REALITY.  Amiright?

TRUTH.  NONFICTION.  No but seriously.  This is something I like to talk about, and this week, it’s all I’m gonna talk about.  While reading my “real,” “truthful” Winnipeg comics, you can also read some of my half-baked thoughts about reality itself.  This is gonna get so meta.

Today the topic is reality television.  The New York Times recently did a piece about what goes on behind the scenes on reality TV shows.  I read this with great excitement: reality TV shows are notorious for making contestants sign extreme contracts promising to NEVER EVER reveal what happens on the set.  The secrets turn out to be not very surprising: the shows subject their contestants to a combination of little sleep, little food, and lot of alcohol to stir up the kind of emotional melodrama that gets ratings.

I recently got a more personal glimpse of the way reality shows work when I discovered a segment of the Tyra Banks show featuring two Hampshire students.  I don’t know either of the girls personally, but I’ve seen them around campus—one is a Prescott intern, who acts in an improv group, does stand-up, and writes for CollegeHumor.  I’d heard they were going to go on the show as a joke—pretending to be a straight girl and lesbian who had dated for awhile.  To actually see the segment made the joke seem a lot less funny.  When one of the girls tries to talk about breaking down gender barriers and stop putting people in boxes, Tyra shuts her right up.  She asks if they were mortified to see one another around campus, suggesting that being openly gay on their campus must be mortifying.  Anyone who has been on Hampshire’s campus should realize how absurd that sounds.  It was frightening to see how two girls who seem so strong and vocal and assured at Hampshire could get so completely clammed up by the fierceness of cameras and Tyra Banks.

(All this said, I would still totally go on Frontier House or Manor House if given the chance.)