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Compared to what's bubbling up in the culture this morning, Elizabeth Edwards seems positively demure. This morning on the Today Show, Kate Gosselin, star of the one family reality circus, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, went on to flog her new book, Eight Little Faces, but also to talk about whether or not her husband, who was seen walking out of a bar with another woman, is having an affair. (The woman's brother said they've been seeing each other for three years; Jon made a very unconvincing denial on the show.) Kate says she really wants to "weather the storm" and "just focus on the kids." She said this with her usual sweet, wholesome expression. The whole exchange left me feeling not that she was opportunistic, but that she actually believed that going on the Today Show to talk about whether he was or wasn't having an affair was the best thing for her family.
So there really is no distinction anymore in the culture between an actual private life and a private life chronicled on weekly television. The Truman Show, which came out in 1998, would seem like a relic now in an age when it's impossible to believe that the star of a reality show would not be complicit in his own exposure, or that he would be troubled by it in any way. And Elizabeth Edwards, who was blogging about her son's untimely death in a car accident before there were bloggers, is a pioneer in understanding the collapse of these distinctions.
If we need more proof, read this story in today's New York Times home section called "Branding the Family" about the fabulous duo of decorators, Robert and Cortney Novogratz, who will have their own Bravo reality show in the fall. Given that they only have seven children and are much more fabulous looking than the Gosselins, there will surely be a storm to weather soon. So tune in...
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We live in an environment where self-branding is a lifestyle choice and self-promotion is confused with achievement. Breaking through the 4th wall (when reality contestants talk to the camera) is not the same as actual contact between player and watcher, however, and does not substitute for honesty or intimacy. When the Octomom had her litter in January, Jess and Noreen wrote about the Gosselin and the Duggar families who became television commodities by inviting reality producers from the Discovery Channel into their reproduction-driven lives. Now I learn from Hanna's post that one reality celebrity husband, Jon Gosselin, has a secret life with a secret friend. I have to say, I can't really blame the guy. Maybe he just wanted some privacy?
I sometimes wonder about living our private life in public. Since my husband, my daughter, and I are each involved in different aspects of the media, at times when our home life is particularly surreal, I can imagine us inspiring a sitcom. But my family's imaginary TV series would be more like a small-cast version of the ABC series of 30 years ago, Eight is Enough. In that now-quaint series, the family of newspaper columnist and former CIA agent Tom Braden was fictionalized, their identity was disguised and the eight actual Braden children kept their relative obscurity.
Like Hanna, I cringe at the level of self-exposure necessary to tear down the 4th wall in the manner of that "family of renovators" featured in the New York Times article "Branding the Family." Bravo, the cable network that brings us Real Housewives of New York City and other urban locations, bets the exploited exploits of the Novogratzes, another multi-offspring family, will be riveting to audiences because, as the series executive producer told the Times, "audiences are craving authenticity." I doubt they'll get it watching Bravo. Real reality happens without cameras, inside the four walls of our own lives, fueled by truly unscripted, unedited, conversations. It is sometimes uncomfortable and usually, in our case at least, decidedly unphotogenic. Though, it may be exciting to imagine a life in front of an audience, genuine people tempted by reality-shattering reality cameras should follow the advice of fray poster ScrewJack2008, and run for their lives.
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It's May, the month of nice weather, pretty flowers, weddings, declarations of love, pregnancies, hallucinations, fatalities, cliffhangers and shocking twists. It's the month of TV finales, wherein shows wrap up the season that came before, while providing incentives to watch the season that comes next, manipulating you into thinking "Finally!" and then "Really?!" in quick succession. House did exactly that last night with an episode stuffed with a possessed hand, a wedding, and a trip to the loony bin. Most importantly (spoiler alert), it was revealed that last week's long-awaited "Huddy sex" (that's the official term), in which Dr. House and Dr. Cuddy consummated their love-hate relationship (Finally!), was actually a hallucination (Really?!).
Ginia Bellafante, writing in the New York Times, took the mature view of this sucker punch. "Shamefully, I would have been overjoyed if the season finale had ended with House and Cuddy electing to spend the summer together in Corsica," she writes. "[Though] this would have betrayed the show's primary covenant—to keep House miserable—and entirely erased its integrity." Other House fans, not professionally required to be rational, took a less subtle position. "REALLY, SHOW?/ That was a letdown/ Whaaaa? That was lame/ WTF show?? Seriously??" were the initial comments on a message board about the episode.
