I have never seen a single episode of “American Idol”, and yet I can state with a pretty high degree of certainty that the whole thing is a carefully constructed fantasy version of what really happens in the course of a season’s production. However, I’m surprised that the producers have been able to keep a lid on it after all these years until now. This Daily Beast post by a journalist who has followed the series behind the scenes for several years explores the difference between the actual process and the way it is dramatized on television.
Makes you wonder about the machinations that got The Naked Senator’s daughter, Ayla Brown, so far along.
I know a couple of people who have had their own brushes with reality television. One is a member of a local a-cappella group that auditioned for “America’s Got Talent”, only to get yanked before they even got a shot at being on TV. The producers of that show had gone so far as to shoot profile pieces and start building the narrative bits for them, a sign that they thought the group would go on to make the show. More recently, my cooking-school buddy Jo wound up at the local auditions for an upcoming cooking competition series based on the BBC show “Masterchef” when her cooking school was hired to be an audition location. No monkey business with fake auditions and special treatment for “stars” at that audition, I gather from what Jo has said, just a ton of people all standing in line to show off their cooking.
The show that I would love to see some behind-the-scenes expose about is, you guessed it, The Amazing Race. You gotta know that there a lot more than meets the eye to that show, given how slick the editing is. Some of their machinations are patently obvious, but it seems like the action of the show takes over from that pretty easily…yet, I wonder if that’s just more clever manipulation from the producers. So far, nobody’s telling.
Our town was once the location of a * reality show*. A take off on some BBC production, it wanted to explore what would happen if all of the women in a small town took off for a week and the men were left to handle everything. All of the women were offered a *free* vacation somewhere.
Much to my children’s chagrin, I refused to participate ( house is always a mess…) and I’m glad that I did not : everyone filmed was made to look like fools- entirely out of context- and camera crews invaded our quiet town. My Husband and son had to stand at the local Chinese take out place until three takes were made of some guy answering the question of whether or not he wanted hot sauce.
The series bombed, as it well should have.
But we are all very, very excited about Jo !