Since the death of God shortly after my 16th birthday, I’ve sought acceptable replacements to plug the sucking wound in my psyche. After a brief, childish stint in atheism, I explored the universe of alien faiths from 17–22, finding tantalizing wisps of Jungian universals and antediluvian civilization within the esoteric penumbra of physical reality. The end of this search found me no happier, and I abandoned myself to drugs and materialist philosophy until the recent tipping point of my 28th birthday, where I fell off a cliff into abject nihilism.
You know how birthdays are. Another year gone. Inching toward oblivion. Why the suffering? What am I doing here?
Like the honest-to-dead-God American I am, I react to my bouts of existential horror with the time-honored techniques of petit alcoholism and televisual binging. In the week following my 28th I hardly left the couch. If I’d the finances to Amazon diapers to my front door I’d’ve shat myself on that couch before the stream of image, but poverty kept me standing, damnably, to use the toilet, to feed myself. These little breaks between the television and I proved almost too much to bear and I found ways to transfer the stream to my phone so that when I wasn’t directly before the TV, I’d a little stream in-hand, comforting me as I puttered about.
In this deep, dark night of the soul I had no purpose. Nothing stirred me. Every new program, every new film was just the same as the old rehashed nonsense, as unreal as the job I left, the fast food I ate, the trails I used to walk, hacked into the mountains for “safety” in “nature”.
Everything was meaningless… until I by chance discovered reality television.
Even filthy as I was, unwashed and drooling, I’d prevented myself from watching reality TV out of irrational bias. “Those Kardashians,” I’d think, “have been under the knife so many times. They all must be violently ill. Someone should help them.” And it’s true. The Kardashians are violently mentally ill. Someone should help them. But there are many genres of reality TV, and one of them restored my sense of purpose, my faith.
You see, all over America, maybe even the world, people are praying loudly in screams and tweets, by mail, video, and contest submissions. People cry in misery, “Why me? Why do I experience this pain? There is no reason: I am an American, a good person. If only I had the time, the money, the experience, the right people! I should not be feeling this way! This is not how people feel on the TV, on Instagram! Take pity!” Lo, behold, there is an answer to this pain, and no mythical force of consequence is required.
The self-improvement genre of reality television is a brilliant market-driven response to the death of God, and it doesn’t rely on an organized community or faith in common humanity, so it’s completely non-communist! It provides real, tangible results to real, devastating problems that people cannot solve without degrading themselves by seeing a therapist, doing some research, and engaging practically with reality. It is proof that the American system listens and loves us, though we might not always understand her.
So, lying on the sofa, jaw slack, almost insensate, I flipped on My 600-lb Life and found my 170 pound self changed forever. I found sexless mountains of flesh weeping into their folds, a spectacle and a grotesque on its own! But these beasts looked for change. They’d supplicated the proper totem, TLC, and The Learning Channel sent a camera team to record for broadcast the cripplingly obese person in their pain, to prove to the world that this person exists and can be made better. I, the viewer, embarked on an odyssey of revelation through childhood traumas at the root of disorder to find myself with the starring victim in a doctor’s office as an expert describes to them their truncated lifespan, the emergency rehabilitation they must undergo to prove commitment, the necessity of reaching a safe weight, and the potential surgery they will receive if they are committed to their own cause.
I watched a person abandon themselves to a higher power, and I watched the higher power carry them straight through their problems into the Promised Land. The fat melts away through tears and teamwork, months pass in an hour. Life improves, through faith a mountain moves.
I binged an entire season, then the entire series.
It wasn’t enough. The glowing feeling fades every time with the credit roll. I needed more.
I binged Hoarders next, a similar show sounding the depths of human desperation, something I vibe with at this despondent age of 28, where peoples’ mental illnesses manifest materially as prisons of emotionally-triggering consumerist trash accumulated due to faulty impulse switches flipped by a traumatic event or by complacency or by poor genetics. The culmination of each show is a teary, angry burst of crazy as the person is separated from their life’s work, which is immediately discarded by a hazmat crew, and they are left in an empty house, a new person, in need of new furniture.