In other words, the House finale was a total success. Not in spite of being enraging and disappointing and manipulative and even a little cheap (hallucinations have been a twist on House before), but explicitly because it was all of those things. Good finales don't have to be enjoyable and satisfying (nice when they are, of course), but they do have to make you yell at your television. Come September, the agitation and anger will have faded and we'll only remember that we really cared and we'll show up to see if maybe, hopefully, Huddy get together this year, preferably not just in House's imagination. Season finales are an exercise in a visceral, brute storytelling, the intent of which is to manipulate. That means that any and every cheap trick becomes acceptable and even laudable, so long as it works an audience up. (Hallucinations? Why didn't they just say it was all a dream?) So, during the coming weeks, expect to sit down on the couch and have your favorite show try to make you angry. It just wants you to care.
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
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This week, is there a tabloid that doesn't feature Jon and Kate Gosselin of TLC's mega-spawn reality show "Jon & Kate Plus 8" fame? Today, Kate vomited her guts to People, revealing that her marriage to the man with whom she fathered a pair of twins and a set of sextuplets may be deeply in the crapper. Rumor has it he cheated on her with a school teacher. Other rumors claim she cheated on him with their bodyguard. (Bodyguard? Who knew having so many children could be so... Bond?) Whatever's going on with those two, I'm not surprised, since more than anything else Kate has become the shiny new postergirl for those ladies who threaten to topple the bad mommies brigade: the bad wives club.
Personally, I'm less interested in the Gosselin's test-tube babies and their supposed extramarital affairs than I am in Kate's hair. What is the deal? You can see it here. Or here. A frightening asymmetrical mashup of stripes and spikes, part bob and part pixie, a cartoonish mix of blond and brunette hair shingles, it looks like someone took a blender to it. Once upon a time, Kate had normal mom hair. Short. A little choppy. Whatever. Now, it's crazy. Dlisted deems her freakdo a "reverse mullet," which I guess means party in the front and business in the back? I look at it and see a possum attached to the back of her head, wild in a frenzy of chewing and scratching, and then, voilà, Kate walked out the door.
Apparently, I am alone in my confusion regarding what is now known as the "Kate Gosselin Bob." For busy moms on the go, it's the new new hairdo! Here's how to do it yourself in eight complicated steps! Or style yourself there! I guess I can't quite figure out what it all means. Because what that hairdo says to me is, "I'm a mom. And you know what? I'm insane."
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Last night's season finale of 30 Rock wasn't the best episode of the season—the A and B plots didn't hang together especially well—but the episode provided some of the best lines of the year. The Liz Lemon plot revolved around her sudden fame as a relationship advice-giver. Liz had written a character for show-within-a-show star Jenna that inspired the catchphrase, "It's a dealbreaker, ladies." As a result, Liz and Jenna got invited on a Tyra-esque talk show to dole out similarly pat relationship counsel.
Poking fun at female-centric institutions (the trashy talk show; the cheesy, useless, he's-just-not-that-into-you-style romantic advice book) is where Tina Fey shines—it harkens back to her Mean Girls roots. The advice Fey's Lemon gives to desperate audience members is completely priceless. "You have sexually transmitted crazy mouth," she tells one woman. "Deal breaker." To another woman, whose stylish boyfriend is about 10 times more attractive than she is, Lemon says, "You have a classic case of fruit blindness. Deal breaker." And my personal favorite, "S that D. Shut it down." In this clip, Liz starts giving advice to her co-workers' disgruntled spouses, causing Tracy Jordan's wife to cry, "Teach it like you preach it Liz Lemon!" Lord, will I miss that woman during those 30 Rock-free summer months.
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More and more frequently, movie trailers are better than the movies they're promoting. As they've become increasingly adept at short-handing a feature-length plot, and increasingly unconcerned about revealing all the elements of said plot, they play like accelerated shorts, complete with a story arc and emotional climax, ruining plot twists and funny-the-first-time-you hear-them jokes. They're trailers for people who hate surprises.
