Suggestions for reality shows ( ... mostly involving academics)

One of the most disturbing but most entertaining consequences of living in America has been that both of us now watch much more TV than we ever have in our lives. It’s kind of a love/hate thing: it’s so vacuous... so soulless... so ADDICTING and BRILLIANT... Reality TV is, of course, the best kind, appealing perpetually to our fascination with the real vs. the un- or hyperreal, and really our only complaint is that reality TV doesn’t feature enough academics (what, who says pasty professors can’t be telegenic?!).

To remedy the situation, we propose the following shows:

1. Publish or Perish: Academics in the Ring (i.e. if a contestant fails to publish in a peer-reviewed journal, he or she must be ‘peer-reviewed’ by The Adjudicator)

2. Wax figure-sculpting contest: can you fool the audience?

3. Wax person contest: can you fool the audience?: this entails setting people on stage while the judges and/or audience attempt to guess if the person is a real person or a wax person; see our previous post on the wax person phenomenon.

4. The Next Best-Selling Teen Novel: must draw major plot elements/religious persuasions out of hat

5. The Apprentice: Ljubljana (with Slavoj Žižek instead of Donald Trump; his hair is anyway vastly superior)

6. Dance-ademic: is deconstructive criticism parasitic or isn’t it?! is there such a thing as universal grammar or isn’t there?! did Michelangelo sculpt Laocoön or didn’t he?! DANCE IT OUT! Showdown, bitte.