settlement," currently obliged to live in a modest home that she petulantly boasts would have fit into the garage of the residence provided by her erstwhile spouse. The poor thing has even been reduced to using one of the bedrooms as a closet, to accomodate the designer spoils of her late marriage. At 32, Kellie declares she wants to have her own money now. She wants her settlement, dammit!
Of all the Belles, Julie is the least fleshed out, at least in the first episode, where her role seems to be primarily that of Culture Victim. A low-end fashion model in her mid-thirties, she is now subjected to the indignity of being told she could get work in ad campaigns looking for "soccer mom types." As the camera moves from the decade-old glamour shots in her book to her face upon hearing this verdict from a smug-faced agent, the narrator doesn't have to say a word. The strains of the leitmotif of heartbreak swell as clearly as if sounded by a score of violins. Julie's story is trite but true. The Youth Culture really does destroy lives and souls. Well, duh.
Speaking of narration, apparently Shea does need some. We hear her background described as "nouveaux riche," against a montage that screams "Ya think?" If ever reality show has shown us a stereotype, Shea is it. Her shallowness and vapidity soar to cartoonish near-Hills quality heights. She has captured, it would seem, the heart of a suitor, but pouts that she has no ring. She takes him shopping for one. He would, he says, need to sell both kidneys in order to afford one that she would wear.
Shea is the creepiest of all because if you have known only one Belle in your lifetime, whether you knew her in Louisville, Lagos or Lhasa, in the 20s, the 60s, the 80s, she's the one you knew.
Maybe you know her today. And even if you missed it, you just know she had a really amazing Super Sweet Sixteen.
I have watched the "Real Housewives," in all its various ghastly iterations. I have squee!ed and shuddered in delighted disgust with the best of them in the unspeakably lurid parade of the majestic oeuvre of Chris Abrego, each more grandiloquently repellent than the last.
So what is it about the seemingly innocuous-by-comparison Southern Belles Louisville that makes my flesh crawl?
It took me a while to figure it out, but I think, to put it as politely as possible, that it is the diminished suspension of disbelief requirement.
With all due respect to DiVello, Abrego, et al, their creations give the senses an "out." The much-decried obviously scripted and totally UN-real nature of the reality shows to which we have become accustomed permit us to emerge from our viewing experience comforted, even if subconsciously, by the knowledge that it is "just a show," a work of fiction no different from Ong Bak or Original Recipe Exorcist.
But somehow, Southern Belles Louisville, whether due to artistic intent on the part of the director or exceptional dramatic talent on the part of the cast, fails to provide that cooling spray of reassurance.
These hamsters, this reality show, cranks the realness up a couple of notches past my viewing pleasure center.
Maybe it is just the unavoidable damning by faint praise of calling these characters "better drawn" than the typical Rock of Love skank, a sort of superficial pseudo-documentary version of Arendt's banality of evil.
Or maybe it's because that banality hits a little too close to home in ways that at least for most of us, Bikini Corrie and Heidi Montag do not.
While relatively few of us can make such a claim about Saaphyri or Brittanya, if we are to be brutally honest, and leaving aside any and all distinctions of geographical or cultural context, most of us have, at some point in our lives, known these Belles.
And even more poignantly, most of us will have, at some point in our lives, faced the sad task of comforting their hapless Beaux.
The Belles' grisly payload of skeeve is not about just another gaggle of bimbos "suckin back" on the glorified screwdriver whose current popularity has no doubt caused the descendants of that crafty old imperialist Lauchlin Rose to ceaselessly bless his crusty old opportunistic soul, nor is it yet another stream of glittering scenes of yet another charity event where the total sum of funds raised is slightly less than price paid by most of the attendees for their gowns.
If we are tempted to gasp at the incogitant cruelty of Hadley, as she describes her dream wedding standing two feet from the man who has just declared himself and been spurned, what really gets us is the look on his face. That's just a smoosh realer than I like my reality, thanks just the same.
Hadley actually breaks two hearts in the course of the first episode. Her best friend, who, though presented to us as a "ladies man," has the words "quintessential nice guy" painted all over his every word and gesture, is also in love with her, and meets the same sad fate as his rival.
If we can manage to move past the cringeworthy pathos of those sorry little scenes, we are obliged to acknowledge that it would be disingenuous, not to mention impossible, to completely divorce the show's zeitgeist from cultural context.
On the contrary, we are hit in the face with the social costs of a culture in which some of the children remain children until they are well into their thirties.
If Hadley displays the emotional nescience of a teenaged girl, Emily seems similarly oblivious to the gilded cage from which she acts out "her dream."
Thanks to parents depicted as annoying salt of the earth folksy folks who dine at a card table adorned with a bottle of supermarket salad dressing, whose down-home working class ethos belies their inherited millions, in return for some relatively mild belittling of her unremarkable hairstyle choices, Emily receives the safety net that permits her to eschew a seat in the family boardroom in favor of a low-wage fun job at the local TV station.
The Belles' blondetourage is rounded out by Kellie, the obligatory divorcee "waiting for her settlement," currently obliged to live in a modest home that she petulantly boasts would have fit into the garage of the residence provided by her erstwhile spouse. The poor thing has even been reduced to using one of the bedrooms as a closet, to accomodate the designer spoils of her late marriage. At 32, Kellie declares she wants to have her own money now. She wants her settlement, dammit!
Of all the Belles, Julie is the least fleshed out, at least in the first episode, where her role seems to be primarily that of Culture Victim. A low-end fashion model in her mid-thirties, she is now subjected to the indignity of being told she could get work in ad campaigns looking for "soccer mom types." As the camera moves from the decade-old glamour shots in her book to her face upon hearing this verdict from a smug-faced agent, the narrator doesn't have to say a word. The strains of the leitmotif of heartbreak swell as clearly as if sounded by a score of violins. Julie's story is trite but true. The Youth Culture really does destroy lives and souls. Well, duh.
Speaking of narration, apparently Shea does need some. We hear her background described as "nouveaux riche," against a montage that screams "Ya think?" If ever reality show has shown us a stereotype, Shea is it. Her shallowness and vapidity soar to cartoonish near-Hills quality heights. She has captured, it would seem, the heart of a suitor, but pouts that she has no ring. She takes him shopping for one. He would, he says, need to sell both kidneys in order to afford one that she would wear.
Shea is the creepiest of all because if you have known only one Belle in your lifetime, whether you knew her in Louisville, Lagos or Lhasa, in the 20s, the 60s, the 80s, she's the one you knew.
Maybe you know her today. And even if you missed it, you just know she had a really amazing Super Sweet Sixteen.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Real Housewives of New York: Chihuahua Tongue Flashback and The Count is an Old Rake
In case we had forgotten about RHNY's contribution to the Most Revolting Moments In Television Hall of Ew, Jill promises her little chihuahua dog that if he cooperates with having his Halloween costume fitted, she will "let" him insert his tongue deep into her nose and lick it clean.
Mercifully, we were spared a repeat of Ms Zarin's preferred combination nasal hygiene and animal cruelty performance.
This week's real RHNY gossip was off-camera - according to reports, Count de Lesseps (who received his title as a result of an ancestor having arranged for some rich men to make some more money) has forsaken his erstwhile Countess Luann, who refers to herself as a "Native American from Connecticut," for Her Royal Highness Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar of the ancient Gibe Kingdom in the land today popularly known as Ethiopia.
Luann, who distinguished herself on the show for expressing displeasure when Bethenny introduced her to a driver as "Luann," instead of "Countess de Lesseps," maybe ten minutes before a scene in which she is shown addressing catering staff by their first names, and hurling an especially ugly back-handed putdown at a ten year old girl who said she wanted to be a model when she grew up, and snort-sneering at another who aspired to be a baby-sitter, has written a book called "Class with the Countess."
Count and Countess are said to be currently "separated," but if they should divorce, will outraged readers demand that the publisher send them a new copy of the book with an updated title? Maybe "Class with the Ex-Countess," or "Class with a Native American from Connecticut?"
