Surely you’ve seen the previews by now. In Moment of Truth, normal, nice-seeming Americans volunteer themselves for the “hot seat” - answering increasingly personal questions for cash while friends and family members look on. If the polygraph suggests a lie, the contestant loses all his or her winnings, and wins a very, very uncomfortable ride home. Actually, let me clarify: all contestants, with empty or bulging pockets, get a very uncomfortable ride home.
The show premiered Wednesday and brought in 23.2 million viewers; today, the New York Times took a look at the show’s appeal. A sampling of questions mentioned in the article (all of which are tailored to the contestant, based on pre-interviews with friends, relatives and co-workers):
- Do you wear a hairpiece?
- Have you ever had a sexual fantasy while attending Mass?
- Do you have a gambling problem?
- Did you delay having children because you are not sure if your wife of two and a half years will be your “lifelong partner”?
- Have you ever touched a female client more than was strictly necessary?
- Have you ever stuffed your pants to look better endowed?
Cringe, cringe, cringe. I think the appeal of this show is the chance to probe deep into people’s hidden thoughts and beliefs. People can function in society as decent human beings while tucking away dark secrets, deep prejudices, skeletons in the closet. We all do it, but for the most part we have the good sense to keep hidden thoughts hidden. There’s something intriguing, appealing in watching other people’s rusty internal boxes forced open. There’s sympathy, extreme discomfort felt for the contestant. And there’s disgust, a feeling of moral superiority and self-righteousness, relative to the contestant. It’s a bit like the strange pleasure we get from shows like My Super Sweet 16 - “This girl is an awful, spoiled brat! A little part of me is jealous, but mostly I feel good about being such a better human being!”
In the blog Past Deadline, Barry Garron makes the excellent point that the show is a Darwin Awards-like gathering of morons: it’s fun to watch with the knowledge that, after the camera stops rolling, the contestants (winning and losing alike) will have to face their freshly shattered marriages and relationships.
Maybe there will eventually be a spin-off: The Moment of Truth, and the Morning After.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Paul Dailing // Jan 26, 2008 at 2:09 am
It’s a weird facet of our collective that’s obsessed by others’ secrets and shame. But I think you’re right - disgust and an often false sense of moral superiority is a factor of it. After all, we’re watching. Are we really better than those Sweet 16 jerks?
Either way, I dig your writing style too.
2 Model behavior: does rape sell? // Mar 1, 2008 at 1:28 pm
[…] few weeks ago, I wrote about our voyeuristic schadenfreude in watching The Moment of Truth. The girls of ANTM are putting themselves through similarly […]
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