#34 - Project Runway - Lessons Learned

Everything is right with the universe.

Chloe Dao won PROJECT RUNWAY. Good thing too... that gal worked like a pro throughout the contest. I love her designs and can't wait to see what she does with this.

Daniel Vasovic was generously offered an internship with Michael Kors. He never would have fallen into that without this show.

And Santino?

Santino... is well, selling t-shirts, buttons and undergarments on his web site, doing interviews , and toodling about having a good time.

Here's the thing...

I thought Santino was going to win...

I truly did.

I thought his final show was excellent, but he fooled around so much with all the previous assignments, that I think the judges soured on him.

It didn't help that he yelled at the judges either...

Nope...

that doesn't work in your favor.

I hope Santino gets a good business manager who can get his stuff out there, and give Santino the liberty to design and...

well...

be Santino.

What shocked me about being a viewer of PROJECT RUNWAY is that I got so caught up in the whole thing.

I mean really caught up.

Just like an armchair quarterback watching Monday Night Football.

I rallied for the "good guys" and booed the "bad guys" and totally fell for the show aspect of this contest...

hook, line, and sinker.

And that brought out the worst in me.

Looking back, I am stunned.

Is this what reality television does to you?

The contestants are not scripted characters pulled out of the imaginiation of some playwright's creative mind.

They are real people being squished into stereotypical roles, manipulated by blunt editing and used up to feed the television machine.

I think I caught track of that after some of the contestants started blogging and I saw how they were truly being effected by the representation fo themselves on PROJECT RUNWAY.

I learned that reality television is sort of kind of real, but then again it is not.

For someone of my generation, this form of television programming is confusing.

I grew up on The Brady Bunch, Mary Tyler Moore, Starsky and Hutch, Happy Days...

that sort of stuff.

The actors became famous and known for the characters they played, but you know they were playing CHARACTERS...

that they existed separately from the images on the television screen.

This reality television thing is turning out to be something that I really have become quite wary of.

People become fodder for the purposes of entertainment.

Public humiliation seems to be the goal of most of the reality programming.

Singling out people's idiosyncracies, encouraging wild behavior (it makes good television), and character assassination are the prime objectives of reality television.

I would love to know the after effects for the participants in these programs.

I know that during Survivor, contestants are given psychological exams prior to being selected and that debriefing counseling is done afterwards.

But, I have a feeling that this is the exception, not the rule.

Who helps out the women from Flavor of Love who have bared themselves on television and are tossed away like yesterday's trash?

Who helps the Wendy Peppers (Porject Runway - Season 1) whose marriages fall apart after the show?

Do the makers of reality television own any responsiblility for the psycholgical damage created by their shows?

I just have to wonder.



In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.
Andy Warhol