On the show, however, Luann goes shopping with her daughter, who, she says, enjoys "watching her (Luann) getting dressed in the dressing room." (WTF?)
She buys the daughter a black hoodie identical to one I got last week at Wal-Mart, except the daughter's has unsightly elbow patches. Mine cost $9.
I hope the Possibly Soon-to-be Ex-Countess didn't pay a whole lot extra for those patches.
After re-watching a few episodes, I have, upon reflection, come to the realization that Kelly, at least as she is depicted on the show, may be "troubled," and thus the only appropriate comment would be to express the sincere hope that she will seek and receive any help she may need.
Mercifully, we were spared a repeat of Ms Zarin's preferred combination nasal hygiene and animal cruelty performance.
This week's real RHNY gossip was off-camera - according to reports, Count de Lesseps (who received his title as a result of an ancestor having arranged for some rich men to make some more money) has forsaken his erstwhile Countess Luann, who refers to herself as a "Native American from Connecticut," for Her Royal Highness Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar of the ancient Gibe Kingdom in the land today popularly known as Ethiopia.
Luann, who distinguished herself on the show for expressing displeasure when Bethenny introduced her to a driver as "Luann," instead of "Countess de Lesseps," maybe ten minutes before a scene in which she is shown addressing catering staff by their first names, and hurling an especially ugly back-handed putdown at a ten year old girl who said she wanted to be a model when she grew up, and snort-sneering at another who aspired to be a baby-sitter, has written a book called "Class with the Countess."
Count and Countess are said to be currently "separated," but if they should divorce, will outraged readers demand that the publisher send them a new copy of the book with an updated title? Maybe "Class with the Ex-Countess," or "Class with a Native American from Connecticut?"
On the show, however, Luann goes shopping with her daughter, who, she says, enjoys "watching her (Luann) getting dressed in the dressing room." (WTF?)
She buys the daughter a black hoodie identical to one I got last week at Wal-Mart, except the daughter's has unsightly elbow patches. Mine cost $9.
I hope the Possibly Soon-to-be Ex-Countess didn't pay a whole lot extra for those patches.
After re-watching a few episodes, I have, upon reflection, come to the realization that Kelly, at least as she is depicted on the show, may be "troubled," and thus the only appropriate comment would be to express the sincere hope that she will seek and receive any help she may need.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
The Hills: El Mongol would have kicked Spencer's ass
OK, OK, I know this has already been mentioned, including by me. But come on. Is this going to go down in the Great Moments in Stupid Television or what?
The dude went into the bar with a camera crew. Releases were signed. Introductions were made, removing any possibility of Stacy-the-bartender not recognizing one of the two most over-exposed faces on the planet.
Next, we get Spencer ragging on Heidi about the appearance of her high school boyfriend at a restaurant outing with her parents in Colorado, where she had, in her anguish, fled, with a camera crew, for three whole days.
Said boyfriend appearance, it is only fair to note, was one of the stiffest and most awkwardly done scenes in the whole series. Darlene couldn't even keep a straight face, and boyfriend's fervent desire for the floor to open up and end it all right then was more audible than his mumbled lines.
Then, we have Heidi and Stephanie speculating about where Spencer may have gone. Hey, I know - ask the camera crew that's there with him! The ones that the crew that is there with you are texting and paging every five minutes about logistics and lunch as soon as we finish up the next scene.
OMG! They guessed right! Are they psychic? They know Spencer so well! He can't hide! And there he is with the Stacy the Smirking, that Charlie-who-is-a-bad-influence (How can anyone possibly be a "bad influence" on Spencer Pratt?) and a couple of random girls who, like Stacy, are like, all brunette and stuff, but still white, KWIM?
Spencer waits for his cue. You can't see his earbud, but you know it's there, and he listens, Bush-like, for instructions, for line.
Suddenly, there they are - Heidi, in full Donna Reed Wannabe Wronged Wife Face Mode. She's been practicing. Spencer is contemptuous-contemptible-tipsy-cavalier, Charlie carpes the diem for some face time, even profile, he better take what he can get, this is his Big Chance, Stacy Smirks, the random chicks smile randomly for the camera crew.
Next thing you know, we're back on the regular Hills set, a little table outside any cafe, and oh what a cliffhanger - the show ends with Heidi, as advised by Stephanie, giving Spencer An Ultimatum - Counseling or Else!
Could this be the End of the Greatest Love Story of All Time?
As if that weren't suspenseful enough, think about it from the point of view of viewers who have forgotten that taping for this season ended like around Christmas or something - TMZ has not done any Speidi segments for a whole week!
Fox has got your back, Adam.
When I was in the sixth or seventh grade, around 1963 or 4, I don't remember how the subject came up, but I remember that some kid said that the "wrestling" show slated for the weekend in a nearby city, headlined by El Mongol, was not "real." A short, stocky little girl with freckles and a porcine nose leapt up, and with tears streaming down a face flushed to an alarming shade of fuschia, began pounding the young heretic with plump, grimy little fists. "Take it back!" she sobbed, her squeaky voice hoarse with rage and for a second, I thought, something like fear.
I cannot hear the even the first notes of Natasha Beddingfield's anthem of hope and promise and excessive lip gloss without remembering that scene, as vividly as if it happened an hour ago.
So yes, Virginia, The Hills is real. Adam Divello is a real man. The releases are real. Lauren is real. Heidi, Spencer, their Great and Eternal Love, the camera crew, all real.
And so is The City. Whitney really does work at DVF. The show shoots there at least twice a week, and she receives a real paycheck for showing up there and doing her scenes.
The dude went into the bar with a camera crew. Releases were signed. Introductions were made, removing any possibility of Stacy-the-bartender not recognizing one of the two most over-exposed faces on the planet.
Next, we get Spencer ragging on Heidi about the appearance of her high school boyfriend at a restaurant outing with her parents in Colorado, where she had, in her anguish, fled, with a camera crew, for three whole days.
Said boyfriend appearance, it is only fair to note, was one of the stiffest and most awkwardly done scenes in the whole series. Darlene couldn't even keep a straight face, and boyfriend's fervent desire for the floor to open up and end it all right then was more audible than his mumbled lines.
Then, we have Heidi and Stephanie speculating about where Spencer may have gone. Hey, I know - ask the camera crew that's there with him! The ones that the crew that is there with you are texting and paging every five minutes about logistics and lunch as soon as we finish up the next scene.
OMG! They guessed right! Are they psychic? They know Spencer so well! He can't hide! And there he is with the Stacy the Smirking, that Charlie-who-is-a-bad-influence (How can anyone possibly be a "bad influence" on Spencer Pratt?) and a couple of random girls who, like Stacy, are like, all brunette and stuff, but still white, KWIM?
Spencer waits for his cue. You can't see his earbud, but you know it's there, and he listens, Bush-like, for instructions, for line.
Suddenly, there they are - Heidi, in full Donna Reed Wannabe Wronged Wife Face Mode. She's been practicing. Spencer is contemptuous-contemptible-tipsy-cavalier, Charlie carpes the diem for some face time, even profile, he better take what he can get, this is his Big Chance, Stacy Smirks, the random chicks smile randomly for the camera crew.
Next thing you know, we're back on the regular Hills set, a little table outside any cafe, and oh what a cliffhanger - the show ends with Heidi, as advised by Stephanie, giving Spencer An Ultimatum - Counseling or Else!
Could this be the End of the Greatest Love Story of All Time?
As if that weren't suspenseful enough, think about it from the point of view of viewers who have forgotten that taping for this season ended like around Christmas or something - TMZ has not done any Speidi segments for a whole week!
Fox has got your back, Adam.
When I was in the sixth or seventh grade, around 1963 or 4, I don't remember how the subject came up, but I remember that some kid said that the "wrestling" show slated for the weekend in a nearby city, headlined by El Mongol, was not "real." A short, stocky little girl with freckles and a porcine nose leapt up, and with tears streaming down a face flushed to an alarming shade of fuschia, began pounding the young heretic with plump, grimy little fists. "Take it back!" she sobbed, her squeaky voice hoarse with rage and for a second, I thought, something like fear.
