Extreme Academia
When it comes to new programming, academia offers a gold mine for Hollywood producers.
By Melissa Gregory
Inspired by the charismatic magnetism of the Professors Heinz on PBS's Colonial House, networks have realized that academics are a huge untapped resource for the world of reality television. Airing next fall . . .
The Swan: Tenure!
The competitors, two assistant professors seeking one tenure slot, sweat away in their offices day and night over five weeks, working to lose unsightly rejection letters and bad teaching evaluations.
"I used to think my low self-esteem resulted from the collapse of university presses and my heavy course load," one contestant says. "But Fox TV's life coach, Nely Galán, has helped me realize that it has everything to do with my cheekbones and the bond weight of my c.v. paper!"
Candidate receives new lips and a fully overhauled tenure file: special fonts, bullet points, a spiffy table of contents. "It doesn't even look like me," she sobs, kissing the spiral-bound Kinko's folder.
Winner is granted tenure, ten new committee appointments, and the chance to compete for the position of Ultimate Swan: department chair.
PBS's Medieval House
Cameras stationed in one of the junior professor's hovels reveal the makings of a peasant rebellion, but several serfs claim to pre-fer bubonic plague to grading papers. English professor Dennis Baron is assigned the role of lord but is ousted by the show's producer when he spends all his time writing velum scroll articles about how hard it is to be a lord instead of ruling his subjects.
"Welawey and alas," he sighs. "Me lathis my role as professional example-setter."
Show culminates with Viking invaders who slaughter the professors who earnestly try to "dialogue" with them in best pedagogical fashion.
"I don't mean to complain about the Other," says one. "But did they really have to use battle axes?"
Queer Eye for the Academic Guy
The Fab Five makes over a hapless associate professor from a medium-sized university in Ohio.
"Okay, we already know you are smart, but we're going to see what we can do about making you look smart," says makeover artist Carson.
"This is your office?" asks his colleague Thom. "Okay. I've heard of feng shui, but this is like, I don't know, feng shut up. First thing we need to do is lose the bookshelves!"
Grooming czar Kyan fusses with the professor's Supercuts coif and admonishes him, "Problem number one: it's obvious you spend way more time on your research than your hair. Goodbye sparky prose, hello spiky haircut. Less problematizing and more product."
Culture guru Jai is horrified to learn that the professor has read every book by famed author Umberto Eco but has never seen Broadway show Avenue Q. "We need a radical prioritizationectomy, stat!" Meanwhile, Carson and Thom build a robust bonfire out of tweed.
Barbara Walters's Adoption Story
English professor Stanley Fish adopts the University of Illinois at Chicago but then abandons it in a gutter. Show host Walters tries to turn a deadbeat dean tragedy into an uplifting adoption saga, but couple after couple refuses to embrace this troubled teen.
"I would rather take home a new interdisciplinary 'studies' program to raise instead of a grown-up college with fully formed dysfunctions," says one potential mom.
"I was really looking for something more along the lines of a small vocational school," says another. "We don't have a big backyard."
Celebrity Poker: Theory!
Academics gather to play card games using AltaMira Press's "Theory Trading Cards." In the World Series, the game looks to be over when a hand of four Michel Foucaults beats a Camille Paglia high straight flush, but then a literature professor trumps everyone else by slamming down a Terry Eagleton Ace that negates the relevance of cultural theory altogether. Show is sent straight into harmless reruns.
Average Joe
Journal editors deliberately select mediocre articles for their next issues. No one notices.
Graduate Student Moms and Dads
Modeled after Bravo's successful Showbiz Moms and Dads, this show follows desperate parents who push their twenty-something kids to enter and complete doctoral programs.
"Some people say it's child abuse," complains a defensive mom. "But they don't know how fabulous my darling looks in a doctoral hood."
"These kids want to do this," insists an aggressive dad, who claims he's not trying to vindicate his languished ABD status by living through his son. "People who criticize us are freaks who think 'good parenting' is all about shielding your offspring from 'privation' and 'frustration' and 'misery.'"
Watch one assertive mom stand at the back of a classroom, broadly enacting gestures and facial expressions for her teaching assistant daughter to follow while conducting class. "I wish she wouldn't do this," the daughter mutters as mom broadly mouths the word "hegemony."
Another mom cradles her son, a budding Classics scholar, to her chest and coos, "My Tyler is such a hit with the undergraduate girls. You should see them line up for his office hours. They love his long lashes and his insights on themes in Sophocles."
"Sophocles speaks to me," Tyler whispers.
A great show to watch if you're the parent of a miserable pharmacist or lawyer and want to feel better aboutyourself.
Punk'd
First episode awards hard-working senior professor a fake McArthur genius grant. Professor sets fire to all committee work, tells colleagues exactly what she really thinks of them, and runs naked through the provost's administrative office shouting, "In your face! In your face!"
When Punk'd host Ashton Kutcher shows up, professor plunges rapidly into denial, refusing to acknowledge her Punk'd-ness and dismissing Kutcher as an irrelevant construct of the reactionary youth celebrity complex.
Fear Factor: Promotion!
Professors desperate for promotion are forced to undergo a series of grueling and appalling trials: redesigning a departmental Web site, joining the faculty council, and teaching a service learning class at the local animal shelter.
One contestant eyes a menacing stack of placement files and beseeches host Joe Rogan, "Mightn't I eat maggots instead?"
For Love or Money: Master's Candidates
Impoverished grad student grovels for money over love as soon as she gets off the bus. Show tanks immediately.
Trading Spaces (with a Senior Professor)
Senior professors are forced to swap offices with their new junior colleagues. Junior profs make hay with the espresso machines, hang out at bars chatting with doctoral students, and enjoy taking phone calls from important presses. Senior colleagues dazedly try to hide from the lower-level general education students piled outside their doors, waving papers and asking for feedback.
"Does this mean I have to keep one of these so-called blogs?" plaintively asks the foremost Americanist in his field.
The Simple Life
Urban socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie are sent to a remote liberal arts college to teach a first-year seminar on democracy and the Western tradition. Their pedagogy consists of declaring every book on the syllabus "booooring," holding every class outside or at a bar, and letting every class out eighty minutes early. Little is covered by way of cultural universalism or the formulation of the canon, but their teaching evaluations set campuswide records.
"Who knew utilitarianism was just so hot?" exclaims one besotted male student.
The Apprentice
Business titan Donald Trump's effort to eke free and humiliating labor out of graduate students at his gleaming new Trump University fails when English professor and labor advocate Cary Nelson convinces everyone that reality-show contestants should unionize. Trump hires contestant Omarosa as the new provost, and Nelson goes the way of union boss Jimmy Hoffa.
American Lecture Idol
Paula: "Fabulous! So what if they didn't understand the concept of the postmodern rejection of absolute truth? You gave it your all, and that's what counts."
Randy: "Dawg, it was ai'ight, it was ai'ight. A little pitchy in the Richard Rorty section, which isn't the material I would have chosen for you. But you were you, man. You were definitely you."
Simon: "Frankly, I preferred Clay's presentation on gender ambiguity. Have you considered a career as a book editor?"
Melissa Gregory is an assistant professor of English specializing in nineteenth-century British literature at the University of Toledo.
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