KEY POINTS:
An Orange-skinned blonde woman is about to do something so toe-curlingly mortifying, you'll wonder if her desire for fame has completely crushed her ability to feel shame. Depending on the TV show, the woman will now pretend to be Cher, confess to carrying drugs, reveal her nipples, attempt to samba, try to make a stranger love her, or drop in a gratuitous reference to Lindsay Lohan.
Welcome to the compulsively watchable world of car-crash TV. More than just another reality show, car-crash TV is the kind that you stare at, even though something truly excruciating is happening. You can't bear to look - but you can't look away, either.
TV One's Stars in their Eyes shouldn't fall into this category. The UK version is an honourable institution which has been turning out adept and even glamorous impersonations of well-known singers for 18 years. Unfortunately - or fortunately, if you enjoy public humiliation - the Kiwi show suffers from a wild optimism that slapping a hat and culottes on a sturdy young single mum from Auckland will transform her into Alicia Keys.
The other week, the vivacious Cindy from Samoa achieved a passable imitation of Chris Masoe doing the haka in sequins. Then I turned up the sound and discovered she was supposed to be Tina Turner. In a revelation that shocked nobody, the media subsequently announced that Cindy is a fa'afafine.
A fa'afafine in the final! Now that's a Pacific plot twist the UK version would never have imagined. The public's fascination with Cindy and her transgender upbringing, rather than her somewhat meagre musical ability, must make her a favourite to win in Tuesday's final. Hundreds of thousands of us will be tuning in this Tuesday at 8.30pm to see if she does.
Kiwis love this kind of television. In the 18-to-49-year-old age bracket, Stars in their Eyes has been consistently in the top 10, along with Border Security, Ten 7 Crime Investigation and Motorway Patrol.
It seems we can't get enough of caterwauling singers and cartoonishly inept criminals sacrificing themselves for our entertainment.
According to senior TVNZ executive Andrew Shaw, "light documentary" and "constructed reality" is a global phenomenon. "These shows are an opportunity for ordinary people to be seen in an extraordinary light. It's a fun, amusing diversion that audiences want to watch." Wendyl Nissen, writer and media commentator, has noticed a trend towards positive reality shows such as Stars in their Eyes and Dancing with the Stars.
"Everyone's having a great, uplifting experience, rather than being grim losers fighting it out over who gets to swallow the slugs," she says. "This trend often happens when real life is hitting us with depressing news such as increased petrol and food prices.
We turn to the TV to cheer us up and distract us from the fact that we haven't eaten cheese in a month." And if we're having a little chuckle at the participants' expense, well, surely it's all just a bit of harmless fun?
Sara Chatwin, registered psychologist and director of MindWorks, agrees that these shows "allow us to laugh at others and, in some way, ourselves. Sometimes, when we see other making fools of themselves it makes us feel better about where we're at. Or, if we don't have a very exciting life, we can live vicariously through these characters."
Prime TV manager Karen Bieleski theorises that, "as a relatively reserved and well-behaved society we get a vicarious kick from watching others violate social rules or do things we ourselves don't dare to."
So, next time you find yourself sniggering in exquisite discomfort at some prat falling about the stage in a giant cow suit on America's Got Talent, or psychotically screaming at another woman's cowering husband on Wife Swap, or pathetically trying to win the attention of a too-good-to-be-true navy lieutenant/medical officer/triathlete hunk on The Bachelor Season 10, don't feel bad about it. As Shaw says, "Participants are knowingly being exploited.
Thanks to YouTube they're media savvy and they want to be seen. They know what's involved. Plus, there are well-drafted laws to protect them." But there is a darker side. If Stars in their Eyes is a gentle fender bender, some shows are fatal 50-car pile-ups in the fast lane. I was in the UK in 2000 when the first series of Big Brother aired.
It turned viewers into voyeurs and was unlike anything we'd seen before. There was back-stabbing, a kiss, and a particularly hypnotic sequence shot from a modesty-preserving distance when one girl plucked her bikini line. It was groundbreaking, mesmerising stuff.
But, of course, the rapacious audience demanded more, responding with the same base impulse that saw the Victorians flock to stare at the Elephant Man and other freak shows. Big Brother contestants obliged, becoming more exhibitionist and unconstrained every year.
In 2006, two male contestants in Australian Big Brother were evicted for allegedly sexually assaulting one of the females. And in last year's British Celebrity Big Brother, racism and bullying drove several participants into therapy. Bieleski says she's fairly open-minded about what screens on Prime, but she has boundaries. "We try to steer away from the really extreme examples of car-crash TV, because they strongly polarise viewers.
There's a show screening in New Zealand right now that I declined to bid for because I felt it was exploitative in the extreme. Some shows go too far, particularly when there is collateral damage to friends and family." One such example is TV2's now "resting" controversial American show, The Moment of Truth (returning later this year).
Contestants are hooked up to a polygraph and asked a series of increasingly personal questions in front of their horrified relatives. During one episode, a chihuahua-faced woman was asked if she'd had "sexual relations" with anyone outside her marriage. I watched, squirming. Her husband waited, slowly imploding under the studio lights. The audience hissed in disapproval. Her blue bug eyes welled with tears. Then she admitted what we all knew: "Yes." And the audience cheered, because she was another step closer to winning a few thousand dollars.
In TV2's publicity blurb, they enthusiastically say this show "hit the headlines around the world when a contestant on the Colombian version was arrested for admitting to hiring a hitman to kill her husband!" Like that's supposed to be some kind of ghastly selling point? I prefer the more predictable dramas of celebrity trash TV.
Nissen is a fan of the recently ended Celebrity Rehab on Sky's Vibe which she describes, appropriately enough, as "highly addictive". I've already checked out E!s new shows, Living Lohan (Tuesdays at 9.30pm) and Denise Richards: It's Complicated (Tuesdays, 10pm), to marvel at the complete lack of self-awareness and total self-obsession of its "stars".
I've also found myself strangely compelled to watch Girls of the Playboy Mansion, on both E! and C4. (It was before The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and I was just filling in time. Honest.) It stars the three identikit girlfriends of geriatric Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, and is a fascinating study in desire, greed, kitsch, and the commoditisation of women.
"Oh Puffin, I love you!" coos the number one girlfriend, who thinks they are soul mates despite the fact that she has to share him both in and out of bed with two others. Shudder. The other night, somebody's plain sister was transformed into another bleached blonde, fake-tanned, breast-thrusting, barely-clad Barbie.
Her mother was so proud she cried. Back here in New Zealand, we're casting off our innate reticence as casually as Hef's harem shed their clothes. As both viewers and participants, we're conspiring together to enjoy the deliciously awful delights of car-crash TV.
The channels, meanwhile, are ecstatic with the high-rating, low-cost nature of this kind of programming. If you're prepared to take the risk, TV One is already looking for contestants aged 18-plus for the next season of Stars in their Eyes.
Meanwhile, Prime TV says it'll try to accommodate those hardy souls who turn up for New Zealand's Got Talent auditions next weekend in Auckland and July 5 in Christchurch, even if they weren't registered (see www.primetv.co.nz for more details). But Nissen, who has worked behind the cameras, has words of warning for these wannabe performers.
"I've seen what those lights and lenses do to completely alter a perfectly nice, normal human being and turn them into a rabid, needy monster."
* Stars in their Eyes Grand Final plays on TV One this Tuesday at 8.30pm.