I cannot hear the even the first notes of Natasha Beddingfield's anthem of hope and promise and excessive lip gloss without remembering that scene, as vividly as if it happened an hour ago.
So yes, Virginia, The Hills is real. Adam Divello is a real man. The releases are real. Lauren is real. Heidi, Spencer, their Great and Eternal Love, the camera crew, all real.
And so is The City. Whitney really does work at DVF. The show shoots there at least twice a week, and she receives a real paycheck for showing up there and doing her scenes.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Kyle XY: Series Finale Override: The hey_am_here Canon
To say that the series finale sucked, that it was a slap in the face to the many sincere fans of the show, would be an understatement - and nothing but a paraphrase of about 12,975,389.06 other blogrants.
But what the viewers want is closure, and hey_am_here was kind enough to provide it, on the blighted network's on website, and so, without further ado, I present to you the full and original text of what shall henceforth be known as the hey_am_here Kyle XY Canon:
But what the viewers want is closure, and hey_am_here was kind enough to provide it, on the blighted network's on website, and so, without further ado, I present to you the full and original text of what shall henceforth be known as the hey_am_here Kyle XY Canon:
here's what I think so far:
Well first I thik kyle will not kill cassidy but he'll in some how get into cassidy''s memory and find the way he killed sara and save it into a herogliphic memory and that he'll black mail cassidy like he did and threats him if he don't let the familly alone he will expose him and put him i jail.
About what Jessi found in nate's computer I think she knew the fact that Kyle and cassidy are brothers and probably nate too that's why he was interessted in kyle issue.
Then nete wakes and hurts jessi he'll shock her or try to kill her or some thing like that and in some way amanda manages to run away so she goes back to tell kyle. Mean while kyle goes to the rack to save the family and by mark's help he figures out away to do it.
But there's one missing IT'S JESSI so amanda tells him that she is in nate's appart and probably he killed her and that nate is in arage and ask him to stay and don't go that she's gone and that she wants him back since every thing is over now, but he tells her that after what they passed through together he can't leave her that he cares about her that he loves and can't live without her.
So kyle goes to latnock no one was there just like in the firt episode of saison 3 every thing is gone he listens to jessi's hart beats here is it but it's getting slower he starts a deseption to find out where is she she's locked in cassidy's office, she's wonded she is dying here heart is stoping kyle restarts all his power revive her but it doesn' work he's loosing her he lost his hope and as usual it come some one to save the day it's Foss he asks him to kiss her, but kyle says there's no why she's allredy dead but foss inssists so kyle does it at that moment a masse circuit of energy lightens the city of seatel. And here she is, she opens here eyes she's alive but after this whole power loss kyle and her are so tyred and frustraited they just passe up and wake up on the hospital where all the familly and friends were waiting for them. So foss took them to the hospital. Then life goes back to normal at the tragers kyle and jessi decides to take along tripe out of seatel. They continued their training together with foss.
And finally it all ends up three four years later it's josh and andy's wedding every body was there kyle and jessi are back for the weddind they got married and they have tow cute children a boy and a girl "Adam & Sarah", declan and the girl from latnock are married to she became a Prof at the university and declan is now ruling his fathers company since he can't get back to basketball. Lori now is pop star she kept writing songs and her cds are hitting the world but she out of work now, she's pregnant, her husband mark now is working with steven they established acompany working in computers hardwares. And of course you all asking about amanda she's teaching piano and ruling her own conservatory and yes she's got married to a guy who is muscian too he plays violent and she has a very sweet young man seven months old his name is.....defently "KYLE". Oh how do I forgot necole the tender mother she is working at a heigh school as a social conselar. Hey waite I said it's josh and andy's wedding but where are they they're too late every body is waiting for them, oh not they're in josh's room, what are they doing, WHAT??? they're playing G-force!!!!!!!!!!!! what is this tey never grow up even though they are 21 years old unbelievable.
what do you think????????????
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The L Word: A Eulogy of Faint Praise
The first three seasons of The L Word are a frolic of nostalgia for the late-sixties-early seventies lifestyle as enjoyed by that swath of the Baby Boom who lived for Art and stayed twenty-something right on up to the maw of 40.
Lyrical, even evocative of early David Lynch, L Word starts out as the simple tale of Jenny, All-American EveryGirl, who leaves her corn-fed, midwestern small town existence behind to seek her fortune in Hollywood.
We know right away that this story is not just your typical night-time soap, because Jenny does not aspire to be a movie star.
She does not want to be an actress or a model. Our Jenny wants to be a Writer!
When she arrives in LA, where she will live with her corn-fed, midwestern small town womens' swimming coach of a boyfriend Tim, she expresses surprise at the proximity of the Pacific Ocean. That's just how innocent she is. And she has big googly smudgepotted eyes, with really looooong innocent lashes, that lower thoughtfully as she peeks at a couple of her new Lesbian neighbors romping in the swimpool next door.
Tim has her describe everything she saw in detail. He is really turned on, and they make sweet innocent corn-fed midwestern love.
It is through young Jenny's eyes that we are introduced to the other major characters, Bette and Tina, the Stable Relationship Couple with Issues, Alice the Adorable and Quirky EveryPal, Dana the Closeted Athlete, Marina the Predator Fatale and Shane the Irresistible Androgyne.
The juxtaposition of the comfortable traditional sitcomic stereotype characters with the kiss of quasi-surrealism in the editing, lots and lots of snappy Gilmore Girl-grade dialogue and a compact if predictable plotline that manages to peel away the layers of those characters while still retaining an ethereal and amusing lightness makes the first three seasons as delightfully addictive as even the most jaded viewer could wish.
We meet the L-Wordians in the full bloom of those halcyon days of friends as chosen family, the first yearnings of that second nest-leaving that can be more seminal than the first, a coming of age redux as the twenties march on, and instincts older than time, stirrings of nesting, wing-spreading, and through the show we watch this poignant, sometimes cataclysmic unfolding into adulthood's chilly Big Room.
It's entertaining enough to make you overlook the annoyance that once again, the victims are affluent residents of the SoCal enclaves, though the series does indulge in some diversity celebratin', The L Word's glossy ambiance of entitled and affluent SoCal whitefolks manages to be faithful to the subgenre of 90210, The OC, and their subsequent "reality" companions even beyond the enclaves, with significant storylines set in West Hollywood, East LA and beyond.
Though it may have the ring of damning by faint praise, the series does feature more people of color than its predecessors, and its "social issues addressed" list includes at least a glancing acknowledgment of the impact on the lives of individuals of societal perceptions of ethnicity: Bette, one of the main characters, is bi-racial, and the show gets points casting here. Like Bette, Jennifer Beals is a light-skinned child of one white and one African-American parent.
If previous teleworks, both traditionally scripted and "reality" flavor, have subjected the hapless SoCalaffluents, particularly women, to a repeated battering of stereotypical portrayals, drawing, over the years, a caricature of a population already popularly perceived as cartoonish, characterized by shallowness and exaggerated materialism honed to art forms, proudly insular, more proudly ignorant, essentially useless creatures whose principal talents are self-absorption, shopping, solipsism, and "tanning," a quaint custom of white people dyeing their skins orange, a key expression, along with aquisition of long blonde hair and large surgically attached breasts, of their collective desire to physically resemble each other as much as possible.
The L-word cranks that up a notch, giving us further insight into the nature of this fascinating demographic creation, presenting us with a portrait of beings almost unfailingly incapable of viewing or being in the presence of another human to whom they feel even the most fleeting and superficial attraction without hurling themselves immediately into each other, the mythical "nymphos" so whispered about by the zit-afflicted teenboy contingent since time immemorial, the heroines of generation upon generation of wet dreams, women who are not only willing, not only eager to engage in physical intimacy, but biologically and emotionally incapable of restraining the ferocity of their uncontrollable urges regardless of appropriateness of time, place, choice of partner, potential - or certain - impact on others, involved, traffic...
