Ruination

The Happy Tutor, despite his recent suggestions that he has “gone from satire to sermon”, seems to have now recanted (partially, he makes it clear), for which I am glad. There’s room in this world for both the productive and the critical impulse to coexist, and for all Phil’s fine efforts, I think the world would be a poorer place without the Tutor’s “Satire of Wealth and Power in the Tradition of Roman Comedy — Stupid, Obscene and Cruel.” Consider a comparison between Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale and his Parson’s Tale, one a satire and the other a sermon, and what each has to offer us. (Consider, also, the one to which many of us more attend.)

I haven’t the Tutor’s skill at satire, but Amanda’s recent post sparked my interest, and — in the spirit of satire — I’ll see if I might extend her fine, scathing take on the apparently disgusting (didn’t watch it, and won’t, but I have to note that the sponsored links at the end of that Salon review were for “Atlanta Breast Implants”, “Plastic Surgeon in CT”, and “Pageant Gowns for Sale”: please tell me this was intentional, like maybe an attempt at ironic humor) new Fox reality show The Swan a bit further.

Amanda demands, “You know what I want to see? I want a reality show where millionaire television executives get stripped of their designer suits and their luxury cars and their stupid beach houses, and turned into regular slobby middle-aged guys. There could be plastic surgeons to give them beer bellies and receding hairlines, and wardrobe consultants to dress them in track suits. And then I want a pageant where said executives parade on a platform while average-looking, “unfeminine” women compete to see who can lob rotten tomatoes at them with the greatest accuracy. Now that I would watch. I think it would make the world a better place.” I’d extend the pitch somewhat, towards a show more in the spirit of the vastly underrated David Fincher / Michael Douglas paranoid thriller The Game, a movie that gets closer to the spirit of Thomas Pynchon than any other.

Here’s my idea: Amanda’s pageant, I think, would be a great finale for the two-hour season premiere of the new reality series Ruination, after the seven contestants — the entertainment executive, the chief financial officer, the wealthy senator, the venture capitalist, the successful televangelist, the corporate litigator, the plastic surgeon, the investment banker — and their families are stripped of all the accoutrements of wealth, their credit ratings ruined, their bellies extended, hairlines receded, teeth crookened, their wardrobes WalMartized, the mansions traded for a double-wide or a basement efficiency, the Mercedes exchanged for public transportation. But that would only be the first episode, of course. Every day of each week, contenstants would have to work two minimum-wage jobs under punctilious, passive-aggressive, stupid and suspicious bosses in order to make ends meet, and the highlights would be shown in each new weekly episode. The jobs, of course, will force a diet of fast and prepared foods, since there’ll be no time to cook. New “stay in the game” challenges each week will include skipping meals in order to pay the rent or getting the phone turned back on, and since the families will be involved as well, there’ll certainly be visits from the law and from social services by the season’s second or third month. No health or dental care will be provided, and in order to compensate for lifetimes of privilege in that department, random police-administered beatings (as well as framings and interrogations) of contestants will be set to a laugh track. As the credits roll at the end of each episode, participants will strip down to their underclothes and be forced by men with cattle prods to grub at a common trough, to the tune of Agnetha Faltskog’s (she of Abba) “It’s So Nice to Be Rich”.

Unlike those on other reality shows, losers on Ruination will be contractually required to keep playing. Of course, in the season finale’s surprise twist ending, so will the winners! Ha ha! But, as condolence, they’ll be given a TV upon which they can watch the show’s reruns (when they make it home from work in time). Future season themes may include “Ruination: Police State”, “Ruination: Rural Poverty”, and “Ruination: Outsourcing”.

Who am I kidding? I still can’t touch The Swan for pure venality and offensiveness, and yet my attempt here is far more coarse than anything of the Tutor’s.