It’s rare for a television reality show to perfectly capture the American cultural zeitgeist, except on those all-too common occasions when it actually does, which is frequently. These shows hold a mirror to our own reality (“reality” shows), by reflecting back to us who we are, what we’re doing, what are our shared interests. American Idol is a perfect microcosm of our culture’s pursuit of musical success (a “recording contract”), on which so many of our young, I-want-it-now-mp3-downloading children place so much importance. Then there is Survivor, which glorifies the reveling in the cut-throat world of deserted island back-stabbing in the pursuit of filthy lucre (“dirty money”), in the form of a $1 million prize. This is the type of greed typified by the current Goldman Sachs situation; I’m not sure of the specifics on that, but I know that a greedy win-at-all-costs attitude was the motivating factor.

Then there’s The Apprentice, which might just as well have been called The Show That Precipitated the Whole Bernie Madoff Scandal, since that is basically what it precipitated. Shows on VH1, such as Flavor of Love and Rock of Love teach our young women and girls to become sluts and whores, and even in some cases tramps, in the hopes of spending some time bedding rock and roll celebrities (see American Idol, above). These shows have fostered the current whore culture, where women don’t act like women, they act like whores, with their thongs sticking up over the tops of their low-riding jeans (if indeed they’re wearing any panties at all; very often they’re not, and photographed getting out of their limousines immodestly, on their way to shooting a career-making sex tape). The Real Housewives of series glorifies our consumerist culture by showing what becomes of the women begat by the VH1 shows — shallow, misbegotten old hags whose sole purpose in life seems to be merely to shop for shoes as a way of killing time between “cat fights” and botox injection appointments.

That’s why I’m happy to see the tide turning in our culture, as two recent reality shows have displayed that some of us actually have an active interest in the health and well-being of our fellow citizens, and aren’t afraid to show it. These programs, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and Tacky House, show a citizenry preparing to take ownership of itself, by helping the most vulnerable. They show the positive results that can occur when one citizen looks at another citizen and says, “What you’re doing is wrong, I don’t like it, and I’m going to help you because you’re obviously too misguided, not stupid but misguided, and/or lazy to do anything about it yourself, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing in the first place.”

These are the perfect shows for our troubled times.

First up was the just-completed Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Jamie Oliver is an English chef who has hosted a number of television programs both in England and here in America, and at first I admit I was saddened that it took an English person to come over to America and tell us how fat and lazy we’ve become (I read somewhere that Americans are the fattest and laziest people on earth), but then I thought about it and I came to realize that in a way it’s actually a good thing that Jamie Oliver is English, because hearing that you’re fat and lazy can be difficult, but hearing it from someone outside our culture, such as a caring European, can soften the blow somewhat.

The basic premise of the show is that Oliver comes to America, to a town in West Virginia that is the fattest in America, which means it’s the fattest town in the world. He lectures the people there about all the things they need to do to change their lives for the better, such as follow his diet plan and eat the foods that he creates. It really hardly takes any time at all to create an elegant salad or a pita wrap, instead of eating fast food every day, which is what most people in America eat. Because we crave convenience almost as much as we crave deep-fried bacon fat. How else can you explain the newest “sandwich” sensation, the Krispy Kreme Double Down, which consists of a KFC Double Down (two pieces of fried chicken, two different types of cheeses, and two slices of bacon and no bread) between a Krispy Kreme donut, sliced down the middle?

If that sounds good to you, congratulations, you’re a typical American.

Krispy Kreme Double Down: Typical American “sandwich.“

What we need to do as a culture is get back to a time when people were connected to their food. Today, nobody knows what life is like on a farm, except what I hear from the vendors at the farmer’s market, and many of them speak Spanish and I don’t understand Spanish very well. We all live in big cities and eat foie gras and drink port wine and pine away for a time when one of our servants would go out to the “barn” and “slaughter” a chicken for dinner, after getting their eggs to make you an omelet for breakfast. I would probably have something quick for lunch, like a lettuce wrap or something like that, because I’m working on my book. My point is that when I’m eating my foie gras, I don’t have any connection to where it came from, and that makes me sad. It probably makes other people sad, too, and the saddest thing of all is that those other people probably don’t even realize that they’re sad, or if they do realize they’re sad they don’t realize why they’re sad. But I know it’s because they’re disconnected from their food. They just go and get their Krispy Kreme Double Down and forget everything, until it’s time to turn on the latest reality show that is holding a mirror up to themselves, even if they don’t realize it.