Someone somewhere decided at the first concept meeting that The L Word must not content itself with merely featuring lots of sex scenes. Every episode must be chock-a-block with not just any old sex scene, but Hollywood-styled pretty, pretty sex, most of it the kind of hot steamy girl-on-girl fantasy action so beloved of those adolescent males and "men's magazine" fans.
Although the show's credits feature many prominent women very prominently, and the main characters are Lesbians, one gets the sense while the dialogue and character development seem skewed toward a female audience, the sex scenes are very markedly designed to appeal to the customer base of the Girls Gone Wild series.
A kinder perspective, might compare it to the Bollywood convention of characters spontaneously bursting into big song-and-dance production numbers every fifteen minutes or so in the course of a two-hour movie, completely independent of whether such a thing would be something the character in question "would do."
Enjoying this show requires the viewer to ascend to whole new levels of suspension of disbelief.
This is really the best way to absorb the show as a whole, otherwise it becomes just too distracting. Although the Sex Scene-Production Numbers certainly impact the story line, and frequently constitute plot development, at the same time they sort of exist on a different plane, floating above characters or plot, presumably for the benefit of those pubescent males who have no interest in any of that, and simply fast forward through any scenes where the actors are clothed. (Though they should do so with caution, as the characters are not always able to contain themselves long enough to disrobe).
Even during the Summer of Love, those dreamlike pre-AIDS years that saw the coming of age of the Baby Boom, where those who participated had few inhibitions about sexual activity, engaging in it early and often, and on the slightest provocation, (pun just left there), it was nothing like the L Word, where eyes meet, meaningful glances are exchanged, and the next minute is a full-on Penthouse video, plot and character tossed wildly across the room to land engagingly across the lampshade, along with time, place, and bits of fancy lingerie, which all the characters wear all the time, even when they are at home alone.
Before the show's debut, there was naturally a lot of interest, and many hoped, I think, that it might serve to reduce, even if only a little bit, the ignorance that spawns bigotry and hatred, and there are certainly storylines and dialogue that do have the potential for raising awareness of a number of social and legal issues that bigotry has created.
However anyone who looks to this show to "learn about Lesbians," or transgendered people, gay men, heterosexuals of either gender - anybody - would be well advised to hang onto that Bollywood song-and-dance metaphor with regard to actual sexual behavior.
No real people of any sexual preference or orientation behave like that, or have sex like that, unless they are doing it as performance art at best, or making that Penthouse video or a simple porn flick at most likely.
Ironically, what suffers most from this are the points in the story where the characters would be intimate. It's not that they aren't, just that by the time we get to a point in the story where there should be a real "sex scene," there have been so many that this is just another one, and like all the others, it is Bollywood Production Number Sex, that deprives the characters of any genuine sexuality, and thus deprives the viewers of a key and integral facet of the character.
Halfway through Season 1, I found myself doing the opposite of the teenboys - fast forwarding through the sex scenes as if they were commercials, not out of prudery, but a combination of boredom and curiosity born of real interest in the story itself!
No doubt to atone for an unacceptably low-level of regime praise in earlier episodes, in season 4, one of the most likeable and popular characters, Alice, is persuaded to jettison any previous aversion to crimes against humanity by being taken on a helicopter ride, given a kiss, and informed that her current object of desire is an old fashioned and traditional kind of girl who believes in invading other countries and waiting until she is "sure" to throw down and get freaky.
Her best friend is naturally the totally coolest lark in the exaltation; Kate Moenning's portrayal injects loveable fauxbutch playa Shane with more cool hotness even the producers will have dreamed of, back in those giddy pre-production days when the character's concept was carefully focus group-enriched to inspire girls who have never kissed a girl to reflect that if they ever were to do so and like it, it would have to be one like Shane.
Her gender-transcending and irresistible appeal is trumped only by that of Papi (Eva Torres), a stereotype-laden Latin American force of nature, the aforementioned best friend of the regime loyalist who reinforces the ideological dysfunction du jour of "supporting" the "policies" while disliking the on-camera talent.
Viewers who are sensitive to having their intelligence, along with a generous handful of population sectors, insulted will want to avoid this show, but the truly impervious devotee of vapid, mindless entertainment and Trash TV as an emerging genre should revel in it.
Season 4 is definitely where the series jumps the proverbial shark. This is where it all breaks down into desperate needy marketward graspings, not only at the predictable and presumably obligatory glorifying of atrocity, but greedily lapping up even the poker craze, culminating in one of the characters using crisp paper money to commit a sexual act on the disowned heiress, a connectivity that will cause the more fastidious viewers (the ones who have heard of Erich von Stroheim, anyway) to cringe.
To add insult to injury, Shane, the most awesome of all the principals, is shown wearing pointy-toed boots.
Yet to give credit where it is due, the scene where Alice and Shane spray paint the billboard is a truly moving expression of friendship, and the All Day Bed Party in the same episode (9) is as delicious as it is cheesy.
By the show's Swan Season, the most complex of all the characters, Max, whose story had heretofore taken us down roads of transgender whatitsreallylike-ology that Hilary Swank drove right by with windows rolled up, has been sensationalized into a groaningly predictable "pregnant man" scenario, smearing cheap tabloid sperm all over one of the potentially meatiest roles Daniela Sea (who does an awesome job in spite of it all) or anybody else is likely to get in any sitcom, ever.
Sweet Innocent Ingenue w/ long lashes Jenny has morphed into Evil Jenny, so evil, in fact, that she has either fallen off an unfinished exterior landing or been mysteriously murdered, evidently by one of the other main characters, who despite their assorted nuanced flaws, and ample respective Reasons They Might Have Killed Jenny, are all essentially Good People.
The series finale has been by now so thoroughly and vigorously trashed by pretty much everybody who saw it and deigned to say anything about it at all that there is little I can contribute to the pyre.
Was it by design that all the "loose ends," - and there was a big ol' tangled ball of them - were pulled out and made looser? Had the writers just come off a Majid Majidi binge of several days without sleep, and decided, as the deadline hurtled ever closer to their noses, to present their own interpretation, some sort of pseudo-deconstruction of the great director's precision-landed nonendings?
Or was it a case of mass writer's block, caused by mercury poisoning, the result of poor sushi choices in the days and weeks that preceded the handing in of that final script?
If truth be told, it was so non-final that I did not realize until well into the second half of the episode that it was the series final!
It was probably accidental, the presence of one smile-and-nod inducing plot point: The L Word ended as it began, with the main characters, Bette and Tina, together with issues, and with firm plans in place to resolve those issues by dint of obtaining a (second) baby.
Lyrical, even evocative of early David Lynch, L Word starts out as the simple tale of Jenny, All-American EveryGirl, who leaves her corn-fed, midwestern small town existence behind to seek her fortune in Hollywood.
We know right away that this story is not just your typical night-time soap, because Jenny does not aspire to be a movie star.
She does not want to be an actress or a model. Our Jenny wants to be a Writer!
When she arrives in LA, where she will live with her corn-fed, midwestern small town womens' swimming coach of a boyfriend Tim, she expresses surprise at the proximity of the Pacific Ocean. That's just how innocent she is. And she has big googly smudgepotted eyes, with really looooong innocent lashes, that lower thoughtfully as she peeks at a couple of her new Lesbian neighbors romping in the swimpool next door.
Tim has her describe everything she saw in detail. He is really turned on, and they make sweet innocent corn-fed midwestern love.
It is through young Jenny's eyes that we are introduced to the other major characters, Bette and Tina, the Stable Relationship Couple with Issues, Alice the Adorable and Quirky EveryPal, Dana the Closeted Athlete, Marina the Predator Fatale and Shane the Irresistible Androgyne.
The juxtaposition of the comfortable traditional sitcomic stereotype characters with the kiss of quasi-surrealism in the editing, lots and lots of snappy Gilmore Girl-grade dialogue and a compact if predictable plotline that manages to peel away the layers of those characters while still retaining an ethereal and amusing lightness makes the first three seasons as delightfully addictive as even the most jaded viewer could wish.
