To Ralph:
Thanks for asking.

"Pimp my life"

Make-overs shows: The new mystical parable!

“So what’s with all the badly-produced make-over shows everywhere?”—said my pal, being up to HERE with shots of rotting basements or split ends or sweating obese people.

“Badly produced” is a clue about ambivalence. It’s the adjective that says we’re squeamish about confessing how riveting this dreck is, so we’ll dog the production values as a way of saying Eew, wouldn’t catch me there.

Ok, then I’ll go first:
I watched the ENTIRE episode of something that must have been called “Pimp My Excess Abdominal Skin”, during which the money shot was this:

<...graphic image to follow, viewer discretion is advised...>

I saw with my own two eyes, the formerly 535 lb (243 kg) makeover protagonist—now melted down to 190 lbs (95 kg)—lying on an operating table with a gathered-up bundle of skin sticking out of each hip. Each bundle is gathered in some kind of massive surgical scrunchie, and is about the size of a bucket. Something like 35 lbs of left-over upholstery to be trimmed, according to the surgeons — design guys with knives.

I stuck around for it all -- and ya, so what! (Peed real quick during the break, too, in case anything riveting happened and I missed it—dang!)

Why riveting? —just trashy curiosity? Nope. Sumthin else. And I figger I got it!

It’s a real old story and it goes like this:

We see a character accepting a trial of courage. We see them excited, proud, apprehensive, quavering, deeply motivated by yearning, ego, and newly amped up shame. Bingo. We have a seeker.

RIVETING FORMULA:

Step 1:
Seeker faces demons. They face life without carbs, they face scalpels, cauterized flesh, sanding, stretching, acids dissolving their skin, teeth being filed – really doesn’t matter exactly what, cuz the main ingredient here is the trial. They gotta go through something that has an element of viewer pain-porn.

Step 1A:
The seeker breaks. This HAS to happen. The producers have it in their contracts: The zoom shot on the breaking point, at which the hero’s dignity leaks out in tears and snot and there’s no camera-flinching allowed. It’s cruel and unusual. (if it’s an architectural make-over, it's the contractor outta control, threatening his crew with castration over the fucked up vapour barrier.)

This is the social-emotional-spiritual component of the ritual trial: the explicit humiliation-as-entertainment, for which the physical trial is just a catalyst..

<ASIDE for Fellini watchers:>
This performance-suffering scene goes all the way in Satyricon. During the orgy, a peasant is brought on stage, nervous and amazed. His starring role is to submit to a hand amputation. Which he does, with vibrating eyes and freaked out trust. I think about this every time I see these make-over scenes of the seeker’s pride being chopped off. There’s one make-over show with the seeker in a glass box in public. Then the boxed one must face the recorded judgements on their deeply flawed selves. And they weep. It’s nastier than Fellini cuz it ain’t acting.

Step 2:
The seeker retreats. They’re either anaesthetized, or sent to a clinic for eight weeks, or simply shoved into a fitting room with some piece of stretchy clothing that scares the fuck out of them and exposes their dangly upper arms. But they have to go somewhere for a symbolic moment or month. Into the chamber, the chrysalis, the exile.

Step 3:
The Reveal! Our warrior returns. They appear again among us, transformed, and there is weeping and joyful noise and worshipping of their new incarnation and hottitude. They've proven they've got what it takes, in that wobbly newborn way, and they try to retrofit their personalities real quick and look like they can handle it. [Quick, someone mate with this worthy creature!]

--end of make-over format--

Soooo? Any of this sound familiah?

This is the media age, digital age resurrection myth, campers.

Metamorphosis and transformation. The most powerful concept we ever wrassle with. To wit: We transform from atoms of air and water and soil – into our own selves. Somehow. Not sure how. And we’re going to transform right back again. Ceaselessly fascinating. While between the existential bookends of soil, we try to keep up with every change required, deciding what's worth it and what ain't.

Face the trial + have the crisis of confidence +go into the darkness + endure torment = return transformed and admired.

Very old stuff. Very necessary stuff. The Nielsen ratings don’t lie. They tell us what our souls are hungry for. It’s hardwired into us.

And it don’t matter none whether it’s pimping abdominal flaps, or ‘56 Chevys™, or moldy ensuite baths, or even termite-riddled relationships. (Check out “You’re killing your kids” or “Can this marriage be saved?” Wow, way to make us all feel less neurotic at home...)

Makeover shows will go on as long as we hunger for proof that facing life's shit is A) possible B) better than doing nothing C) necessary D) suddenly performance art.

The old myths and parables seem so aerie up against this stuff, don’t they? And who can be bothered to form an abstraction any more, anyhoo? Forty days in the wilderness? The cave-paintings at Lascaux? Whatever.

Just get teary at the make-over reveal segment (following your own journey thru four or five commercial breaks) and you’ll know you there's still hope.

So snicker at these shows carefully, cuz it seems we need them. For the majority, they're the only concept of the mechanics of transformation. They’re the secular resurrection myths.

Via morbid curiosity, viewers are dragged through the quaint concepts of discipline, deferred gratification, suffering for a goal--in short, all the spiritual chops that are currently threatened with extinction.

It's better than nothing. You can bet your foil highlights and new porcelain veneers.

Coming soon: Somalia gets a make-over! Designer Guys at the U.N.!

Bonus drivel:
One small wrinkle: The resurrection myths are broadcast on TV, the leecher of spiritual juice, and softener of glutes and critical thinking all over this land.

There's the next metamorphosis ritual we need:

To move this stuff off the networks and into the MUCH better production values called Life.

Will someone please send Dubya into the glass box? I want to see him cry, real bad. [“He looks a bit smug, can he have surgery on his conscience?”—says the jury, before His Squintness is hauled off to have his values exfoliated.]

MEMO TO THE UPPITY:
Don't even start with any noble noise about the shallowness of self-improvement, bigger titties, smaller pores, and tighter abs. (Is most twittering done by the couch-bound?) Caring about whether a makeover is 'necessary' is like caring about a communion wafer’s nutritional value or a walk up the aisle's aerobic benefit. The phenom here is to support belief in transformation cuz it makes us trust that the pain of trials has a larger context. And it’s why this program format will be around as long as the older, more lyrical myths ain't.