WaPo: Trump wants to make reality TV. But now the cast is ignoring his directions.

[Celerity]

What happens when the reality TV president loses control of his production?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-wants-to-make-reality-tv-but-now-the-cast-is-ignoring-his-directions/2019/10/17/9b908b16-f0f6-11e9-b648-76bcf86eb67e_story.html

It has always been appealing to talk about Donald Trump as the reality television president. For all his documented racism, and despite the many accusations of sexual assault, no jab at his unfitness for the job has seemed more ubiquitous than the reminder that he was previously famous as the guy who fired Cyndi Lauper on the tacky boardroom set of “The Celebrity Apprentice.” It’s a dynamic that was palpable this past week, when Trump invited the parents of Harry Dunn, the 19-year-old Brit killed in a traffic accident by American diplomatic wife Anne Sacoolas, to the White House. Without telling the grieving parents beforehand, he had Sacoolas waiting in the next room for a surprise emotional catharsis, to be played out in front of cameras ready to capture the moment.

This is the ultimate old-school reality TV idea, recognizable to anyone who has ever indulged. It’s mid-’90s, daytime-trash gold — that box in the corner of the screen where we see a guy’s girlfriend waiting to burst onto the set and confront him for sleeping with her sister. It’s that moment on a “Real Housewives” reunion episode when a minor character is trotted out just to catch one of the stars in a lie. Since Trump clearly was looking to sell reconciliation, not conflict, my mind went to a more contemporary example from the most recent season of “Queer Eye,” when Karamo, the near-caricaturishly kind and sincere lifestyle adviser, brings the man he’s making over to a restaurant for a surprise. The guy who shot him and put him in a wheelchair for life is waiting to meet him.

The very temptation to compare such constructed, formulaic theatrics to the drama playing out on the global stage doesn’t just indict Trump: It’s also a condemnation of the rest of us, the viewers who voted him into office. We fell for the spectacle. A few months after Trump’s inauguration, Emily Nussbaum detailed in the New Yorker the way his “Apprentice” persona — the man in the power suit calling the shots, never challenged — was a cardboard cutout that could, at least, appear presidential, however free of substance it might be. Implicit in that point is the dynamic that makes any reality television production work: participants willing to engage in the spectacle shaped around them, and an audience willing to suspend disbelief in the face of that spectacle. Whether you loved or hated Trump, he was watchable because we’d seen all the bits before.

It’s easy now to point out that for the past three years Trump has been going back to that same playbook. Reality television, as noted by media critics like Nussbaum, political reporters like John Cassidy and the Bravo god himself, Andy Cohen, is the language he knows — a flip book of insults and set pieces ready-made for conflict or humiliation, or just fireworks. But it might be more helpful, or at least more hopeful, to point out all the ways the show breaks down around him: moments when he expects the production to play out exactly as he wants, but participants and viewers refuse to give him any moral or narrative authority. Often these are interactions with normal people, people who want nothing from him, who won’t be made to mean what they don’t want to mean. They are not contestants, they are citizens, and that is a distinction Trump seems unable to make. When he forces them into the show, their humanity in the face of the formula turns the familiar grotesque.

snip

[tanyev]

1. Good points, but it should also be pointed out that The Apprentice had a production team

that created the illusion. (Maybe the article does—I’m past my # of free WAPO articles.). Mark Burnett has a lot to answer for our current predicament, IMO.

Apprentice Producers Struggled to Make Trump—and His Decisions—Seem Coherent

Television producer Mark Burnett was a key part in making President Donald Trump possible. When he approached the now-president to host the Apprentice, Trump was a mogul on the decline. But Burnett, and the popular reality show, turned him into a household name that was synonymous with success. The New Yorker talked to several people involved in the show for a profile on Burnett that has several interesting revelations about how producers worked to make Trump seem bigger than he was.

“He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.” Bill Pruitt, a producer on the show, said, “We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise.”

Although Trump immediately proved himself to be an ideal character for reality television, producers had to do a lot of editing work to make him seem coherent. “He wouldn’t read a script — he stumbled over the words and got the enunciation all wrong,” Katherine Walker, a producer on the show, said. “But off the cuff he delivered the kind of zesty banter that is the lifeblood of reality television.” Although editors “cleaned it up so that he was his best self,” Walker is convinced “Donald thinks that he was never edited.”

Producers didn’t just edit Trump so that his words made sense; they also made sure to make it seem as though Trump’s decisions were coherent with what happened in the challenges every week. Trump often was unprepared for the “board room” sessions and fired people “on a whim.” That sometimes meant he got rid of people who had done a good job in the challenge, so editors would go back and “reverse engineer” the episode. Show veterans see lots of parallels with what Trump is doing as president now. “I find it strangely validating to hear that they’re doing the same thing in the White House,” Jonathon Braun, an editor, said.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/mark-burnett-profile-in-the-new-yorker-apprentice-producers-struggled-to-make-trump-and-his-decisions-seem-coherent.html

[mia]

4. What an interesting article.

Thank you.

[loyalsister]

3. One thing that has had me confused since 2016

I can't understand why participation in the most ridiculous, vile entertainment format did not instantly disqualify Trump in the minds of voters during the primary.
It may be an age thing but to me reality TV has as many redeeming qualities as Trump. None.

[IcyPeas]

5. I think this is why a lot of people voted for him

people like celebrities. they think they are cool.

I'd love to see a poll of how many of his voters were also fans of The Apprentice.