Remember in Quiz Show where the producers rigged the game show so that the guy won week after week and then blew it on a comparatively very easy question, because that was more poignant and had a compelling irony? Lo, via a Washington Post blog:
If you’ve missed [Fox's "The Moment of Truth"], I’ll summarize: contestants undergo a pre-show interview strapped to a polygraph and are then asked questions about every deep and dirty secret in their life. On the air, the contestant sits before a couch filled with loved ones [...] and are then asked about these questions. If they answer truthfully, money. [...] If their answers are false–based on the pre-interview polygraph results–they get the boot with nothing.
Watch this clip first, and then let’s talk.
Holy Cow, right? The short version of the story is that this week’s contestant seems to have blown her life to bits in short order for um, zero dollars. She confessed to stealing money from work and avoiding sex with her husband. And then a slew of other not such good things [e.g., being in love with someone else and having cheated on her husband]. But she keeps answering truthfully and being rewarded with money.
What is amazing is she’s ultimately undone when she answers the question: Do you think you’re a good person? She says yes. False! She thinks she’s a bad person! Since she confessed to being adulterous and lying it kind of seems like she might have realized her conscience might be in conversation with the polygraph.
This clip is so fake-o I can’t believe it’s been first a television and now Internet sensation. I especially like the part in the middle (@ 4:30) where the host asks the husband if he’s been unhappy, immediately after the wife admits to being in love with an ex-boyfriend, and the husband says “Sometimes. (ludicrously fake somber dramatic pause, then softer) Sometimes.”
Update, next day: This is a quote from the husband in a story about the episode in the New York Post: “Everything that was mentioned during this show, we had talked about before. We’ve had our issues. Unfortunately, now they’re not just our problems. Everyone knows about it.”
8 Comments
I’m trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. So the source of the drama isn’t whether the subject chooses to answer the question (to “go forward”) because they’ve already answered all the questions (for the lie detector) and can strategize their money-to-harm calculus. The drama is actually about how much embarrassment one is willing to put one’s family through, for how much money, right?
And under what circumstances do friends and family choose to use “the buzzer”?
I’m puzzled.
Jenn: I didn’t really get the buzzer, either. I don’t know if the bystanders can use it to skip one upsetting question or more than one or what.
“This clip is so fake-o…”
Not sure I agree, but I’ll be curious to hear what others think.
I think friends and family are allowed to use the buzzer, but it doesn’t stop the questions; it just serves up a different (and potentially more heinous) question. I would guess (but am not sure) that it could be used more than once since it carries the same risk each time.
The real fakery is the woman’s claimed age, 26. Has she been working in the stockyards since childhood?
The comparison to Stephen King/Richard Bachman’s The Running Man is kind of obvious, but I’ll make it anyway. “Celebrity Fit Club” isn’t all that different from “Treadmills to Bucks.”
I went to the show’s website, cause I couldn’t see how it would work if the contestants actually knew the questions before getting onstage. I mean, you’d know exactly what was coming! But the site confirms this is the case. Strange.
They’d never let me on, since I’m boring and really don’t have any dirt. However, I can see the draw. The challenge of trying to beat the machine, the desire to get some things off your chest AND FOR MONEY.
I thought the last paragraph of that Washington Post article was the most intriguing. I think the tie into relgion and our confessional culture is key. A Foucaultian analysis, using his writings on confession in History of Sexuality, would be particularly applicable.
It is honestly difficult for me to figure out if it’s fake, too. I’m with you on the cheesy heightened drama of it all, but there are some serious famewhores out there who seem to buy into the whole There Is No Bad Publicity thing. Jonny Fairplay, anyone?
No?
Just me?
Okay, I watch too much TV. But honestly, after all those seasons of the Real World, it’s hard to figure out what’s staged and what’s contestants milking their situation for airtime.
I think it’s Jerry Springer in a game show form. So I’m with abarian: famewhores.
I’m not so concerned with the contestants (some pple do anything to be on TV, as you suggest) but with the producers (and there’s the first sentence of my tenure review statement).
I’m wondering, after a good night’s sleep and an odd documentary on Kurt Cobain, why the producers don’t follow the contestants and their families in the weeks and months after they’re on the show, and provide viewers with a “where are they now?” featurette at the end of each episode.
If there’s fakery, I wonder if it is on the family’s part. I can imagine a smart contestant priming them and offering to split the money in exchange for instant forgiveness. If this is possible (both the conversation and the capacity of the family to agree) then the drama of the show is no longer there.