My MTV: Tiara Girls

As should be evident from previous posts dedicated to MADE and 8th and Ocean, when it comes to MTV, I'm an easy customer to please. I'll lap up pretty much any reality show they toss my way. So this week I gave the new MTV series, Tiara Girls a test run. Sadly, I think my favourite network has let the rhinestone-encrusted crown slip a little on this one. This show falls so much short of MTV's usual sassy standards that I doubt I'll be able to eke out a two paragraph blog about it. But, this being a slow night, I'll give it a try.

I think Tiara Girls was doomed from the start for the reason that beauty pageants make too easy targets for the kind of pseudo-satirical/pseudo-documentary teen reality shows we've come to expect from MTV with shows like MADE and Super Sweet Sixteen. We know that pageants are weird. We can conjecture that the surreal sub-cultures in which they flourish are disturbingly bizarre. We expect that teenage girls competing in pageants are going be spouting off the kind of anti-feminist remarks that would earn them a lot of furrowed brows and angry headshakes if they were appearing on Oprah. So when we see all these easily-anticipated elements come together on an episode of Tiara Girls, the result is just...yawn.

Maybe it's just that I personally find pageants unexciting. Growing up in Canada, it seemed pretty clear that pageants were a foreign phenomenon, and they didn't really hold all that much fascination for me (I was too busy idolizing Elizabeth Manley). These days, I find them to be one of the most tired feminist bad objects out there. Whether the world keeps turning with or without pageants doesn't really matter--either way, 99.9% of its problems are still going to go on unsolved.

Despite my negative review, I'm not really saddened by the lack-lustre appeal of Tiara Girls. This just means I'll have more time to keep up with my other MTV favourites. Really, my TV viewing schedule was getting packed as it was, especially having to fit various play-off games in. If you get a chance to check the show out, give it a try and tell me what I'm missing. Or not. It's really not as fun as MTV should be.

My MTV: 8th and Ocean

MTV is making it awfully hard for me get my ass off the couch these days (actually, it's a futon, but I digress). I'm still harbouring an addiction to MADE, am swiftly developing an addiction to the new season of The Real World, and as of last week, have started catching a few episodes of 8th and Ocean. The prognosis is not good. Like my erstwhile favourite MTV "reality" drama, Laguna Beach, it features generic California scenery, insipid dialogue and painfully slow-paced action. I think I'm gonna be hooked.

I'm not much of an America's Next Top Model follower, so I can't really say whether fans of that show will find 8th and Ocean equally enticing to watch. A big plus for 8th and Ocean is its Tyra Banks-free format. While the MTV show lacks Top Model's explicit competition, it is well-endowed with the more subtle variety, such as the sparks that are about to fly between identical twins, Kelly and Sabrina. FYI, Sabrina's unfortunate acne outbreaks constitute the show's core dramatic conflict at the moment. She feels left behind because the other models' careers, particularly her sister's, are starting to take off, while she keeps being told to avoid the light of day until her face is fit to be seen in public (I just assumed this was par for the course if you live in California, model or not). Apparently, in the next episode Kelly expresses interest in breast "enhancement" surgery, which upsets the insecure Sabrina even more. It's like Sweet Valley High in some alternate Botox-infused universe. If that's not enough to get you watching, I don't know what will.

After taking in the dramatics of 8th and Ocean this evening, I paused to consider that models have gained a lot of exposure in the past decade. Back in my junior high and high school years, which, fortunately for my formative self, coincided with the golden age of the Supermodels, models were seen and not heard. We didn't have television shows that revealed Cindy Crawford binging on Ben & Jerry's at one a.m., Linda Evangelista stealing cans of Red Bull from Christy Turlington's tote bag, or Naomi Campbell padding around in badly-fitted pajama pants and a trucker hat. We never saw these women without make-up, for Pete's sake. And only rarely did we see them off the runway. But now it seems that everywhere in the media, models both old and new are letting it all hang out. Sometimes I kind of wish they'd pull it all back in because, well, most of these people are just not that entertaining once they step off the cover of Vogue. It's the old "don't sit too close at the ballet" thing.

I'm not really sure why I watch any of the copious model shows on tv in the first place. Unlike some women, I don't really relish the chance to catch models looking "ugly" (which, let's be honest here, they never do. They're models) or saying "stupid" things (they don't get paid the big bucks to solve the world's problems, folks--that's, what, the President's job or something?). Furthermore, I don't secretly idolize models or covet their lives (oh hell no--I love my freedom, my sense of self worth and my Cheetos too much to buy into that crazy-ass fantasy). I guess I watch these shows because the modelling industry, like Hollywood, is so incredibly surreal in its workings: extremely irrational, extraordinarily shallow, fickle, dirty, backstabbing and occasionally heartwarming. In other words, a perfect evening's entertainment!

Made in the U.S.A.