We meet the L-Wordians in the full bloom of those halcyon days of friends as chosen family, the first yearnings of that second nest-leaving that can be more seminal than the first, a coming of age redux as the twenties march on, and instincts older than time, stirrings of nesting, wing-spreading, and through the show we watch this poignant, sometimes cataclysmic unfolding into adulthood's chilly Big Room.
It's entertaining enough to make you overlook the annoyance that once again, the victims are affluent residents of the SoCal enclaves, though the series does indulge in some diversity celebratin', The L Word's glossy ambiance of entitled and affluent SoCal whitefolks manages to be faithful to the subgenre of 90210, The OC, and their subsequent "reality" companions even beyond the enclaves, with significant storylines set in West Hollywood, East LA and beyond.
Though it may have the ring of damning by faint praise, the series does feature more people of color than its predecessors, and its "social issues addressed" list includes at least a glancing acknowledgment of the impact on the lives of individuals of societal perceptions of ethnicity: Bette, one of the main characters, is bi-racial, and the show gets points casting here. Like Bette, Jennifer Beals is a light-skinned child of one white and one African-American parent.
If previous teleworks, both traditionally scripted and "reality" flavor, have subjected the hapless SoCalaffluents, particularly women, to a repeated battering of stereotypical portrayals, drawing, over the years, a caricature of a population already popularly perceived as cartoonish, characterized by shallowness and exaggerated materialism honed to art forms, proudly insular, more proudly ignorant, essentially useless creatures whose principal talents are self-absorption, shopping, solipsism, and "tanning," a quaint custom of white people dyeing their skins orange, a key expression, along with aquisition of long blonde hair and large surgically attached breasts, of their collective desire to physically resemble each other as much as possible.
The L-word cranks that up a notch, giving us further insight into the nature of this fascinating demographic creation, presenting us with a portrait of beings almost unfailingly incapable of viewing or being in the presence of another human to whom they feel even the most fleeting and superficial attraction without hurling themselves immediately into each other, the mythical "nymphos" so whispered about by the zit-afflicted teenboy contingent since time immemorial, the heroines of generation upon generation of wet dreams, women who are not only willing, not only eager to engage in physical intimacy, but biologically and emotionally incapable of restraining the ferocity of their uncontrollable urges regardless of appropriateness of time, place, choice of partner, potential - or certain - impact on others, involved, traffic...
Someone somewhere decided at the first concept meeting that The L Word must not content itself with merely featuring lots of sex scenes. Every episode must be chock-a-block with not just any old sex scene, but Hollywood-styled pretty, pretty sex, most of it the kind of hot steamy girl-on-girl fantasy action so beloved of those adolescent males and "men's magazine" fans.
Although the show's credits feature many prominent women very prominently, and the main characters are Lesbians, one gets the sense while the dialogue and character development seem skewed toward a female audience, the sex scenes are very markedly designed to appeal to the customer base of the Girls Gone Wild series.
A kinder perspective, might compare it to the Bollywood convention of characters spontaneously bursting into big song-and-dance production numbers every fifteen minutes or so in the course of a two-hour movie, completely independent of whether such a thing would be something the character in question "would do."
Enjoying this show requires the viewer to ascend to whole new levels of suspension of disbelief.
This is really the best way to absorb the show as a whole, otherwise it becomes just too distracting. Although the Sex Scene-Production Numbers certainly impact the story line, and frequently constitute plot development, at the same time they sort of exist on a different plane, floating above characters or plot, presumably for the benefit of those pubescent males who have no interest in any of that, and simply fast forward through any scenes where the actors are clothed. (Though they should do so with caution, as the characters are not always able to contain themselves long enough to disrobe).
Even during the Summer of Love, those dreamlike pre-AIDS years that saw the coming of age of the Baby Boom, where those who participated had few inhibitions about sexual activity, engaging in it early and often, and on the slightest provocation, (pun just left there), it was nothing like the L Word, where eyes meet, meaningful glances are exchanged, and the next minute is a full-on Penthouse video, plot and character tossed wildly across the room to land engagingly across the lampshade, along with time, place, and bits of fancy lingerie, which all the characters wear all the time, even when they are at home alone.
Before the show's debut, there was naturally a lot of interest, and many hoped, I think, that it might serve to reduce, even if only a little bit, the ignorance that spawns bigotry and hatred, and there are certainly storylines and dialogue that do have the potential for raising awareness of a number of social and legal issues that bigotry has created.
However anyone who looks to this show to "learn about Lesbians," or transgendered people, gay men, heterosexuals of either gender - anybody - would be well advised to hang onto that Bollywood song-and-dance metaphor with regard to actual sexual behavior.
No real people of any sexual preference or orientation behave like that, or have sex like that, unless they are doing it as performance art at best, or making that Penthouse video or a simple porn flick at most likely.
Ironically, what suffers most from this are the points in the story where the characters would be intimate. It's not that they aren't, just that by the time we get to a point in the story where there should be a real "sex scene," there have been so many that this is just another one, and like all the others, it is Bollywood Production Number Sex, that deprives the characters of any genuine sexuality, and thus deprives the viewers of a key and integral facet of the character.
Halfway through Season 1, I found myself doing the opposite of the teenboys - fast forwarding through the sex scenes as if they were commercials, not out of prudery, but a combination of boredom and curiosity born of real interest in the story itself!
No doubt to atone for an unacceptably low-level of regime praise in earlier episodes, in season 4, one of the most likeable and popular characters, Alice, is persuaded to jettison any previous aversion to crimes against humanity by being taken on a helicopter ride, given a kiss, and informed that her current object of desire is an old fashioned and traditional kind of girl who believes in invading other countries and waiting until she is "sure" to throw down and get freaky.
Her best friend is naturally the totally coolest lark in the exaltation; Kate Moenning's portrayal injects loveable fauxbutch playa Shane with more cool hotness even the producers will have dreamed of, back in those giddy pre-production days when the character's concept was carefully focus group-enriched to inspire girls who have never kissed a girl to reflect that if they ever were to do so and like it, it would have to be one like Shane.
Her gender-transcending and irresistible appeal is trumped only by that of Papi (Eva Torres), a stereotype-laden Latin American force of nature, the aforementioned best friend of the regime loyalist who reinforces the ideological dysfunction du jour of "supporting" the "policies" while disliking the on-camera talent.
Viewers who are sensitive to having their intelligence, along with a generous handful of population sectors, insulted will want to avoid this show, but the truly impervious devotee of vapid, mindless entertainment and Trash TV as an emerging genre should revel in it.
Season 4 is definitely where the series jumps the proverbial shark. This is where it all breaks down into desperate needy marketward graspings, not only at the predictable and presumably obligatory glorifying of atrocity, but greedily lapping up even the poker craze, culminating in one of the characters using crisp paper money to commit a sexual act on the disowned heiress, a connectivity that will cause the more fastidious viewers (the ones who have heard of Erich von Stroheim, anyway) to cringe.
To add insult to injury, Shane, the most awesome of all the principals, is shown wearing pointy-toed boots.
Yet to give credit where it is due, the scene where Alice and Shane spray paint the billboard is a truly moving expression of friendship, and the All Day Bed Party in the same episode (9) is as delicious as it is cheesy.
By the show's Swan Season, the most complex of all the characters, Max, whose story had heretofore taken us down roads of transgender whatitsreallylike-ology that Hilary Swank drove right by with windows rolled up, has been sensationalized into a groaningly predictable "pregnant man" scenario, smearing cheap tabloid sperm all over one of the potentially meatiest roles Daniela Sea (who does an awesome job in spite of it all) or anybody else is likely to get in any sitcom, ever.
Sweet Innocent Ingenue w/ long lashes Jenny has morphed into Evil Jenny, so evil, in fact, that she has either fallen off an unfinished exterior landing or been mysteriously murdered, evidently by one of the other main characters, who despite their assorted nuanced flaws, and ample respective Reasons They Might Have Killed Jenny, are all essentially Good People.
