I saw a really disturbing program on MTV this weekend: I Want a Famous Face. I really shouldn’t be surprised. This is just a natural progression of MTV shows that started with Fanatic, continued through Becoming and Crib Crashers and has now reached this point. I suppose with the success of a show like Extreme Makeover and the pending arrival of Fox’s The Swan, it just makes sense that permanent plastic surgery would be the next step for MTV.
I always found Fanatic to be a really scary show. Basically, people (read: teenagers) would send videos into MTV explaining why they were some music personality/group’s biggest fan. They would be surprised at home or at work, given a bunch of gifts and then whisked away to actually meet their idol. The celebrity worship exposed on this show and the degree to which these fans lives seemed to completely revolve around the objects of their affections was not really the best reflection of our society. On the other hand … they were teenagers. Most people grow out of that kind of blind-faith idol worship.
And compared to Becoming and to a lesser extent Crib Crashers, Fanatic was tame. At least on Fanatic, said fans had the chance to meet and interview their idols. On these two shows, they were lucky to receive a video message. These shows had more to do with, as the first title suggests, becoming and living like their idols than providing any actual connection with them. On Crib Crashers, fans would be surprised by having their bedrooms “styled” to look like that of their favorite celebrity. That’s it. There’s not really even anything tangible there considering that it’s impossible to make some 16-year-old’s 15-foot square bedroom actually look like Mariah’s palatial master boudoir.
Becoming focused on again kidnapping these big fans, styling their hair and clothes to look like their favorite act and then having them perform/lip sync in a recreation of the star’s most recent music video. This could entail utilizing five fans who don’t know each other to portray various members of a band. They supposedly have the opportunity to live like a rock star for a day or two … whatever it is. They go to rehearsals to learn their movements/dances for the video; spend time having their hair changed and fitted for clothes; spend the night in a plush hotel where they get tons of free crap, and then shoot the music video. Somewhere along the way, the person/people they’re “becoming” send them a message on video wishing them luck, and the fans usually treat that tape like it’s the lost Holy Grail. At the end of the day, all they’ve really done is play dress-up, NOT met their idols and visited a music video set.
But now, “becoming” Britney Spears isn’t good enough unless you’re really becoming Britney Spears. That means plastic surgery. That means implants and lifts and nose jobs and tummy tucks. I saw parts of two episodes over the past couple days, the first following a woman who works as a Spears impersonator and wanted her breasts improved, and the second trailing a woman who wanted to look more like Kate Winslet with the hope of working as a plus-size model. The repeated goals over-and-over of both women was to look like their respective celebrities, and they were willing to go to any extremes to do so.
Am I wrong in thinking this is absurd? That this is celebrity worship gone a bit too far?
I do have to say, the Britney Spears episode did include one thing that I found amazing. The audience gets to see a fair amount of the actual breast surgery, and it’s not pretty. It’s almost enough to turn me off breasts for at least … ok, scratch that. Regardless, there are shots of the breast cut open, of blood and tissue and other internal parts that we’re just not supposed to see externally. In fact, it’s quite reminiscent of scenes from the bloodiest horror film of recent memory. Through it all though, MTV is very careful to not show the nipple! No sir. We can’t be seeing any nip-slippage in this surgery footage. Instead, there’s that little fuzzy circle to let as see the rest of the D-cub in all its glory, just not that special pink circle in the middle. The best part is watching this smudge move all over the place as the actual surgery pushes and shoves the breast (obviously including the nipple) around.
What am I saying? Thank you MTV. Screw “Choose or Lose” and John Kerry: who needs to have 18 year olds voting when they can watch their peers have plastic vacuum tubes shoved into their chests.
Out of Focus 