Reality winding down

It is closing time again for many of our favorite reality shows. Survivor: Micronesia - Fans vs. Faves just declared its winner, Parvati Shallow. I wasn’t following it—I can take only so much betrayal and backstabbing and social manipulating—but I must say that the “fans vs. faves” twist made it pretty interesting. This is why Survivor has lasted sixteen seasons.

The twelfth season of The Bachelor also ended more recently—this week, to be exact—with Matt Grant, a 27-year-old British financier, choosing 22-year-old Shayne Lamas, an actress and the daughter of Lorenzo Lamas, to be his future bride. Good luck to them—they need it, as the odds are against them. Wikipedia has a table tallying the status of all the engagements. Only two couples are still together; only one is still “ABC-sponsored” engaged.

And then, of course, there’s American Idol, that’s winding down to the finale. I’m not going to make any predictions anymore. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that the David I’m rooting for gets the top spot.

While we’re on the topic of reality shows—and since people who’ve been following my column probably know the only local reality show I watched with interest were Philippine Idol and Celebrity Duets—I’d like to share with you something somebody else wrote on his blog. It’s just too precious not to share.

The author is Bicolano poet Jaime Jesus Borlagdan, and you can find this in his Multiply blog on lakadbulan.multiply.com.

Life, Death, and Pinoy Big Brother

You find yourself in this artificial and temporary world.  Everything seems nice and tolerable... A pool and comfortable beds, food. The chic furniture, the people, they blow you away. Soon enough you forget that this is temporary, you get used to it, and adapt and accept. You make friends, you make enemies, and fall in love promising forever and ever, and actually feel pseudo-happiness, and forget that this will end sooner or later.

And so you continue to sleep and be woken up by some joke expressed in music, and do what the big booming voice tells you. And if he’s pleased you get a reward, a promise of a vacation in a paradise or some heavenly place, now or when the time comes when you have to leave.

Some, who, despite the “beautiful world” inside, still want to leave before their time, too homesick or just plain sick of the monotony, either do things that would piss the big voice off or simply decide and call it quits. They just simply stop “acting” the artificial life and just become plain annoying. Usually, when they leave they are never heard of again, banished, unforgiven by the host of self-righteous fans.

For to these zealots, you are a pet, a tamagotchi that they need to take care of every night, nurturing your survival with SMS votes. You can’t just give up and get away with it.

And when you leave, your housemates cry as if they’ll never see you again, as if this is the only world. As if they’ll be forever stuck in that place. But you, who are about to leave, who can describe your expression? You who are finally allowing, after a period of calculated denial, the truth back in to your consciousness.

And when you are outside you will be met by your loved ones. Unconditioned by the world where you had come from, they seem to be wiser, for they’ve always known the truth.

And as you are debriefed before being admitted back to the absolute, your whole life inside the “house” will flash in front of you on a big screen, as if to rub your foolishness in.

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