The series finale has been by now so thoroughly and vigorously trashed by pretty much everybody who saw it and deigned to say anything about it at all that there is little I can contribute to the pyre.
Was it by design that all the "loose ends," - and there was a big ol' tangled ball of them - were pulled out and made looser? Had the writers just come off a Majid Majidi binge of several days without sleep, and decided, as the deadline hurtled ever closer to their noses, to present their own interpretation, some sort of pseudo-deconstruction of the great director's precision-landed nonendings?
Or was it a case of mass writer's block, caused by mercury poisoning, the result of poor sushi choices in the days and weeks that preceded the handing in of that final script?
If truth be told, it was so non-final that I did not realize until well into the second half of the episode that it was the series final!
It was probably accidental, the presence of one smile-and-nod inducing plot point: The L Word ended as it began, with the main characters, Bette and Tina, together with issues, and with firm plans in place to resolve those issues by dint of obtaining a (second) baby.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The City vs The Hills: The Discrete Charm of the Vapid Whole
I think it may be one of those whole greater than the sum of the parts things.
A key element of the charm and appeal, for want of better terms, of The Hills, had to do, I think, with the juxtaposition of essentially bland characters, each of whom brought a different quality of blandness, and without that blandness, the show would never have had another key element to its success: accessibility.
Lauren, Audrina and Whitney remind us all of girls we knew in high school, college, or both, no matter when or where we went to high school or college, and regardless of whether we mocked those girls, were best friends with those girls, wanted to be those girls, or were those girls.
That, more than any DiVellic script or production values or editing, is why we feel as if we know them, and why their inane interactions with each other against the backdrop of an almost static, time-stands-still landscape, resonate with us.
We are taken back to a standingstill time when we each heard our own personal protoLaruens and protoWhitneys exchange banalities, sharing with each other and us the non-events of lives that are, despite the glitterglam of the designer bags and endless expensive outfits and trendy restaurants, the glitzy star-studded events and assorted swimmin' pools n' movie stars, basically dull as dust.
Oh, sure, there is a little kick of schadenfreude, of cliched hollow bleakness of tinseltown existence, but these are almost optional condiments to be sprinkled or not on the dish that we are really lapping up: the slightly more "experienced," opaque-eyed Lauren, as she recounts, in her trademark whiskeywhisper, to Whitney the Fresh-Faced, that this or that boy did or did not call, that this or that recently or not-so-recently estranged friend of her televised Lagunadolescent days was or was not present at this or that place, texted or did not text, and Whitney's impeccably polite and unerringly noncommittal responses delivered in that perfect Nice Girl peal of a voice that no amount of coaching nor talent could produce. This is the reality part.
Whitney the Wholesome, who keeps her friend-estrangements, if any, genteelly to herself, who seldom receives, or expects calls from boys, at least none that she wishes to tell us about enough to interrupt Lauren, to whom it seemingly never occurs that Whitney has any existence at all beyond sitting at the next desk, she is there all night, waiting, while Lauren is out at the fashionable bar du jour taking shots and whispering to other more, sophisticated but equally uninteresting and unremarkable members of her limited little social circle about who has come in, who has gone out, OK, don't look but who is coming this way now.
Maybe the incongruity of what, in almost any other circumstance, would be called the "chemistry" between the two is enhanced by Whitney the MarySue, the viewer representative.
Lauren is without a doubt the most accessible Teen Queen in television history, Millions can identify with her completely, either being, or having been her, minus, of course, at least some of the tinsel and limitless wardrobe budget.
But if it is too heady for most of the show's biggest slice of the demographic pie, young girls between 10 and 24, to imagine themselves in the Jimmy Choos and Louboutins that grace the feet of LC Superstar herself, they can at least imagine themselves as that next-desk neighbor, receiving the Word from the slightly overglossed lips of the Goddess Herself.
Every high school, every college homecoming, every town festival, always has more Ladies in Waiting than Queens, more Whitneys than Laurens, who don't date quite as much, don't seem to inspire as much envy, or have quite as many quarrels with friends old and new.
The Los and Audrinas of the world do not fight over the coveted prize of being Whitney's BFF, nor are mothers likely to sigh that they wish their daughters had more friends like that Lauren.
It is no wonder then, that as The Hills has crawled on, through season after season of a story whose actual plot, if it can be called that, could be summed up in about half a page, double-spaced, as Lauren has blazed into the stratosphere of superstardom and become a one-woman empire that some awed whispers have suggested could be on her way to giving Oprah herself a run for her money one day, if this keeps up, that the Sweetheart Crown has gradually ceased to fit exactly, and shifted from Lauren's smooth, meticulously maintained highlighted head to the softer, corn-colored locks of Whitney the Increasingly More Accessible.
The decision, in retrospect quite shrewd, of Whitney to keep her personal life off the show (if indeed it was hers and not the producer's) added a touch of mystery to her sweetness, and cultivated a growing interest in the girl who just sat at the next desk and absorbed recap of the basically nothing that had happened last week, whose lines consisted almost solely of those unfailingly courteous, exquisitely vapid replies that slowly got viewers to wondering, first idly to themselves, and then out loud, what was really going on under those golden tresses.
There were even a few here and there who dared to speculate that Whitney must be totally over it by now, sick of just sitting there listening to Lauren going on about every phone call and text message she received, every social engagement she attended, though Lauren's star could by no means be said to be in decline, on the contrary, her fame moved ever-upward, even as more and more viewers began expressing more and more love for Whitney.
Audrina and Lo's own respective "chemistries" with Lauren fulminated and marched apace, and roles continued to grow, and the unique contributions to the show's overall lack of substance recognized, with Audrina becoming what that big viewer pie slice perceived as having an "edge," meaning that she hung out with "rockers" and had once posed for photos with her top off.
Audrina evolved into the Slightly Bad Girl and undisputed champion whose perfectly empty gaze would define for a generation the term "vacuous," perhaps most sharply crystallized by a scene that quickly catapulted itself to viral status, of a co-worker trying to discuss with Audrina the news of some experiments involving a particle accelerator, to which Audrina responded with the now-classic line "Isn't it strange that all of this is happening when Lauren is gone?"
Meanwhile childhood friend Lo, historically pleasant and perky, but so assiduously uninteresting, even for a show famous for giving viewers a glimpse into a world where nothing happens, that in a bold and unprecedented move, she was given a character makeover, and with no warning, and for no apparent reason, did a complete personality 180, from one appearance to the next became New Demon Lo, jealous and crafty, petty and manipulative enemy of Audrina, her declared arch rival for the BFFic affections of LC.
Whitney, already The Sweet One, by contrast began to appear positively angelic, and all through the fandom, Whitney Love bloomed like wildflowers on Miracle Gro.
This is how spinoffs happen, and so it happened with Whitney and The City, the story of the basically nothing much that happened when Whitney proved to have indeed grown weary of sitting at the next desk delivering noncommittal and courteous responses to Lauren's weekly update.
If ever a show were positioned to be an instant hit, The City should have been it. Whitney even relaxed her no private life on camera rule and allowed herself to be shown not only liking a boy, but kissing one, going on dates with one.
The new star-become sun was given her own coterie of satellite players, carefully selected to be guaranteed to be duller than she, but with tenuous off-show celebrity connections: the daughter of a famous name eighties rock band, a social-climbing wannabe whose mediaho antics had gained her a few, if not a full fifteen minutes of minor and largely local notoriety, even a slightly sketchy musician boyfriend with an Australian accent that he might or might not be enhancing for dramatic effect.
She was outfitted with a suitable faux job at a famous name design house, and the regulation spacious luxury apartment that no one who really had that job could possibly afford. Off-camera, she launched her own clothing line and made multiple appearances on The Hills aftershow to promote The City.
No effort was spared to painstakingly craft the show into an East Coast doppelganger of The Hills, with all the identical stock elements, of fancy parties and scene after scene set at cafe tables set up outside establishments popular with a small but select segment of Manhattanites who all knew each other and no one else.
