I know it has been said many times before that reality TV has sunk so low it cannot go any further. And each time, it has been proven wrong as it outdoes itself again and again, each time enthralling viewers with its train-wreck fascination. From the smarmy almost-prostitution of Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire to the merry voyeurism of Big Brother and its clones to the greedily self-delusional women of Joe Millionaire (not to mention the sequel!), the genre keeps plumbing new depths.
Personally, I thought the absolute worst came with The Littlest Groom, in which a 4'5" man looked for love among women of similar height, with a few average-height women thrown in for good measure. It was little more than a multi-hour short joke and brought back memories of the 1938 film The Terror of Tiny Town, which starred "Jed Buell's Midgets in a rollickin', rootin', tootin', shootin' drama of the great outdoors."
How foolish of me. For now comes along the very latest in reality television – surgery for your amusement! ABC did it first with Extreme Makeover, in which "lucky individuals are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime chance" to be refurbished by a team of "the nation's top plastic surgeons, eye surgeons and cosmetic dentists." The now-rebuilt people are shown delighted with their new bodies as they return to whatever passes for normal life with them.
But, as we all know, good enough simply cannot be left alone; showing before-and-after photos just isn't sufficiently humiliating and/or titillating. So Fox (who else?) got into the game with The Swan, which not only puts these allegedly lucky people under the knife, but also pits them against each other in a beauty pageant afterwards. Or, as the Fox website puts it, "Each week feathers will fly as the inevitable pecking order emerges. Those not up to the challenge are sent home. Those who are will go on to compete in a pageant for a chance to become 'The Ultimate Swan.'"
Not be left out, MTV chimed in with I Want a Famous Face, featuring people who for whatever reason want to be transformed into a look-alike of their favorite star, whether that be Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, or what have you. For sheer wretchedness, this one actually edges out The Swan, as difficult as that is to imagine. What kind of person would be so obsessed with, say, Britney Spears, that she would actually volunteer to go under the knife and be altered into a freakish clone? Or what kind of man would want to become a shadow of Elvis? And to have it all shown on television. (One wonders what their lives will be like in 20-30 years, when Pamela Anderson is just a bad memory.)
What's next for reality TV? How about The Death House, where condemned prisoners compete against each other; the winner gets a pardon and the loser gets the chair – broadcast live, of course. (No, wait, they already did that in the film The Running Man. Oh, what the hell, put it on anyway and call it a remake.) Or perhaps Sexy Mamas, in which wannabe parents experiment with new sexual positions and fertility treatments, with the winners getting pregnant. (This one can be shown twice: once on network TV with all the naughty bits fuzzed out, and once on pay-per-view with everything displayed for all to see.) Maybe Who Wants to Be My Mommy and Daddy?, where viewers all across America get to vote on which couples can adopt which children. (The really scary part is that this idea was actually pitched to a network but thankfully was not picked up. A patent application was submitted, however.)
We all know why reality television is king of the airwaves. It's cheap to produce, has a ready-made audience of voyeurs, and has an even readier-made pool of applicants who are so dazzled by the chance to get on the boob tube that they will risk national humiliation, disfiguration, and worse. I for one desperately hope that the genre will burn itself out, and soon. I'm not sure how many more editions of Temptation Island can be shown before people start throwing their TVs out the window.
