I watched the first episode tonight of The Apprentice, Mark Burnett’s new reality show. It really is Survivor in the corporate boardroom, with Manhattan as the island that the losers are booted off of. The show is insufferable, and some sort of masterpiece, for the way it epitomizes everything that is most sick about American society, from the idealization of “teamwork” among people who are just waiting to stab one another in the back, to the inane business-speak that permeates any understanding of activity and character, to the way the 16 contestants grovel before Donald Trump as they seek to curry his favor, to the way Trump himself eats it up and takes it as simply being his due, to the nouveau riche vulgarity of Trump’s apartment (I can just imagine the scorn with which the old rich would regard its collection of fake Italian Renaissance artifacts), about which Trump expansively explains that “this is what it’s all about”, to the gender stereotypes running rampant throughout the show (the initial contestants are 8 men and 8 women, they are divided into teams by gender, and the women seem to be showing their business acumen by competing as to who can wear the shortest skirts and the highest heels), to the conclusion in which the evidently Jewish man is the one whom Trump decides to (as it were) banish from the island first (I don’t think this is a coincidence)
The Apprentice
I watched the first episode tonight of The Apprentice, Mark Burnett’s new reality show. It really is Survivor in the corporate boardroom, with Manhattan as the island that the losers are booted off of. The show is insufferable, and some sort of masterpiece, for the way it epitomizes everything that is most sick about American society, from the idealization of “teamwork” among people who are just waiting to stab one another in the back, to the inane business-speak that permeates any understanding of activity and character, to the way the 16 contestants grovel before Donald Trump as they seek to curry his favor, to the way Trump himself eats it up and takes it as simply being his due, to the nouveau riche vulgarity of Trump’s apartment (I can just imagine the scorn with which the old rich would regard its collection of fake Italian Renaissance artifacts), about which Trump expansively explains that “this is what it’s all about”, to the gender stereotypes running rampant throughout the show (the initial contestants are 8 men and 8 women, they are divided into teams by gender, and the women seem to be showing their business acumen by competing as to who can wear the shortest skirts and the highest heels), to the conclusion in which the evidently Jewish man is the one whom Trump decides to (as it were) banish from the island first (I don’t think this is a coincidence)
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