Lest it be assumed, based on my last three posts, that my pontifications are limited to 1980s pop culture and do not span into the present, I have chosen to devote today's entry to my favourite current television show, MTV's Made. For the uninitiated, Made is a "reality" tv show with the ostensible goal of helping average American teens realize their dreams, while of course having fun and coming to an easily-encapsulated-in-fifty-words-or-less sense of self-knowledge along the way. Here is a sampling of a few choice episodes:

• the sensitive jock who wants to become a ballet dancer
• the shy tomboy who wants the female lead in the school play
• the band geek who wants to be crowned a pageant queen
• the skinny nerd (male) who wants to join the wrestling team
• the skinny nerd (female) who wants to be a cheerleader
• etc., etc. (for more examples, visit MTV's hopelessly unnavigable website).
  

In each episode, the protagonist is a wholesome, down-to-earth, more or less emotionally stable kid. Of course, these kids have a few problems, but that's why they're on Made--so that MTV can whip up a 28-day, action-oriented solution to their teen angst that, if successful, will help them to disavow the realities of adolescence and adopt a perky, all-American, can-do attitude the likes of which we haven't seen in TV teens since The Brady Bunch went off the air.

So how does this mythical journey unfold, you ask? Here's a brief synopsis of the narrative arc that characterizes most episodes of Made, accompanied by my notation of the various blatant fallacies embedded within it:

1. We meet the teen/hero. Teen does not fit in at school, as evidenced by the fact that they do not belong to the "popular" crowd [blatant fallacy #1: entry to the popular crowd = instant happiness]. We get a glimpse of the "in" crowd, which is contrasted with the teen's friends. We are asked to empathize with this teen's feeling that his or her high school experience is in some way deficient. This feeling is frequently compounded by there being a big brother or sister in the picture who is perfect in every way and rubs this in with our teen/hero at every opportunity [I must confess, the bitchy blonde big sisters are my favourite, but that's probably because I never had one].
2. The teen/hero identifies a goal that they have . They believe that if they could somehow meet this goal, they will be able to have a beautiful, fulfilling high school experience [blatant fallacy #2: there is no such thing as a beautiful, fulfilling high school experience].
3. The teen/hero meets their Made coach. This individual is an expert in the field associated with the teen's dream and has been assigned to basically kick his or her ass repeatedly over the course of one month in order to ensure that dream gets realized (kind of like Mr. Miyagi, but sadly minus the Buddhist enlightenment factor).
4. The teen/hero's road to success is a rocky one. Along the way, they usually build up enough confidence from the progress they're making towards their goal to think that it's a good idea to ask out somebody who's way out of their league [blatant fallacy #3, and damn, is it a pervasive one: it is never a good idea to ask out somebody who's way out of your league]. This pretty much always crashes and burns [which sort of acknowledges the reality of blatant fallacy #3]. Further conflict ensues when the old, uncool friends start getting pissed that the teen/hero not only wants to ditch them, but has solicited the help of a national TV show to do so. Family conflict may flare up as well, particularly in situations where the parents were slackers/nerds in high school and feel threatened by their progeny's quest to better themselves.
   
5. The teen/hero finally (like in the last 5 minutes of the show), takes a test that will determine whether or not they have met their goal. And here's where it gets super-interesting, in my opinion, for a mainstream American tv show: the teens usually FAIL! OK, they don't totally fail. The band geek won Miss Congeniality, the skinny nerd (female) made the junior varsity cheerleading team, the shy tomboy got a speaking part in the play. But they aren't blazing success stories either--especially in a country where world-class figure skaters, Democratic presidential candidates and that Bo Bice guy from last season of American Idol are berated for coming in second in their respective arenas of competition. [NB: Now, with Canadians it's a different story. We're willing to designate friggin' national holidays for people who come in fourth.] At any rate, Made tries its darndest to gloss over the fact that its protagonists come up short in their quests to attain their goals [which brings me to blatant fallacy #4: it's not about winning or losing, it's about how you play the game. Yeah, right. Jerry Bruckheimer ain't never making your biopic if you believe that kind of claptrap].

As with any kind of journey (except for "Journey," who will be the subject of a later entry), lessons are learned along the way. Here's a few that I gleaned for myself from repeated viewings of Made:

1. Popular girls are nice.
2. Popular guys are nice.
3. Pageants, especially the mettle-testing swimwear competition, can be the answer to one's self-esteem problems.
4. Forcing oneself to conform to dominant notions of gender identity that feel completely and utterly foreign to one's self isn't as bad as feminist theorists make it out to be. Especially if there's a chance it'll impress a boy.
   
5. High school can be fun--you just have to have the right attitude and a willingness to repress certain personality traits.

Perhaps what I like best about Made is how it makes a highly persuasive case that this is how the American high school experience should be: everyone can participate, everyone can get along, everyone is entitled to social climb as high as is decently possible, everyone can have a great yearbook photo, everyone can be a team player, everyone can love high school from the bottom of their hearts if only those hearts are open to the possibilities of personal betterment. What's that? You disagree? Sounds like somebody needs an attitude adjustment! You'd better sit yourself down and watch a few more episodes of Made.