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Contributed by Sara Schieron
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Saturday, 13 May 2006 |
REALITY
SHOW is fantastic! It's an understated, potentially staged, short
feature that tracks the most explicit and embarrassing failure that
never made it to the already stodgy establishment of Reality TV
programming. If one of the messages of Reality TV is that anyone can be
on it, a tandem myth must be that anyone can create it, and that's just
the myth Dan Sherbondy disproves. |
An attention hungry, 14 year old in the body of a 43 year old, Sherbondy made his initial success as an Orange County Nightclub owner. After his divorce, Sherbondy made headlines and talk show stardom as the lonesome and loaded divorcee who would pay $10,000 to the matchmaker responsible for setting him up with his one true love. The taste of TV stuck with him and after a failed pilot titled "Two Pimps and a Dwarf" he decided the next best move would be a Reality Show. Hence begins "Rock the Party", an undirected, poorly orchestrated collection of party girls from the pacific south west, who are asked to party for the chance to be crowned "biggest party girl" and win a deed to a night club of her own.
Directed by Colin Trevorrow REALITY SHOW appears, at first, to be pretty neutral. Narrated in a kind and traditional tone that sharply contrasts the sophomoric and comic tragedy that unfolds in front of many cameras, REALITY SHOW takes the opportunity to expound upon the damage caused by Reality programming. The film's one expert/witness describes the "reality show mentality" using words like "belligerent" and "deceitful", finally concluding that these shows create images that make us "less attractive as a culture." And what is specifically ironic about his comments is that it draws attention to the fact that "Rock the Party" is not so much a legitimate reality show as a pilot made by a product and consumer of reality shows.
At the first act break we're told by inter-title that the film REALITY SHOW will cover the five dreadful days of "Rock the Party" production. In the process of the destruction of "Rock the Party" we learn the fated "star" of the Show is not one of the women aimlessly competing for a deed (a deed we learn doesn't exist), it's Sherbondy, the dark and dangerous protagonist of the film. The man who, in the end, must be educated by these women he both tried to sleep with and tirelessly stole bikini tops from. His flagrant disrespect for them and himself is not just destructive; it's somehow evaluative of this "less attractive" culture studied by the angry media critic. A body of self-loathing, even his tears aren't comforting to us.
Love it or leave it, the audience of REALITY SHOW engages with the documentary much in the same way we would engage with a reality show. The major difference, of course, is that the film attempts to be redeeming. Exploring the topics of voyeurism and avarice that seem so central to the only half ironic allure of the genre, REALITY SHOW also painfully identifies the absence of human growth in the genre. In identifying this absence, the film points to the possible redemption of the genre, because the film isn't against reality TV, it just sees the genre as something worth revising because, after all, humans are always going to think the grass is greener somewhere else.
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