David Edelstein, in his New York review of the new Terminator film (aka, the film where Christian Bale lost his shit), demurs from revealing a mysterious fact about one of the protagonists. ("I won't deprive you of the pleasure of figuring out his secret for yourself, about an hour and a half before the Big Reveal," he writes). The trailer is not nearly as circumspect, having revealed months ago that the protagonist in question is, in fact, a hunk of metal.
Another trailer that outdoes its source is the glorious promo for Glee, Fox's new show about a high school glee club, premiering tomorrow night. The show itself is, apparently, "sweaty and desperate to impress," but the trailer...Wow. The trailer is the Platonic ideal of trailers for anyone who enjoys fictions involving high school, angst, music, geeks, jocks, teachers, highly choreographed dance routines, and "Don't Stop Believing." (How long before the cultural capital accrued from its appearance in the final minutes of The Sopranos starts to dissipate? Years?) It's a larger population that you might imagine.
One new trailer that doesn't ruin everything is the sneak of Nine, a musical inspired by Federico Fellini's 8 ½ co-starring Daniel Day Lewis, Judy Dench, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Sophia Loren, and, confoundingly, Kate Hudson and Fergie. The trailer, like the film, is overly ambitious, stuffed with dance routines, period costumes, black-and-white footage, baby blue convertibles and a charmingly brusque Judy Dench. It's a treat. After watching it, I had no clue if the final product will be hugely inspired or a huge mess, and that uncertainty was a nice surprise.
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In seven seasons of 24, I've never given much thought to its gender politics. For one, I've mostly tuned in for the escapism of watching Jack Bauer save the world. For another, it's always had enough strong female characters—villains, heads of CTU, and the ass-kicking-yet-socially-awkward Chloe—to make up for the damsels in distress. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Kim Bauer.)
But two sequences at the end of last night's finale jumped out at me for their portrayal of the women. (Warning, if you have the finale waiting on your TiVo: Spoilers ahead.) To wrap one storyline, President Allison Taylor has to decide whether to turn in her daughter for having one of this season's baddies murdered. Given that one of the themes of this season was the Taylor administration's opposition to torture and lawlessness (usually), it was not at all shocking to me when Taylor handed her daughter over to the Justice Department. But what was remarkable was the scene that followed. Taylor stands weeping in the hallway, sagging under the weight of a decision that likely cost her her daughter and her husband. She allows herself a good 20 to 30 seconds of sorrow, is briefly consoled by an adviser, and then straightens herself up and continues crisply down the hallway, fully in charge and ready to take on the day. She's the president, damn it, and she's not going to let any womanly emotions or maternal guilt get in the way of her job. The scene told you everything you needed to know about the character.
I'm still chewing over the other scene, not sure what to make of it. The FBI has übervillain Alan Wilson—who's apparently been behind at least three seasons' worth of mischief—in custody. Agent Renee Walker has him in an interrogation room, and she's ready to go all Jack Bauer on him. She deactivates the surveillance cameras and handcuffs Janeane Garofalo's character to keep her from interfering. (Oh, why couldn't someone have done that by, say, Hour 3?) But Janis talks her down, and Walker comes to her senses. This comes not long after Jack had explained to Walker that he usually knew in his mind that the laws he was breaking were more important than the lives he saved, but that his heart wouldn't let him not act. So, was Agent Walker repudiating Jack and his reluctant torture? Were the writers trying to say that women are less likely to torture than men? The problem for me is that the scene was not done especially well—even by 24's low-believability standards, it kind of came out of nowhere—and it's not a perfect parallel. Jack Bauer's torture has usually been of the "imminent threat" variety: If someone knows a bomb is supposed to go off in an hour, can you torture him to find out where it is? In this case, the threat is over and the bad guy is under lock and key. It doesn't quite add up.
Are there any 24 watchers out there? What did you think? And do you agree that this was the most "feminist" season of 24 yet? Not only did we have our first female president and Jack's first female sidekick (well, besides Chloe, who's usually stuck in front of a computer), but Kim Bauer not only DIDN'T get kidnapped, she saved her dad's life. Twice.
