Last week I stayed in a hotel in Stratford for two night and had a teevee with cable and all! The only time I get cable TV now is when I go back to my parent’s place in Vancouver or go on trips to rooms with these mysterious black boxes. That’s because I’m a 20-something living in the city and have too many ‘zines to read. In case you haven’t been to a TV lately, there is now anentire channel for women. Horah! Women as equals, got our own TV channel now!
The channel super perfect for me because I am a woman. The channel even has this awesome website with all the info I need for being a woman- “Beauty and Style”, “Relationships” and “Shopping” are even the first three columns!
http://www.wnetwork.com/Home.aspx
I watched this great show called “Undercover Boss Canada” that made me love and admire all the hard work privileged middle-aged white men are doing for the rest of us slovenly people who can only be so lucky as to work in their Pizza Pizza factory.
Strangely enough I can’t even find a video for the promo of the show, but here’s how the episode I watched went: middle-aged grandson of Pizza Pizza founder “worked his way up the corporate ladder” to take over as CEO. To better “understand” his company, he shaves some of his eyebrows, changes his name to “Gavin” and frosts his hair tips to go undercover as a new employee. He is shocked by how difficult mundane, minimum wage work is and exclaims he’s “never known people who have work so hard”. Agrandmother teaches him line work in the factory and tells him how she wanted to go to med-school and studies alternative medicine in her rare spare time. He tells her she’ll get there one day. He “passionately believe[s] everyone needs to do what they love”. At the end, a gaggle of Pizza Pizza workers gather in a large conference room to applaud him and all the amazing things he does for them their CEO. La Fin.
As much as I would like to carry on sarcastically and light-hearted, this show is actually frighteningly problematic. But their most bizarre part of the whole pseudo-reality charade was the praise for the CEO’s and companies. Their insight to broadcast their undercover stunt into the “real” lives of employees was met with enthusiastic praise. I naively thought for a second that the episodes finale would feature executives disgusted at their massively, unnecessarily extravagant lifestyles after experiencing a small sliver of “regular person” life. {Shockingly enough} it is quite blatantly a perfectly executed mix of some slightly dicey, company rough-edges, swiftly and eloquently glossed over by a fleeting moment of glory as workers unknowingly boss the millionaire boss and executives gush over their companies appreciation and thanks for all their hard working employees.
Yes sir!
“Undercover Boss” is less an exposé than a showcase, and the chosen companies view it as an opportunity, not a reckoning. Chris McCann, president of 1-800-Flowers.com, who is the star of the season finale, uses it as a marketing tool, sending customers a “special offer” e-mail message. “See our president on ‘Undercover Boss’ — and shop his personal picks!’These self-serving gambits annoy labor groups, including American Rights at Work, a nonprofit labor policy organization in Washington, which circulates labor complaints and employee lawsuits against the companies that CBS has crowned. (1-800-Flowers.com, for example, is currently fighting a sexual harassment suit by a former deputy general counsel and vice president.). The group also takes exception to the way each episode ends with a pageant of seigniorial largesse — a $1,000 gift certificate, a family vacation — instead of a commitment to fair wages and safe working conditions. ” – NY Times
The times caps this off with the following: “But it’s the humility of the workers, their genuine astonishment and thankfulness over small acts of benevolence, that is most striking. If nothing else, “Undercover Boss” is a reminder that in bad times, people are less eager to confront or provoke authority; mostly they wish for small favors and the big, serendipitous strokes of luck”. Good one New York Times, you’ve hit it spot on. As the Times also reported in Sept 2011, “another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it”. 46.2 million Americans are really just thankful for their amazing fortune of possibly having their dismal lives featured on “reality” TV one day as a PR stunt.
But don’t worry everyone, CBS says “‘Undercover Boss’ is not claiming to cure the woes of the country’s economy — it’s an apolitical entertainment show”.
So remember to chill out, it’s all just apolitical entertainment.
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