But it just wasn't the same. It just isn't the same.
Whitney in the role of Manhattan Lauren recounting the non-events is nowhere near as compelling as Lauren, with her Knowing Looks imparting significance to the dreary trivia of her lifestyle of the rich and famous.
Frankly, Whitney was much more fun to watch when she sat at the next desk and replied politely, when any expression of emotion, even a smile or a laugh, would send viewers by the thousands to the internets to exclaim over how beautiful she was, and how much they loved her.
Where is the Whitney that won our hearts that wonderful day when, in the presence of God and everybody, even Emily the SuperIntern, Andre Leon Talley cast one keen glance at her and commanded the magnificent midnight blue Guy Laroche be brought forth and placed upon her?
Andre Leon Talley himself validated our growing Whitney-love, Andre the Giant of all that is Vogue on any and all coasts, saw some ineffable something In her sweet everyday face and proclaimed that our Whitney would walk.
Gracing and graced by the elegant drapery of the very gown in which Hilary Swank had accepted her Oscar, it was our Whitney who would walk, while LC, the undisputed Queen Regnant of Reality Television looked on with a clearly heartfelt joy for her friend, in contrast to the poorly-concealed glowering of Emily the SuperIntern, despite the fact that she, too, was walking, and Lauren was not!
It was an unforgettable day, a day on which something actually happened on The Hills - and what a something!
The now-famous stumble was the moment that sealed forever (or so we thought) Whitney's place in the box section of our affection.
What happened?
How can it be that a mirror-image of DiVello's Hills, matched shot for shot, scene for scene, ham-handedly lyrically relevant popular pop songbyte for ham-handedly lyrically relevant popular pop songbyte, trendy restaurant for trendy restaurant, with even more celebrity cameos and even more Real Couture because it IS New York, and starring our beloved wholesome fresh-faced Whitney, for whom the writers have even gone the extra mile, positioning her character as if she were the quintessential ingenue just arrived farm-fresh from some hamlet in the heartland instead of a seasoned Teen Vogue Paris returnee intern born and bred in the affluent SoCal enclaves and forged in the world capital of glamour, can fail to captivate us even as much as watching yet another meaningful Look form in the void behind those opaque eyes of Lauren Conrad as she huskily confides news of yet another phone call from someone the innocent-looking girl at the next desk has never met?
How do we, who have faithfully watched, for four seasons, every excruciatingly substance-free second of every still-life-paced, soul-sucking episode of The Hills, dare to complain that this DiVello creation, if possible more Hills than The Hills, is just not very interesting and that nothing really happens?
What audacity we have! And what short and fickle memories, to sulk at the just-opened box in which nestles the gift we asked for, the Whitney show we wanted!
The very WhitneyStar we created with our praise of her blandness, we whine, is too bland.
It is early days still for The City. It may find its zone yet.
Even if it tanks, if DiVello has ever had a moment's doubt of the rare jewel he has in Lauren Conrad, or ever questioned that he should move heaven and earth to hang onto her, he can consider the millions spent on the City as a good investment, because if it does nothing else, it will put those doubts and questions, whether they have actually occurred or not, to eternal and definitive rest.
Scarlett O'Hara, wrote Miss Margaret Mitchell, "was not beautiful, but men seldom realized that when caught by her charm..."
Lauren Conrad may be neither beautiful nor charming. She may not be the crispiest fry in the bag, or even interesting. One young man who had a small one or two episode part on The Hills described her "odorless."
**If she were not famous and therefore accompanied by a large and obvious entourage and jostling horde of paparazzi, It would, I think, be difficult to find Lauren in a crowd, in the context of the milieu in which she has lived her life, for instance, in a mall or at a concert in the SoCal enclaves. Had she not, as a young girl, made that fateful decision to sign on for Laguna Beach, it is very probable that today she would be virtually invisible.
I have seldom uttered more than two sentences about her without using the word "accessible," meaning that she is ordinary enough so that millions of viewers, diverse of age, culture, economic status and just about every other trick in the demographer's bag, can identify with her on some level.
Whatever she does not have, Lauren Conrad, we now know, just in case it might have been we and not DiVello who was having those doubts and questions, does have some indefinable and ephemeral quality, a je ne sais quoi that somehow confers on her the mystical ability to cause us to watch her, whether with reverence or lulz, as she does the same thing - which is basically nothing - week after week, year after year - that is, at least, as long as she is one of those parts whose sum is less than their whole.
**(Ironically, I can't say any of that about Whitney. I bet I could find her in a mall within minutes).
A key element of the charm and appeal, for want of better terms, of The Hills, had to do, I think, with the juxtaposition of essentially bland characters, each of whom brought a different quality of blandness, and without that blandness, the show would never have had another key element to its success: accessibility.
Lauren, Audrina and Whitney remind us all of girls we knew in high school, college, or both, no matter when or where we went to high school or college, and regardless of whether we mocked those girls, were best friends with those girls, wanted to be those girls, or were those girls.
That, more than any DiVellic script or production values or editing, is why we feel as if we know them, and why their inane interactions with each other against the backdrop of an almost static, time-stands-still landscape, resonate with us.
We are taken back to a standingstill time when we each heard our own personal protoLaruens and protoWhitneys exchange banalities, sharing with each other and us the non-events of lives that are, despite the glitterglam of the designer bags and endless expensive outfits and trendy restaurants, the glitzy star-studded events and assorted swimmin' pools n' movie stars, basically dull as dust.
Oh, sure, there is a little kick of schadenfreude, of cliched hollow bleakness of tinseltown existence, but these are almost optional condiments to be sprinkled or not on the dish that we are really lapping up: the slightly more "experienced," opaque-eyed Lauren, as she recounts, in her trademark whiskeywhisper, to Whitney the Fresh-Faced, that this or that boy did or did not call, that this or that recently or not-so-recently estranged friend of her televised Lagunadolescent days was or was not present at this or that place, texted or did not text, and Whitney's impeccably polite and unerringly noncommittal responses delivered in that perfect Nice Girl peal of a voice that no amount of coaching nor talent could produce. This is the reality part.
Whitney the Wholesome, who keeps her friend-estrangements, if any, genteelly to herself, who seldom receives, or expects calls from boys, at least none that she wishes to tell us about enough to interrupt Lauren, to whom it seemingly never occurs that Whitney has any existence at all beyond sitting at the next desk, she is there all night, waiting, while Lauren is out at the fashionable bar du jour taking shots and whispering to other more, sophisticated but equally uninteresting and unremarkable members of her limited little social circle about who has come in, who has gone out, OK, don't look but who is coming this way now.
Maybe the incongruity of what, in almost any other circumstance, would be called the "chemistry" between the two is enhanced by Whitney the MarySue, the viewer representative.
Lauren is without a doubt the most accessible Teen Queen in television history, Millions can identify with her completely, either being, or having been her, minus, of course, at least some of the tinsel and limitless wardrobe budget.
But if it is too heady for most of the show's biggest slice of the demographic pie, young girls between 10 and 24, to imagine themselves in the Jimmy Choos and Louboutins that grace the feet of LC Superstar herself, they can at least imagine themselves as that next-desk neighbor, receiving the Word from the slightly overglossed lips of the Goddess Herself.
Every high school, every college homecoming, every town festival, always has more Ladies in Waiting than Queens, more Whitneys than Laurens, who don't date quite as much, don't seem to inspire as much envy, or have quite as many quarrels with friends old and new.
The Los and Audrinas of the world do not fight over the coveted prize of being Whitney's BFF, nor are mothers likely to sigh that they wish their daughters had more friends like that Lauren.
It is no wonder then, that as The Hills has crawled on, through season after season of a story whose actual plot, if it can be called that, could be summed up in about half a page, double-spaced, as Lauren has blazed into the stratosphere of superstardom and become a one-woman empire that some awed whispers have suggested could be on her way to giving Oprah herself a run for her money one day, if this keeps up, that the Sweetheart Crown has gradually ceased to fit exactly, and shifted from Lauren's smooth, meticulously maintained highlighted head to the softer, corn-colored locks of Whitney the Increasingly More Accessible.
