Seeing Through the Facade

In considering Paul in “Faking It!” and how to approach this week’s blog, I had thought that I would write about how a person cannot become an artist in four weeks. During our viewing of this show, I was skeptical about this. On reflection, however, I realized that this reality show is no different than shows like America’s Next Top Model, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, and Project Runway, which ask viewers to accept that normal people can become supermodels, professional singers, perfect ballroom dancers, and fashion designers in a similar space of time. Are these skills less valued than art? Do they require less intense training? Not necessarily. They could all be seen as branches of art, and they all require their participants to “understand” the language and critical approaches to their specific topic, just like Paul is being asked to understand about art.

All of these shows feature “experts” in the field, who are supposed to train and mentor the normal people on their journey to becoming artistic people. Yet I noticed some interesting elements of these mentors. For Paul, one of his three mentors is entirely devoted to marketing him as a product. Considering our recent discussions of the monetary aspect of art, this says a lot. The only one of the above shows not focused on placing its participants in the “real world” trying to find a job with their new-found skills is Dancing with the Stars, and all of the other reality shows also showcase “experts” to tell the participants how to market themselves and their skills. Also, these mentors seem to have an equal function in the shows of letting the audience know when the participants are getting better at their art skills, because the audience members are certainly not expected to be able to tell on their own. I personally did not think Paul’s art was “getting better,” he just seemed to have fallen in some elementary art tricks that he couldn’t get out of. Yet the critics on the show were raving about the meaning in his work, which I guess was supposed to change my mind.

One other thing that bothers me about Paul’s experience as an artist is that he seems to have latched on to painful memories in his past, and the critics are loving this. But what if they had chosen a participant with no traumatic childhood experiences, would they still have something “valuable” to say that the critics would want to listen to? And shouldn’t art speak on its own, without needing the artist to explain what the art means to him? That really bothered me about the supposedly scary critic, who said that Paul’s art became more interesting to him when he understood Paul’s background. I am guessing that Paul will succeed in “Faking It” at the art gallery, partly because this is reality tv about an average guy, and the network knows that audience members at home want to see one of their own succeed in the seemingly-bewildering snobbish art world. Probably one of the critics will dislike his work (see through the façade, if you will), and the other two will buy into it.