A rchive Date
[ 08-07-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[For real reality, try looking in your mirror
By GARY DUNFORD
Toronto Sun
July 9, 2000
GET A LIFE: I spent a few minutes last night watching a woman brush her teeth on network TV. A pal says she has a recurring dream where she sits on a tropical beach, shaving her legs with a clamshell. All right, enough! We're spending way too much time eye-balling "reality" TV.
Who ARE these people who've sold their souls to the devil?
Do you have three months of your seven decades on earth to give CBS for the sensory deprivation tank called Big Brother? Do you have so few connections to lovers, jobs and pets that you'd gladly fly to the end of the earth for a month to sleep with Survivor's strangers and snakes?
Of course not! You have a life!
Hear me now and hear me well: The only Reality TV on the planet is on THIS side of the glass. Far weirder than brushing your teeth in front of a two-way mirror you know has a camera behind it, is sitting in Toronto watching a stranger in California brush her teeth. What good do you get out of it? Why aren't you brushing your own teeth? Making faces in your own mirror that nobody can see? Scrub. Rinse. Spit.
Do you find yourself making lunch, thinking: Who would I least like to share this tuna sandwich with? Gervase, the do-nothing basketball coach on Survivor? Richard, the creepy corporate trainer? Susan, the snarky truck driver? Or Greg, the space ape who takes cell calls on his coconut shell?
Are these our new imaginary friends?
Or is it some extension of a Jerry Springer self-esteem moment? Sure, my life sucks, but at least I'm not sleeping in the same room with Eddy, Big Brother's self-obsessed media major. Or Brittany, the show's designated flake. Get some gaffer tape and we'll tie MegaWill to his bed 'til the series ends in September. Two episodes and we've already seen and heard too much of the Big Brother gang. They made a clock out of a baked potato. And worse yet, I watched.
If oddly-shaped strangers and their banal small-talk are truly your cup of tea, go people-watch at a mall. Much more happens.
But for what it's worth, here's my sure-fire strategy to be the last man or woman left on either TV series, winner of the cash jackpot:
- Sleep with half the cast. Be especially inventive and charming. Dunf's law: They ain't votin' you out if they's gettin' some. Gretchen? You go, girl. One man, one vote. Whisper to each, "You're the best."
- Rub off any sharp edge of personality that marks you as a target. You don't want to be a self-identified Ladies Man. Or a perky Miss Washington USA. No grumpy retired Navy SEAL. But if you are "that helpful Jane or Joe Nice," whose name nobody can remember, you think they'll be able to write it down to eliminate you?
- Speak every thought aloud. Imitate the self-confessions on MTV's Real World and the TV soaps. Big Brother's Eddy has already made himself more essential to the series than the crew that outnumbers the cast. Dunf's law: Big Ego on Camera. But go low profile for meals. Be a main character.
- Challenge. Snipe. Sulk. The producers of reality TV can only piece together continuity from days of crap with reaction shots. Offer your full range of emotions. And if you happen to have a snippet of Gilbert & Sullivan or an obscure Broadway patter tune, break into song.
- Always smile when you brush your teeth. People are watching.
But that snappy Survivor motto? Outwit. Outplay. Outlast?
They're not talkin' about the poor saps-without-lives they've found to people these shows. They're talkin' about viewers.
The cast wants the big money. But why are YOU there? Why am I? You know the "cloudy" Party Ice Dave Letterman talks about? The cloudy ice that makes you feel like a loser? How do these shows make you feel? Like a winner? The real show's on our side of the screen. And, God, I hope the plot-line and conversation is better. Meow.
© 2000 Gary Dunford Reach Dunf at (416) 947-2246 or by e-mail at pagesix@aol.com]
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