>I agree, the obsession with making things over on TV IS an interesting one.
>I've watched more of the ones on the BBC channel, and interestingly, the
>British What Not to Wear (and the home decorating show too) lack this
>redemption component, or at least its not as pronounced.
Fascinating! Thanks Liza! I don't have BBC access, so I had no idea that there were counterparts to _all_ these shows. Were they precursors or developed simultaneously? I only learned of them recently when my son's friend stayed here one weekend. I had heard people talking about it, but didn't follow up b/c I'm so lazy that I often can't even be bothered to push the pad on the teeverator.
Apparently, the home make over shows are even popular among even kids to watch these home improvement shows, which is, I guess, why they introduced the family version.
>The women whose
>wardrobes are so critiqued are often (not always) defiant, resist the hosts
Yah. Men and women in the US version resist, but finally cave in. And, they do look better. Damn it, I want $5k to spend in NYC.
Sorry! But, having shopped thrift and low scale all my live out of necessity, if I've ever come across nicely made fashions, when store castoffs are donated to Sally's Boutique, they DO fit better, feel better, and since you're more comfortable you feel better. You may not objectively look better, who knows?! But, it does feel different.
That doesn't mean they aren't high priced!
>suggestions at every turn, and return to their slutty/tacky/frumpy ways
>after the show. They say the new fashionable/tasteful/age-appropriate look
>was OK, but it's just not for them.
Isn't this interesting? Since the theme of the make overs in the US is never toward the goal of renouncing the advice, but energetically embracing it and the transformation involved in the embrace?!
The one, Sunday, about the LI woman shopping for luscious clothes in NYC really got me. She was probably quite accurately describing how it feels to be able to go out and not worry about how much something costs and buying it because it looks good on her, feels good, etc.
I can't think of anything better for selling stuff. But the UK needs to sell things just as much eh? So why the difference? Why are did they obviously take a different tack?
clearly the producers felt it resonated with their view of the world and would do so with the POV of their viewers. Are we being invited to make fun of the designers and style consultants. A little bit. There is more of that going on in the home improvement shows, I think. There's a space for the viewer to say, "nice, but uh, not for me. and isn't that just typical of a designer who cares naught for function only form?
but there really doesn't seem to be much of that in the US versions--only in so far as a particular designed has come to have a reputation for doing hideous things to someone's home.
speaking of balancing function/form: do you think the women designers wear spike heels while painting just to annoy the shit out of me and people like me? i love shoes, but um, spikes?
> Often, the joke is on the style police,
>because while they consider the woman to be a style disaster, she's
>perfectly content with her look. the message often is, fashion just doesn't
>matter that much to most people. sometimes the implication is, the fashion
>ladies are elitist/conformist and the folks rejecting their suggestions are
>working-class individualists. similarly on the home decorating show, the
>subjects very often hate the changes, even if they are more "tasteful" by
>bourgeois standards. It is an interesting cultural difference: the British
>show has a bit more subtle class warfare and resistance to expertise, more
>questioning of why/whether things or people need to be made over.
Do you suppose that this has to do with the self made man mythos in the US and our claims to having more fluid class barriers if we have them at all?
I've never pursued this, but one of the more fascinating things about the Horatio Alger stories is not, I've been told, that he works hard and makes it, but that he learns how to follow the normative rules of being a gentleman and, thereby, impresses the boss. the example I'd read about was that, in one story, Horatio "makes it" after being noticed by the boss because he spread his jacket over puddle so the boss's daughter could traverse it unsullied by the muck of the factory floor.
this makes complete sense: the point of that literature during that error was the most important things for new immigrants to do was, not only work hard, but become "middle class" and leave their working class, ethnic ethos behind.
_Working Girl_ and other stories about moving up are, similarly, about learning how to comport oneself. One can have all the technical acumen in the world, but it won't do you diddlely squat until you pitch the bubble gum, style the big hair down, lose the sequins and pale blue eye shadow. Get rid of the "trampy" look and become a proper woman, IOW. Then, you can get fucked by Harrison Ford instead of the drunken sleaze in the back of the limo!
>on the other hand, Faking It, also on BBC involves such a heavy dose of
>humiliation and performance anxiety that it makes me too stressed-out to
>watch it. I always make Doug change the channel.
Oh, I wish I had your opinion of the one I saw Sunday about the geeky, urban chic attractive Harvard grad ( i thought she was luscious!) who walked away from her cheerleader experience with a renewed respect for cheerleaders!
I know so much of this was contrived--and it's even easy to accomplish the narrative they want without scripting it, as so many sociological experiments have shown--but it doesn't really matter. what is interesting is that the cable channel thinks it will fly. they feel it will resonate in our culture.
i can see how the geeky Harvard grad story would fly. Her problem, according to the narrative, was that she just wasn't comfortable with being an attractive woman. Her problem was that she'd become too much like a man. She even said at one point, as she went out to do the "trial" performance that they always insert in the narrative: "I feel like half way between a man in drag and a cheerleader."
In some sense, she did look like she was in drag. Not because she had a man's body, but because the heavy stage make up turned an attractive woman into a drop dead gorgeous woman. They'd already transformed her with a better cut, style, and make up, but the stage make up took it beyond that.
Anyway, I'll look forward to analyses of Queer Eye tomorrow!