Last night I saw a couple of minutes from end of an episode of “The Cut”. This is a new reality show where a bunch of people vie to be a new designer for Tommy Hilfiger.
Apparently, the episode involved two groups of people performing a task where the losing team would have someone leave the show. The task they were to perform was to restore a place to its their former glory as accurately as possible for the night (or weekend or whatever). One group had to do the Cotton Club while the other had to do Studio 54. Tommy then judged the two locations to determine which one is more like it was back in its heyday to decide the winner (or more accurately, the loser).
Not surprisingly the group that redid Studio 54 was the losing team. Why is it not surprising? Because. Here are the facts:
- 1) Tommy has personally been to Studio 54 back in the 70’s
- 2) Tommy has NOT personally been to The Cotton Club back in the 30’s
- 3) None of the contestants on either team have been to either club back in its day
- 4) Tommy’s mental image of what The Cotton Club should look like is based on pictures, movies, other’s descriptions, etc.
- 5) Tommy’s mental image of what Studio 54 should look like is based on his own memories of actually being there
- 6) Group “1”‘s mental images of what The Cotton Club should look like is based on pictures, movies, other’s descriptions, etc.
- 7) Group “2”‘s mental images of what Studio 54 should look like is based on pictures, movies, other’s descriptions, etc.
- 8) The Cotton Club is really old, so there are only so many pictures, movies, people, etc. to describe it
- 9) Studio 54 is not that old, so there are still lots of different, varying sources of pictures, movies, people, etc. to describe it.
If you read the facts in order and have even half a brain—or at least a corpus callosotomy—then you can figure out that this was quite an unfair challenge.
Group “1” and Tommy both had to resort to pictures, movies, other people, etc. to get an image of what The Cotton Club should have looked like. Moreover, they probably used the SAME pictures, movies, and people since there are not that many still around from way back in the 30’s. On the other hand, Group “2” had to pick some of the many, many pictures, movies, and people to get an image of Studio 54 (it was only 30 years ago), while Tommy already had a predefined mental image that was much more accurate than the group’s because he was there in person.
Not fair, then again this is “reality” tv and the real world is anything BUT fair.