My only hope is that Oliver will be as successful in America as he has been in England, where his efforts have pressured the British government to spend $1 billion to improve nutrition. Since America is an even bigger (literally and figuratively) country, I actually hope that he’s twice as successful here (by which I mean to say that I hope he can force our government to spend $2 billion to improve nutrition — a small fraction of the amount that fast food restaurants like KFC spend to convince us to eat foods that taste good).

The disconnect from the way our food is prepared has led to a disconnect from our neighbors. Happily this is changing; with the passage of the recent health care reform bill we all have a vested interest in our neighbors’ eating, and exercise, habits. But there are so many other ways our neighbors need help. That’s what makes the new Style Network program Tacky House so exciting. In Tacky House, friends and neighbors of people who have improperly decorated their homes report them to producers, who then trick those people into believing they’ve been selected for a show celebrating their amazing design aesthetic. In fact, they’ve been selected for a show denigrating their pathetic and detrimental design aesthetic. It is a sort of “design intervention,” to show people with very poor taste just how poor their taste really is.

This makes sense. Many people live in homes that are “tacky,” and it negatively affects their life. If you surround yourself with ugliness, you will live an ugly life, and be ugly yourself. You might not even know why, even if I do. In the first episode, a woman called Yvonne, “The Leopard Lady,” surrounds herself with tacky leopard prints. They hang on her walls, afflict her couch and bed, her carpets, her walls, even the limousines that she owns as part of her leopard-themed limousine company. The friend and employee who report her to Tacky House‘s producers complain that they feel uneasy when they visit her home. The leopard skin prints are “overwhelming” (both of them use this word). Yvonne, however, seems blissfully unaware of the fact that she has poor taste. She likes her house the way it is.

When a person doesn’t realize how s/he is ruining his/her life, that is just sad. That is where action is needed.

Yvonne the Leopard Lady might look happy and successful, but she’s not. She’s tacky.

The host, Thom Filicia (formerly of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the reality show that paved the way for “Don’t ask, don’t tell”) gently informs her that what he wants to do with her space is to transform it by using some leopard print elements, but to incorporate other design motifs to accentuate other aspects of her personality. She is more than just her interest in leopard skin prints, he tells her.

This is where the show begins to fall apart, somewhat. Clearly this woman needs the help of a professional designer who will give her not what she wants, but what she needs. Anyone who would decorate her home the way Yvonne did cannot be trusted to make any decisions on her own. For her own good, her friend and employee, who clearly have better taste than her, need to step forward and take ownership of Yvonne’s life. And as more and more “home owners” are being “bailed out” of their “underwater mortgages” by the government (i.e., “the people”), our neighbors’ homes are everyone’s business.

The fact that Tacky House and Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution exist give me hope that we’ll some day live in a world where I can help my neighbor to run every aspect of his life. Too many of us are having trouble, from our uncontrollable desire to eat delicious food to our uncontrollable desire to poorly design our own homes’ interior, and are too afraid to ask for the help we might not even know we need. The tide is turning, and I for one can’t wait to tell you what to hang on your walls.

• Author Bio
• Latest Posts

Ricky Sprague

Ricky Sprague occasionally writes and/or draws things. He sometimes animates things. He has a Twitter account and he has a blog. He scripted this graphic novel about Kolchak The Night Stalker. He is really, really good at putting links in bios.

Latest posts by Ricky Sprague (Posts)

• Meet the start-ups that are thriving in the current economic recovery - May 27, 2016
• How a Wonder Woman comic from 1942 led to the Great California Cow Exodus of 2012, maybe - November 28, 2012
• A common-sense approach to restoring economic prosperity - November 19, 2012
• New Philip K. Dick novel too absurd to be believed - September 17, 2012
• My 90 Days, 90 Reasons submission - September 12, 2012

Tags: television // 2 Comments »