Guilty Pleasure

If you aren't watching "Work of Art" on Bravo, maybe think about giving it a shot. It's basically Project Runway with visual artists, ta-da! And these days for me, it's what constitutes a guilty pleasure. Lately, television as a whole has taken on this weird duality of high minded art ( Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Community etc, these highly written shows in the style of The Sopranos or Larry Sanders or whatever) and utter trash which stimulates one's pleasure centers only in the most base ways possible... Bravo makes  a whole line of these kinds of shows. This trend can be traced to the late 90s, The Sopranos and Survivor are I would argue the two most primal archetypes for the dominant forms of the TV landscape today. Work of Art almost sort of crosses them, if only in the sense that it's essentially a trashy, highly fabricated reality competition show in the vein of Project Runway, but it's about high art, or as one of the judges described it "a game show for artists". That's probably a little too high minded, and now that I think about it, the show really has nothing to do with the Soprano's... but it's entertaining regardless! Especially for someone like me, who has a limited stomach for guilty pleasure television unless there is some remote aspect of craft or information or SOMETHING other than people acting terribly to one another and crying. And Work of Art has the whole art angle as interpreted through a Project Runway/Top Chef lense, two shows I've enjoyed in the past. This season thus far though has been especially self aware, with the host China Chow addressing one of the artists in a cold monotone post judgement and being placed in the bottom "Are you crying because you aren't feeling well?" and then saying "feel better!" after she'd been eliminated. Shit, harsh, awesome. Also this season, the artist I am rooting for is named "The Sucklord" not just because his name is Sucklord and he makes art about action figures, but he's just a great reality show personality, full of snark and enough self awareness of everything to make the experience palatable, playing along but not blowing the whole thing off. I don't really have that much to add about this show. If you like Project Runway you'd probably enjoy it, although I haven't watched that other program since... season 4? The one where Christian Serrano won at the end. Anyway, check it out. I think my thesis about the Sopranos/Survivor dichotomy is a good one... and one that I came up with in the process of writing this post! Some cultural studies major should expand on it. If they haven't already. Probably they have. Ah well, originality is overrated.