ANTM as a Source of Moral Wisdom

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Background: America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) is a reality television show in which 13 beautiful young women compete against one another to be crowned “America’s Next Top Model.”  Each week, one contender is eliminated.  The last model left standing (in six-inch heels, of course) wins a lucrative modeling contract.

In episode 5, the girls were joined by aging supermodel Janice Dickinson, a former ANTM judge who was thrown off the show a while back for being too harsh on the contestants.  Ms. Dickinson has an intimidating presence.  Her super-sized lips and botox-immobilized facial muscles give her a freakish, somewhat aggressive appearance.  Reporter Steve Rogers picks up the story:

That night at dinner, tempers flared when Janice tempted [ANTM contender] Gina to admit who was giving her a hard time in the house. After gentle prodding from Janice, Gina finally pointed the finger at [ANTM contender] Jade — something that neither Jade nor Janice herself appreciated. “No matter what — Rule #1, we never rat out our bitches — zip it!,” Janice ... yelled at Gina as she told her to go back to her seat at the table. “Zip it bitch, zip it, you’re dead in my book,” she added as Gina tried to respond. Gina broke into tears on the ride home, upset at Janice’s comments.

This episode brings into focus questions essential to the calibration of our own moral compasses:

1.  Is the imperative that we not rat out our bitches a categorical imperative, or does the carefully constructed reality of a reality show permit a suspension of the ethical?  As Jade herself once pointed out, ANTM stands for America’s Next Top Model not America’s Next Best Girlfriend.

2.  Janice—a kind of God figure in the episode under discussion— is legislator, enforcer, and judge of the moral laws that govern ANTM.  But is she herself bound by them?  If Jehovah may ask Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, may Janice tempt Gina to rat out Jade, as she in fact did?  Does ANTM succeed in motivating the Kierkegaardian transition from the ethical to the religious? 

Discuss.

Comments

[The Happy Tutor]

Candidia to Abramoff: "We don't rat out our bitches."

[ahfukit]

My friend says they don't raise cows solely for the leather. She says cows are raised either to be milked to death or to fall neatly into tender cutlets when the marbling is correct. I figure there are couch cows, wallet cows, shoe cows, etc. It makes sense to optimize cows for their product destiny, doesn't it? Likewise supermodels.

[et alia]

There’s no point in asking
You’ll get no reply;
Oh just remember—
I don’t decide!
I got no reason—
It’s all too much—
You’ll always find us
Out to lunch!

Oh we’re so pretty
Oh so pretty (va-cant)
Oh we’re so pretty
Oh so pretty (va-cant)But now
And we don’t care!

[Enrique the Gay Philosopher]

I appreciate the fact that Tyra Banks never claims that modeling is a kind of “higher calling,” and nobody on the show denies that it’s about selling Product. Given its unabashed commercialism, the show mixes with the Sex Pistols about as well as oil mixes with metal.

[et alia]

I was just looking for an appropriate comment on the awesome vacuity of this show and others like it, and the Pistols' song sprang to mind.

Ah, the hazards of posting without sufficient context...

[ahfukit]

My honest first reaction was

Thanks for the ANTM link. Why is it you can never find a bazooka when you need one?

but I thought the cows was cheerier.

[ahfukit]

Take away the eyeliner and there's... more eyeliner.

[Enrique the Gay Philosopher]

Yes, there's likely no end to the play of eyeliner signifiers. Tammy Faye, for example, had her eyeliner tatooed directly onto her eyelids, creating a kind of ur-eyeliner, or, perhaps, an eyeliner-an-Sich. This corresponds, perhaps, to the turtles they pile on top of turtles in Hindu mythology.

[ahfukit]

Beautiful. (I vaguely recall Jimi Hendrix calling his performance/audience 'the electric church'.)