This Unit draws on class readings, discussions, and your individual and collaborative imagination
Project elements and due dates
On Thursday, December 8 Unit III teams from both sections will present proposals for a reality TV show reflecting the team’s vision of the future of romance. Teams will develop a poster and supporting documents such as a brochure or handout.
Presentation materials will be available before and during our conference luncheon in the Cardinal Room of the Memorial Union. Team members will present a 5-minute “pitch” for their proposal when the audience is seated for lunch.
Supporting documents and dates
Each team will submit
- an email proposal on Thursday, 17 November with collaboration worksheet attached
- an email status report on December 2
- an individually developed annotated bibliography to the Team on December 6
Audience
Joint session of two ISUComm Pilot sections of 105, also developing expertise in written, visual and oral communication and an interest in romance, culture and behavior. The class will provide oral and written feedback before and during the luncheon. Participants will vote to determine which proposal from each section should be forwarded to program development executives at major networks.
Purpose
Demonstrate to class that you’re only a step away from prime time!
Exercise your ability to collaborate, plan and present a group project with written and visual support.
Process
Your reality TV show should be contextualized by claims that support your Team’s vision of the future of romance, culture, and consumerism. (Individual research and annotated bibliographies will supply this context.)
- Develop a setting, set of “characters” selection criteria, program tests/challenges. All should clearly be both entertaining and consistently focused on your group’s vision of the future.
- Consider management and development issues like contestant selection, site preparation, weekly challenges.
- Draw on your group’s exposure to the genre of reality TV to develop a mock up or prototype outline (both text and visual) for a pilot episode.
- Consider a range of goals—will contestants win by finding a well-suited mate, a prosperous match or by avoiding all entanglements? Will exaggeration or honesty be rewarded? Improvements in physical appearance or in “manners”?
Questions and ideas
The following ideas, questions, contexts, are intended to help you consider options. This is not a list of things you must do or include.
- In your Team’s ideal world how will the role of romance conventions in personal relations, pop culture, advertising, class and gender issues change? (Or will your team freeze Romance time now, fall 2005?)
- Which elements will change and why will the result be a “better” world? (Or the more terrible world we deserve? Or an ironic world, which explodes current perception and practice, by questioning roles and assumptions or reversing everything?)
- Is your reality one of dystopia or utopia?
- Who is included and who is excluded in your version of reality?
- Are there divisions of labor, class, race, and gender in your reality? If so, how are these divisions maintained? If not, how?
- Anti-diet universe. The thin meet disdain and loneliness.
- Super body modification: Bigger is always better.
- Back to the future: Recreate an idealized version of the good old days
- Arranged marriages—to reduce divorce rate
- De-romanticism chamber [tasks to detoxify contestants]
- De-consumerism Island
- The death of romance, a modern horror story
- Alien romance
According to this list from Reality TV World there is a multiplicity of reality TV shows currently being produced and consumed (http://www.realitytvworld.com/). What world view do these shows project? Whose reality are they reflecting and defining? According to whom? Who is in and who is left out of their reality?
The Amazing Race American Idol America's Next Top Model The Apprentice The Apprentice: Martha Stewart The Bachelor The Bachelorette Big Brother The Biggest Loser Dancing With The Stars Extreme Makeover Hell's Kitchen Laguna Beach Nanny 911 Project Runway Queer Eye The Real World The Simple Life Starting Over Supernanny The Surreal Life Survivor Three Wishes Trading Spaces Trading Spouses Wife Swap More Shows
We are inviting you to subvert, support, recreate the world as conditioned by romance Convention