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No longer the home of hits like Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and The Wire, HBO is looking to replace its sex-and-violence lineup of yesteryear with ... more sex. Last spring, the network issued a somewhat mysterious announcement about Hung, a dramatic comedy that debuts this summer. According to Variety, Hung's storyline follows "a well-endowed man who figures out a way to take advantage of his physical gift." I was expecting a show about an oversexed superhero with superhuman sexual powers, but I guess that was me projecting. Later, Alexander Payne, of Sideways fame, signed on to direct the pilot, Thomas Jane was cast in the role of Ray Drecker, the well-endowed lead, and Anne Heche landed the role of the ex-wife.
Now the series trailer is online, and after all the hype it looks a bit cheesy. Apparently, it takes the wacky! kooky! crazy! approach to the subject of sex, and posits the super-hung main character as a loser who realizes that he could make milllions, or something like it, selling rides on his most significant physical attribute. Don't think they left out the postfeminist hijinks, though. Guess who this male prostitute's pimp is? A woman! Will wonders never cease?! It's all rather silly. "You just keep on using me until you use me up," the soundtrack croons in the background.
Too bad a show that takes on male sexuality looks to be little more than a protracted dick joke. In recent years, Mad Men, The Sopranos, and even Entourage have taken on the subject of what it really means to be a man. This time around, I guess the joke's on men.
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The joyful, saccharine, karaoke-inspring Glee, which premiered last night on Fox, got me wondering: What did we do before Tracy Flick? She first appeared, embodied by Reese Witherspoon, in 1999's Election, a previously unidentified personality type, the driven, ruthless, terrifyingly ambitious striver who micromanages her inevitable rise to power in relentlessly cheerful tones. In the decade since Election, Flick has been transformed from a fresh, new character into an archetype, found frequently in both nature and fiction. Hillary Clinton, as Slate pointed out during the election, is a Tracy Flick. Kristen Gillibrand is the "Tracy Flick of New York politics." Amanda Lorber, of MTV's reality series about high school newspaper The Paper is "The Tracy Flick of Journalism." Amy Poehler's character in Parks and Recreation is a "dorkier version of Tracy Flick." And that's just the beginning. Tracy Flick is like the prostate—not so long ago, we didn't know she existed. Now you can scan to find her.
I bring this up because one of Glee's main characters, Rachel Berry, is a total Flick. She's a frighteningly focused performer who won her first dance contest when she was 3 months old. She gives compliments like, "You're really talented. I know because I'm really talented too." (Flick isn't the only character from Election to appear in Glee: the dumb hunk played by Chris Klein has been reimagined as a dumb hunk who sings. "My dad got killed in Iraq the first time we went over there to fight Osama Bin Laden," he narrates.) Given all these Flicks—and there are surely more to come— it seems logical that there must have been Flicks around before we got into the habit of identifying them as such. (Was Margaret Thatcher a Flick?) What did we call these women before there was a shorthand that simultaneously captured their drive and core unlikableness? Were they better off before they could be so easily labeled?
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I really, really wanted to love Glee, the new Fox comedy about show choir—that strange, unholy amalgam of drama club, choir, and dance team. After all, I have already made my love of such dorky performance activities rather public. And before the first commercial break, it seemed like Glee was really gunning for my affections in particular, showcasing all of the following:
- Clear allusions to one of my favorite movies, Election, as Willa has already astutely outlined
- A high school setting (as a former teacher myself, I'm a sucker for any show that prominently features a teachers' lounge)
- Lea Michele, star of Broadway's Spring Awakening
- An Indian guy in a nontrivial role
- A goth-lite Asian girl doing a raunchy rendition of "I Kissed a Girl"
- Jane Lynch, the funniest woman alive, as the captain of the cheerleading squad
But I felt like the show lurched around a lot, never quite finding its groove, either comedically or emotionally. For one thing, all five members of the team have fantastic (or at least very, very good) voices, so the whole Bad-News-Bears, we're-a-crummy-squad storyline felt a little off. And while I am always up for a little Journey in four-part harmony, the show hasn't quite captured the passionate, often hysterical (in all senses of the word), curiously subaltern nature of America's teenage musical theater subculture. For that I suggest the 2003 film Camp, which has a rickety, see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away narrative but absolutely nails the anthropological elements—particularly the funny, complicated ways sexuality can play out in these hothouse, Sondheim-loving environments.
I'll tune in next week, of course, if just to maintain my weekly jazz-hands intake. Maybe this pilot was just a shaky dress rehearsal?
