Trompe d'Oeil

Last night I watched an episode of Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew. And I'm not going to lie: I watch Vh1 and MTV and Bravo and all those shows everyone makes fun of.

Well, not the Hills anymore. But all the others.

Anyway, this show is fascinating. And I was trying to figure out why.

Last time I couldn't understand why a story was compelling, it was because the main character was in an unsolvable dilemma with his/her humanity at stake. Maybe that's true for Sex Rehab, too.

But I think it's because of the honesty.

On drug rehab and on all the Desperate Housewives of (Insert City), the cast is all brain-fried, drunk, or unbearably self-conscious. Everything feels very fake. I thought this show would be the same, but the combination of smart people with enforced sobriety has made it what Big Brother always wished it could be.

And while watching it, I think I learned the actual meaning of authenticity and honesty. It's been my mission for a while in my writing to be as authentic and as "me" as possible. But that seemed like a vague and unreachable goal. Now, I wonder if all that requires is earnestness.

There are three people on the show that I'm fascinated by:

Duncan (film director) and Jennie (dominatrix). At first, I thought I enjoyed watching them so much because they were (are) quick witted and funny. But now I think it's because they seem so earnest about concentrating only on their mission (to connect to people in a healthy way) and to finally become themselves. That's it--whether they *are* being themselves or not, they seem to be *trying* to be themselves always. Watching both of these people come to realizations on the show is 1. a lesson in the inadequacies of acting (when these people look sad, they look sad in a way I've only before seen on documentaries on subjected women in China, for God's sake--they are sad with all of themselves). 2. the importance of being earnest.

James (surfer). He looks like he's ill, barely speaks, and his actions don't seem linked at all to common sense. But when I saw the episode last night, one thing really struck me. The producers finally decided to show some one-on-one time between him and the therapists/producers, and during that time, James talked about how nothing bad had ever really happened to him except that he slept with apparently every women who would have him (losing friends in the process) and that his mother punished him when he deserved it. Of course, this being TV in the era of Law and Order: SVU, the therapists immediately ask, "Punish you how?" and James talks about throwing things, etc, and about how he lost his virginity early (not to her, lol). Anyway, every time he says something weird, like about his mother throwing a knife at him or having lots of sex at age eleven, the therapists look weirded out and ask him how he feels about that in hindsight. The thing about James is it seems he has no hindsight at all.

When he says his mother threw a machete at him, for example, he *immediately* says that he probably deserved it. And looks embarrassed and sad while he admits it. The therapist says, "what could a kid do to deserve getting a knife thrown at him?" and James can't come up with anything. When they ask, "would you ever throw a knife at a little kid," of course, he says no. The whole time, he's constantly leaping to the defense of everyone else: the older kids and adults he had sex with in his early adolescence, his mother, whomever. Why?! He seems completely unself-aware.

How did he end up composing this completely chaotic narrative for himself--that people treated him badly or at least inappropriately because he looked like he could take it? How did he look back at his whole life and think of it as a million unconnected episodes in which he just happened to be around confused people?

I think of everything as a narrative, and it's obvious that most of the people on the show do, too. For instance, on the same episode, Duncan sees a therapist who says he's probably re-acting the same scene with men now that he began as a child...and Duncan seems to think that's perfectly plausible and even enlightening. But then, they show James, wholeheartedly leaping to the defense of anyone he's ever met, while finding himself in this horrible position (bizarre and alone)...how does this man think about time? How does he make goals for himself? How does he relate to others? How does he think about himself.

When he immediately said that he probably deserved getting a machete thrown at him, it was what would have been a "telling detail" if he were a character in a script or story. It's fascinating watching something so messy, like James's sense of self, and inserting it into the neat box of art: this was foreshadowing, that was a telling detail, the whole show is his climax, and soon we'll find a sort of resolution....

Putting someone who sees his life entirely outside the realm of narrative, and then editing it *into* a narrative arc....

Wow. So, is storytelling inherently dishonest? I've always thought the narrative of what could have or should have happened is, in its way, *more* truthful than a plain recitation of the facts. But maybe narrative *is* all fake.

Ok, utterly confused now. Which is honesty: James's episodic and chaotic thoughts on the world, or Duncan's self-aware narrative arc?