As I flew further into this rabbit hole, I bathed lavishly in the glorious phantasmagoria of transformation. Queer Eye, Hot or Not, The Swan, Embarrassing Bodies. No one needs to suffer, The Show solves all iniquity. Suffering is invariably at one’s own hands, which have not yet groped their way to a solution.
And as I trawled the Reality segment of Hulu with my newfound fervor, my eyes settled on a genuine religious vision. A literal god-figure, as we’ve all imagined: benimbused, besainted, beautiful.
Gordon Ramsay.
Greedy for faith, I flipped on Kitchen Nightmares and encountered a perfect vision of the human struggle, judgment, and redemption.
Chef Ramsay ranges the American landscape drawing eyes and cameras and the hopes of every failing restauranteur, hotelier, and American Dreamer. With his tight shirt and tighter body, he cuts through every problem placed before him. His will is the Sword of Alexander, Earth is an infinite Gordian Knot, and he drives forward, relentless, a real Kamikaze. In his wake lie innumerable deaths and rebirths. We can all know and testify. His gospel is on Hulu right now.
Each of Ramsay’s epistles to the greater human race follows a lovingly crafted, predictable but endlessly entertaining format, because He knows we are a simple flock, and require entertainment of our moral lessons. The format: some human, in their iniquity, is found struggling and in supplication to Gordon’s Higher Authority. “I am $500,000 in debt!” they might weep. “I never knew how to run a restaurant, but it’s my dream and it’s destroying me!” “I don’t know how to fire my horrible parent who constantly undermines me!” Everyone has a dream and a story, a restaurant owned by their parents that just doesn’t run like it used to, an institution opening its doors in ’71 that hasn’t been updated since a death, and I, the viewer, am supplied with this context so that when Ramsay appears on the doorsteps of The Elect, there is some minimal understanding of what is about to happen and why. An ignorance quickly cured by Ramsay’s omniscience.
Gordon sweeps in with a perfect nose and sharp eye, quickly identifying that the shellfish are rotten and the service unconscionable. He subjects himself to these conditions still so that we are saved, bearing the horrible food and grimacing waitress to give himself standing for what he is about to say and do. Like Christ Himself, he is pierced by rotten spears, whipped by ignorant tongues, all to save.
Ramsay never takes these injustices laying down, however. Our newer, sexier Christ is a battlefield doctor, no pacifist. Keener than you or I, he airs every problem loudly and directly, never with time or patience for the stagnant neuroses plaguing the establishment and its employees. Gordon, by now an Orphic figure, descends into the festering pit of HELL ITSELF, the invariably horrible kitchen. The kitchen where all the beasties hide, the hive of neurosis and collective shame of employees and owners alike, unspoken and hated all the same. Gordon walks in and begins a thorough investigation, over the course of which his astonishment and anger become A RIGHTEOUS FURY RISING TO FEVER PITCH! DID YOU REALLY JUST SERVE ME ROTTEN MEAT? YOU BASTARD! EVERYTHING IN HERE IS ROTTON!!! LOOK! HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? IT’S RUINED. ARE YOU WAITING FOR A DEATH? LOOK AT THAT! NOBODY HAS CLEANED THAT IN FUCKING YEARS. ARE YOU ASHAMED? YOU DON’T LOOK IT. OH, DON’T GIVE ME THAT, YOU JUST SERVED ME THIS ROTTEN FUCKING SHELLFISH! YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN SHUT DOWN!!!
He abrades and upbraids, a moral typhoon blasting away at neurotic resistance by rubbing everyone’s faces so vigorously in their own shit that it is forced deep into their sinuses where they finally must smell it, must taste it, must acknowledge that they have wronged. Only then can the exorcism begin. A ritual ablution: everyone must work on cleaning out the rank corners of their station, forcing light and bleach into every crevice, tearing out all the old equipment and décor, beginning installation of new, brilliant interior and cookery with no history and every potential for success.
