It is a truth generally acknowledged by scholars of mass media that reality TV poses fascinating questions about the connection between the public and private spheres of personal behaviour.
But in the common vernacular, we're either fascinated or creeped out by reality-TV stars - the exhibitionists, the deluded, the irritating and the people offering too much freakin' information.
Take our Canadian Bachelorette. Somebody take her. Away. Please. Jillian Harris, a 29-year-old, petite (5 foot 2, apparently) brunette, born in Alberta and based in Vancouver, is The Bachelorette (ABC, CITY-TV, 8 p.m.) in that reality show's current incarnation. Thus, she is the true star of the competitive-dating show, the young woman choosing a (potential) life-partner from among a gaggle of handsome dudes.
If you're blissfully unaware - and nobody blames you for being oblivious - this doesn't mean that Harris sprang from nowhere to fleeting, prime-time fame. No sirree. Look around the Internet and you'll find that she's well-known and sometimes referred to as Jillian "Hot-Tub" Harris.
For good reason. Harris's story is familiar to connoisseurs of the competitive-dating genre. After making the final three on The Bachelor - the male-centric version of the show - Harris was rejected by Bachelor Jason Mesnick. And this rejection came after the two had a steamy date in a hot tub. For reasons best explained by the connoisseurs, this made Harris a good choice for being the fifth Bachelorette.
She's the first Bachelorette from Canada. In this weird zone of reality-TV dating shows, one supposes, she represents Canadian womanhood.
On last week's first episode, we learned that after rejection on The Bachelor, "Hot-Tub" Harris returned to Vancouver and felt "defeated and sad." Now, I've had the same feeling in Vancouver, especially while waiting and waiting to get the bill and make good my escape from the Cactus Club Café. But I digress. Viewers were treated to many moments of Harris walking around Vancouver, hair blowing in the wind, shopping for shoes, and throwing her beret in the air, like on that old Mary Tyler Moore show.
Forgive me for trash-talkin' the perky, kinda ditzy brunette from Vancouver. I'm not saying she's an attention-craving airhead. I'm just saying that a skeptical person could well form that impression.
In vignettes of Harris being "defeated and sad" in Vancouver, viewers also saw her - she's called "Canada's Sweetheart" on CITY-TV's website, and "America's Sweetheart" on the show - washing a car in cut-off jeans and high heels. The uncharitable might see this as signifying something vaguely vampy (or a word rhyming with that), but that's just the uncharitable for you. I think it's fair to point it out here, though. Harris is the alleged sweetheart of not one, but two, countries.
Fact is, Harris looked excessively excited to be told she's the new Bachelorette and, in particular, that she's back in a luxury hotel in L.A. Me, being uncharitable for a minute only, did indeed form the impression that Harris is in this for the attention, the hotel, clothes, limo rides, fast cars and related superficial thrills. Not for the romance.
But she talks a good line about romance. She's a perambulating treasure trove of wisdom, albeit at the level of cheesy love-song lyrics. "I think I have so much to give," she has said with frightening seriousness. Also, "You have to slay a few dragons to find the right prince." Most famously, again among connoisseurs, Harris has expressed the view that she can tell everything about a guy by observing his choice of hot-dog toppings: Ketchup means he is an all-American boy, onion-eaters are not the marrying kind, and the guy who takes mustard is the guy women are looking for.
Call me cranky, fussy or fatally discriminating, but this woman cannot possibly be anybody's idea of a "sweetheart" can she? Hot-tubs, hot-dogs, and high-heels for washing the car? I am, to put it bluntly, deeply creeped out by Jillian "Hot-Tub" Harris. My fault, I guess, that I fail to equate shallowness with authenticity.
It hardly matters. Harris is in her element. Swaddled by the camera's attention and thrilled by the prospect of dates in skanky resorts with guys who have six-pack abs, unreliable incomes and can't knot a necktie, she is blind to shame, blind to her own ridiculousness. There she was last week, in a long white gown grinning like mad as 30 - count 'em, 30 - guys were paraded for her delectation.
The most memorable guy vying for her attention is an outright foot fetishist. He can talk about feet with a keenness that is both salacious and very disturbing. He'd be a good match for "Hot-Tub" Harris. She is, after all, a fame fetishist.
He's from Texas, I think. All the guys are Americans, actually. I do wish Harris well. She'll connect with one of these guys. They'll sweep her off her high-heeled feet and take her away to somewhere in the United States. Please. Take her away.
Also airing tonight
Hip 2B Holy (Global, 10 p.m.) is an excellent, eye-opening news doc about the contemporary Christian evangelical movement in Canada. The focus is on the urban evangelicals and how a very Canadian kind of soft-sell is used to spread the Christian message. A good deal of it is about the presumably representative Connexus Community Church, in Barrie, Ont., which holds its services in a local multiplex movie theatre, and uses the Internet and video on demand to reach its congregation. As narrator Kevin Newman (also a producer and co-writer) points out, for all the cheeriness at Connexus, many Canadian evangelicals share their American counterparts' deeply conservative beliefs on gay marriage and abortion. Another part of what's called "a race to define the Canadian evangelical voice," we're told, is the Alpha Course, a heavily promoted Christian-lifestyle movement backed by businessman Jim Pattison.
Magic Flute Diaries (Bravo!, 9 p.m.), a charming movie set in Salzburg, is about a young, insecure singer named Tom (Warren Christie) who is cast as Tamino in a production of The Magic Flute. Playing opposite him is the mysterious diva Pamina (Mireille Asselin). They fall in love. Strange things happen. The past and present co-mingle. Opera and real life get all tangled up. It's terribly sweet and thrillingly rich in music. J.D.
Check local listings.