Last Saturday’s SAT featured an essay question which is causing a storm of self-loathing among high-achieving teens because — gasp! — it was about the value of reality television. Essentially, it asked if the reality TV medium helps or hurts society, given the way it bills itself as authentic but has come to be very falsified. According to test-takers on the discussion boards at admissions-freakout website College Confidential, it’s totally unfair because American high schoolers are too intellectual to watch TV and, like, their SAT prep courses totally didn’t cover a question like this.
Originally, we thought it was a pretty manageable question, especially since students didn’t have to give reality TV more than a hat tip to flesh out the problem of authenticity in art if they didn’t want to. But then, an SAT grader leaked us* the scoring rubric for this Very Special Episode — er, Essay — and we’re now sympathizing with those poor kids! Check out what they’re up against after the jump.
After years of capturing celebrities and quasi-celebrities as art director of the shameless tabloid Star, Brooklyn-based photographer David Kimelman has embraced the habit for his new series, Reality Wanted. The portraits are a series of individuals who hope to be cast in reality shows, wearing their own clothes and given little direction in their posing and staging so they can, as Kimelman says, ”be seen in the way in which they want to present themselves to the world.”
Since all of the aspiring stars are getting their big breaks in the series, we figured we could help the whole process along and cast some of them in shows ourselves. Check out some of our favorite shots, arranged according to our own casting preferences, after the jump.
Work of Art finalist Peregrine Honig takes our intertwined obsessions with youth, fashion, and celebrity, and turns them into quirky, unsettling art.
Perhaps Kansas City’s best-known art-world export (thanks to her star turn on the Bravo reality show), Honig makes paintings, sculptural installations, and performative, fashion-based projects that combine folk-art inflections and a childlike love of color, cuteness, and baby animals with a worldly, satirical voice that’s not afraid to get profound, funny, and even scatological.
In the trailer for Sarah Palin’s new eight-week reality series, which we just spotted over on Jezebel, she hikes snow-capped mountains, kayaks, fishes, waves at a plane, rides around on a four-wheeler, and dogsleds — all in just 30 seconds. She also says lots of folksy things like, “Oh gosh! We are somewhere people dream about,” “This is flipping fun! Why can’t we ever just be satisfied with tranquility?,” and “I’d rather be doing this than in some stuffy old political office. I’d rather be out here being free.” We don’t believe that for one second, lady. And frankly, we can only see one upside to what essentially looks like a really long Palin infomercial: More fodder for a Tina Fey parody!
Cartoonist Dash Shaw has a thing for the reality TV show Blind Date — and now he has adapted two episodes into comics. As Shaw explains in a blog post on his website, he’s fascinated with the simple story structure of the show, featuring people who obviously know they’re on TV, but don’t have a script to go from.
As an example, he points to a scene in the first episode where a man suggests that he and his date should venture into the hot tub because “it’s the best thing for the lower back.” Shaw explains, “Obviously, he knows that he’s on Blind Date and people on Blind Date go into hot tubs. She knows this too. But, he has, himself, improvised his reason for going to the hot tub in the date that he’s performing for us. Of course, she agrees.”
Shaw also cites the improvised camera angle as an inspiration for his drawings. Click through to check out panels from Blind Date 1, which appeared in Mome, a comic anthology.
Did you realize that it’s “I’m Not Here to Make Friends” Day? Well it is, which means that Rich Juzwiak just posted his annual supercut of reality TV show contestants saying, “I’m not here to make friends.” He’s also included a few non-competition shows like Sober House, Addicted, and Ice Road Truckers. If you’re short on time, fast forward for the dance party at 4:54. Brilliant.
If you don’t count all the advertisers it’s lost MTV, Jersey Shore has been a strange, resounding success. It’s unseated VH1′s Celebrity Rehab as the most exploitative show on television and loosed into the pop-culture sphere such cringe-worthy personalities as Snooki and Mike “The Situation.” So it’s only natural that enterprising reality TV producers are on the lookout for a new subculture for American viewers to ridicule.
Enter The Scene… L.E.S. The Village Voice spotted the casting call for this unfortunately named project on Craigslist, where Jimmy Lloyd Productions tells us that the series will focus on 8-10 “Singer-Songwriters who live around and play the circuit of performance venues on the Lower East Side of New York City.” (Never mind that starving musicians were priced out of the L.E.S. years ago.) Here at Flavorpill, we decided to save them the trouble of finding a balanced cast. In the grand tradition of The Real World, with its religious gays and belligerent frat brahs, we’ve picked the eight artiste stereotypes we’d most like to see represented on the show.
Attention design geeks: Our friends over at Unbeige tipped us off to the fact that some kind, British soul has uploaded all six episodes of famed product designer Philippe Starck’s reality show, Design for Life, for your viewing pleasure. While the opening credits are a tad aggressive, the premise is pure fun: 12 contestants from the UK are competing a six month stint at Starck’s Paris design agency. And if his first quip is any indication — “I am a type of new bottle opener, I am a sort of door just to open your brain.” — the superstar will provide plenty of odd, quotable moments throughout.
As a Core77 review of the show points out, “Design for Life isn’t perfect. It has its chest pounding moments — chief among them a long but only casually developed thread about sustainability that never goes anywhere — but Design for Life makes one thing abundantly clear: Starck (now 60) is the closest thing to the Beatles design has ever had, and in the increasingly fractious world of the web, the closest it may ever have.”
Watch all six episodes before they’re taken down after the jump.
MTV’s new reality series, Jersey Shore, is clearly made for fans of True Life: I Have a Summer Share and True Life: I’m a Jersey Shore Girl, random fist pumping, and lots of hair gel. (Apologies for the blurry main image, but clearly an action shot that included sweat stains was necessary.) Unfortunately the preview footage after the jump is not some hilarious parody by the CollegeHumor guys. It is extremely real. And cliché-ridden. And oddly mesmerizing.
If you’ve ever seen or even heard of a reality show on Bravo known as NYC Prep, then you will appreciate this video. Camille’s big head and hairline are spot on. Keli is hysterical (especially when PC slaps her across the face). PC is… himself. Jessie’s characterization is a little mean, but still a riot. Sebastian’s intonations and hair-adjusting are just right, and poor Taylor is just boring, per usual. Make sure to stay tuned for the celebrity cameos at the end.