The decision, in retrospect quite shrewd, of Whitney to keep her personal life off the show (if indeed it was hers and not the producer's) added a touch of mystery to her sweetness, and cultivated a growing interest in the girl who just sat at the next desk and absorbed recap of the basically nothing that had happened last week, whose lines consisted almost solely of those unfailingly courteous, exquisitely vapid replies that slowly got viewers to wondering, first idly to themselves, and then out loud, what was really going on under those golden tresses.
There were even a few here and there who dared to speculate that Whitney must be totally over it by now, sick of just sitting there listening to Lauren going on about every phone call and text message she received, every social engagement she attended, though Lauren's star could by no means be said to be in decline, on the contrary, her fame moved ever-upward, even as more and more viewers began expressing more and more love for Whitney.
Audrina and Lo's own respective "chemistries" with Lauren fulminated and marched apace, and roles continued to grow, and the unique contributions to the show's overall lack of substance recognized, with Audrina becoming what that big viewer pie slice perceived as having an "edge," meaning that she hung out with "rockers" and had once posed for photos with her top off.
Audrina evolved into the Slightly Bad Girl and undisputed champion whose perfectly empty gaze would define for a generation the term "vacuous," perhaps most sharply crystallized by a scene that quickly catapulted itself to viral status, of a co-worker trying to discuss with Audrina the news of some experiments involving a particle accelerator, to which Audrina responded with the now-classic line "Isn't it strange that all of this is happening when Lauren is gone?"
Meanwhile childhood friend Lo, historically pleasant and perky, but so assiduously uninteresting, even for a show famous for giving viewers a glimpse into a world where nothing happens, that in a bold and unprecedented move, she was given a character makeover, and with no warning, and for no apparent reason, did a complete personality 180, from one appearance to the next became New Demon Lo, jealous and crafty, petty and manipulative enemy of Audrina, her declared arch rival for the BFFic affections of LC.
Whitney, already The Sweet One, by contrast began to appear positively angelic, and all through the fandom, Whitney Love bloomed like wildflowers on Miracle Gro.
This is how spinoffs happen, and so it happened with Whitney and The City, the story of the basically nothing much that happened when Whitney proved to have indeed grown weary of sitting at the next desk delivering noncommittal and courteous responses to Lauren's weekly update.
If ever a show were positioned to be an instant hit, The City should have been it. Whitney even relaxed her no private life on camera rule and allowed herself to be shown not only liking a boy, but kissing one, going on dates with one.
The new star-become sun was given her own coterie of satellite players, carefully selected to be guaranteed to be duller than she, but with tenuous off-show celebrity connections: the daughter of a famous name eighties rock band, a social-climbing wannabe whose mediaho antics had gained her a few, if not a full fifteen minutes of minor and largely local notoriety, even a slightly sketchy musician boyfriend with an Australian accent that he might or might not be enhancing for dramatic effect.
She was outfitted with a suitable faux job at a famous name design house, and the regulation spacious luxury apartment that no one who really had that job could possibly afford. Off-camera, she launched her own clothing line and made multiple appearances on The Hills aftershow to promote The City.
No effort was spared to painstakingly craft the show into an East Coast doppelganger of The Hills, with all the identical stock elements, of fancy parties and scene after scene set at cafe tables set up outside establishments popular with a small but select segment of Manhattanites who all knew each other and no one else.
But it just wasn't the same. It just isn't the same.
Whitney in the role of Manhattan Lauren recounting the non-events is nowhere near as compelling as Lauren, with her Knowing Looks imparting significance to the dreary trivia of her lifestyle of the rich and famous.
Frankly, Whitney was much more fun to watch when she sat at the next desk and replied politely, when any expression of emotion, even a smile or a laugh, would send viewers by the thousands to the internets to exclaim over how beautiful she was, and how much they loved her.
Where is the Whitney that won our hearts that wonderful day when, in the presence of God and everybody, even Emily the SuperIntern, Andre Leon Talley cast one keen glance at her and commanded the magnificent midnight blue Guy Laroche be brought forth and placed upon her?
Andre Leon Talley himself validated our growing Whitney-love, Andre the Giant of all that is Vogue on any and all coasts, saw some ineffable something In her sweet everyday face and proclaimed that our Whitney would walk.
Gracing and graced by the elegant drapery of the very gown in which Hilary Swank had accepted her Oscar, it was our Whitney who would walk, while LC, the undisputed Queen Regnant of Reality Television looked on with a clearly heartfelt joy for her friend, in contrast to the poorly-concealed glowering of Emily the SuperIntern, despite the fact that she, too, was walking, and Lauren was not!
It was an unforgettable day, a day on which something actually happened on The Hills - and what a something!
The now-famous stumble was the moment that sealed forever (or so we thought) Whitney's place in the box section of our affection.
What happened?
How can it be that a mirror-image of DiVello's Hills, matched shot for shot, scene for scene, ham-handedly lyrically relevant popular pop songbyte for ham-handedly lyrically relevant popular pop songbyte, trendy restaurant for trendy restaurant, with even more celebrity cameos and even more Real Couture because it IS New York, and starring our beloved wholesome fresh-faced Whitney, for whom the writers have even gone the extra mile, positioning her character as if she were the quintessential ingenue just arrived farm-fresh from some hamlet in the heartland instead of a seasoned Teen Vogue Paris returnee intern born and bred in the affluent SoCal enclaves and forged in the world capital of glamour, can fail to captivate us even as much as watching yet another meaningful Look form in the void behind those opaque eyes of Lauren Conrad as she huskily confides news of yet another phone call from someone the innocent-looking girl at the next desk has never met?
How do we, who have faithfully watched, for four seasons, every excruciatingly substance-free second of every still-life-paced, soul-sucking episode of The Hills, dare to complain that this DiVello creation, if possible more Hills than The Hills, is just not very interesting and that nothing really happens?
What audacity we have! And what short and fickle memories, to sulk at the just-opened box in which nestles the gift we asked for, the Whitney show we wanted!
The very WhitneyStar we created with our praise of her blandness, we whine, is too bland.
It is early days still for The City. It may find its zone yet.
Even if it tanks, if DiVello has ever had a moment's doubt of the rare jewel he has in Lauren Conrad, or ever questioned that he should move heaven and earth to hang onto her, he can consider the millions spent on the City as a good investment, because if it does nothing else, it will put those doubts and questions, whether they have actually occurred or not, to eternal and definitive rest.
Scarlett O'Hara, wrote Miss Margaret Mitchell, "was not beautiful, but men seldom realized that when caught by her charm..."
Lauren Conrad may be neither beautiful nor charming. She may not be the crispiest fry in the bag, or even interesting. One young man who had a small one or two episode part on The Hills described her "odorless."
**If she were not famous and therefore accompanied by a large and obvious entourage and jostling horde of paparazzi, It would, I think, be difficult to find Lauren in a crowd, in the context of the milieu in which she has lived her life, for instance, in a mall or at a concert in the SoCal enclaves. Had she not, as a young girl, made that fateful decision to sign on for Laguna Beach, it is very probable that today she would be virtually invisible.
I have seldom uttered more than two sentences about her without using the word "accessible," meaning that she is ordinary enough so that millions of viewers, diverse of age, culture, economic status and just about every other trick in the demographer's bag, can identify with her on some level.
Whatever she does not have, Lauren Conrad, we now know, just in case it might have been we and not DiVello who was having those doubts and questions, does have some indefinable and ephemeral quality, a je ne sais quoi that somehow confers on her the mystical ability to cause us to watch her, whether with reverence or lulz, as she does the same thing - which is basically nothing - week after week, year after year - that is, at least, as long as she is one of those parts whose sum is less than their whole.
**(Ironically, I can't say any of that about Whitney. I bet I could find her in a mall within minutes).
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