If the owner has not cried yet, this is the part where it happens. Gordon sits them down and confronts them with their own behavior. In 24 Hours to Hell and Back he uses video from hidden cameras for particularly stirring impact, forcing the owner to accept the outstanding flaws in their life leading to this point. That he must let go of his father’s death, that she cannot allow herself to wither under her papa’s tyranny any longer, that if they want this dream to work they must communicate with one another and he must stop DRINKING!! Ramsay blasts last bastions of ego to smithereens with evidence and psychological terrorism, leaving our demiurge with a quivering clay ready to be remolded in his image. Blank restaurant, opened mind.
And he remolds.
He creates a new menu and instructs the staff in the creation of proper food in a clean, new kitchen. He ensures the owner is mindful of their updated role in the institution. He prods the owners to excise troublesome employees and weak links in management, he aids in hiring new staff where necessary. He gives shape to this clay and fires it in the heat of a Last Supper, a full-occupancy reopening complete with critics and bloggers to find breaking points, giving them a once-over before blasting back off to his place in the firmament. In his wake he leaves the teary thankful wondering if maybe he’ll stay, if their time together was real at all, if they’re feeling lust, love, or religious ecstasy.
Admittedly, there are some failures. But Christ cannot save all. Some look Him in the face and deny him. What is to be done? The lake of fire awaits, and judgement comes in the form of insolvency.
Father forgive them, they know not what they do.
After Ramsay I realized that the American spectacle industry works tenaciously at solving the problem of godlessness. If God is dead in the material sphere, what America needs are many, many replacements to give us solutions for our infinite problems, each a potential source of hopelessness. A pantheon of spectacular totems to show that America works, that average people are heard, that anyone can do well if they’re just shown how. They either kick in with that good ol’ American work ethic or they deserve to fail, fat and unhappy and bankrupt, right where they were before The Show lent them a hand at a new life.
So, unlike the billions of idiots who prayed to an unhearing, uncaring God (or gods!) in order to have prayers answered, we have a real avenue. When we fall to our knees to weep, we don’t have to scream at the unblinking sky. We can tweet @FOXTV, “my heroin dealer keeps getting shitty products and I want a show where drug dealers compete for the chance to contract with corrupt Afghan officials through the CIA so that I can consistently get better products”, or @ABCNetwork “It’s fucking impossible to build a multi-million dollar company quick enough to make me happy right now so can you give me the chance to be CEO quick and make a TV show about it? I don’t care about what kind of business it is as long as I get money and am on TV.” And when we tweet out our miseries and fervent desires, unlike the troglodyte religious we actually have a chance of our problems being addressed.
And you better get to asking. If you’re not even asking, you may never get a reality TV show that addresses your issue. Your job as a consumer is to open that spot in the televisual pantheon and demand a show addressing your issue. It is the work of the studios, stations, and financiers to find the right format for the construction of that issue’s altar.
As for me, I am a changed man. I no longer sit and stare listlessly at the screen. I’m enraptured, at the edge of my seat every night, watching the constant redemption and reaffirmation of our society’s greatness. I have seen the miracles. I have seen men rise from their broken husks to franchise greatness, I have seen a lying, valueless CEO become president of the United States by accident, and it makes me certain that I too am capable of spectacular apotheosis, that I too can get my show, my spot in the telecommuted dreams of the western world, and have all of my problems taken care of by FOX. I have a fantastic idea for it, too. I’ve always wanted to head a thriving, vibrant cult, but every time I start one things fall apart with just the first four or five members. I can’t figure out why, because I’m charismatic, attractive, and the Kool-Aid is top-notch. I need help. Enter:
Prophet Over People
Premise: Struggling cult leaders-to-be are given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be coached by David Miscavige, Shirley Phelps-Roper, and the corpse of David Koresh. They help with film production, intimidation tactics, methods of acquiring members, how to instill hope and fear into your flock, how to get away with all your sexual deviancies, and in the end you are granted your own church with a prefilled certificate of formation!
Seriously, help me out. We can get this thing off the ground together. Just message @FOXTV using #prophetoverpeople, and together we can raise me and the collective American consciousness to the level of godmakers. Make sure to include my name in your tweets, because this is about my dreams, but, you know, be creative with it.
Now run off and get supplicating.
- 04.04.2019
