The lack of normal people people bothers me, too. What also bothers me is that US tv and movies and magazines adhere to such a very limited, highly unnatural idea of beauty, one that requires plastic surgery, tons of make-up and haircolor, vapid expressions, and airbrushing. Beautiful IRL people come in various shapes, sizes, cheekbone configuarations, leg lengths, color combinations, etc. We saw more beauty in the people around us before movies and tv and magazines selected the particular cookie cutter shape in vogue right now.
Symmetry and small chins and youthmay always be seen as beautiful, but other standards of beauty change from time to time and place to place. Remember when “skinny” was an insult? (BTW, someone upthread said something about corn-fed midwesterners. Honey, cornfed people have heft and curves, not bones poking through the skin. Corn is what you use to fatten hogs.)
The images promoted so assiduously have more of an impact on how I feel about my own appearance and how I feel about people I meet than I would like. It’s also had a disastrous effect on US politics, since candidates are judged more on appearance than on any other quality.
[Looks around sheepishly] What happened? How did I get on this soapbox? I’ll get down now…
How realistic is it – even in places like NYC and LA – that every character on the set looks like they should be on TV or in the movies? It takes me right out of the story.
Most of my favorite shows use lots of not-gorgeous actors – Mad Men, The Wire, Damages, The Shield, and old favorites like St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, etc.
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While I agree with you, I think the “problem” is getting better. In quite a few of the shows you mentioned, many of the main characters are average looking. Most of the cast in Mad Men, The Wire, and the Shield are average looking. Much of this is people liking, and being familiar with the character, rather then the person being particularly good looking. Do you really think people like Michael Chiklis, Dennis Franz, Elizabeth Moss, etc. would be considered incredibly good looking if they were not on TV?
I’d like TV better if the women weren’t all elegant preppy suburban cuties. The men - all of 'em who aren’t playing a gay guy, anyway - are trending to grunge: sunken eyes, stubble, scratchy mumbly neo-Brando voices. Now maybe that’s what “man” means anymore, but it seems like the women come from this whole other friggn universe. The Planet of Prim Professionals. They can’t wear scruffy clothes or have windblown hair or even wear a goddam tank top, and they all have huge glowing dewy eyes and clear sweet musical voices.
And another thing I’d like TV better if: if there were more ethnic diversity in these romantic interest hotties. TV’s idea of a socially progressive relationship seems to be “fill-in-the-blank man/hot white middle American 20s-30s woman.” They can’t even be Jewish, for cry yi. In 2007. Look at Dr. Cuddy on House: single, sexy as hell, and can’t get it on to save her life. She can wear breathtaking blouses, spray-on skirts and do-me shoes, but she still has to be the Bringer of Moral Compass and want a child more than a partner.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
With the (totally warranted, imo) success of (worldwide hit/different casts) UGLY BETTY, perhaps plain will be the new pretty.
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I bet a lot of viewers watch that show for the good-looking characters, of whom there are many.
[QUOTE=Slithy Tove]
I’d just assumed a career in law enforcement is the standard fall-back when one’s modeling assigments dry up mid-twenties.
What I’m more worried about is how this affects the gene pool: how all the healthy corn-fed descendant daughters of Vikings emigrate from Minnesota or wherever to seek their fortunes in Hollywood, find a glutted market but stay there anyway until they’re ultimatley shot by Phil Spector, while the rest of middle America is bred full of ordinary-looking folks who watch TV shows peopled by strange, superior beings who must have fallen from the sky.
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First of all, America Ferrara can’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be called ugly, or even not-pretty. What she is, on Ugly Betty, is frumpy, non-enhanced, badly dressed, and awkward. Even if you only went so far as to take off the braces and do her hair in some other way, she’d be attractive by any real-world standard.
[QUOTE=koeeoaddi]
So, when you watched the last season of Homicide: Life on the Street, I guess you were out of the story, gone from the house and heading on down the road.
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They’re showing the seventh year right now on Sleuth, and it’s definitely the worst season. The decision to bring in more pretty characters was a symptom of the reason for that imo.
I loved the reference to this in the movie Last Action Hero. A boy named Danny has magically entered the fictional world of his favorite movie character and is in the fictional counterpart of an LA squadroom. He looks around and then says words to the effect of “There aren’t any ordinary, average-looking women; they’re all babes!”
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
The ones that show up on daytime talk shows are.
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The ones I’ve seen IRL tend to be a bit chubby, pasty…in those cases wearing all black isn’t too flattering. Either that, or I think of goths as those kids on that SNL sketch. Chris Kattan played the whiny goth, I think.
Sampiro, plain may be the new pretty, but remember, when we say ugly, we mean Mary Anne on Gilligan’s Island ugly, not Cornelius on Planet of the Apes ugly. And as jayjay already pointed out, it’s hard to see America Ferrara as plain. The girl who played the telenovela Betty (who guest starred on “Ugly Betty”), now, her, I can see as plain, but American Betty? She’s a very attractive girl.
[QUOTE=dangermom]
In real life, quite a few goth kids are ordinary looking or even pudgy and plain, just like the rest of the population. I meet them every time I work at the library, like today!
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I know. Despite not being one myself, I seem to have had my fair share of them as friends and was surprised to read that they’re supposed to be unattractive. They’re just people, just like any other (sub)culture.
[QUOTE=brickbacon]
While I agree with you, I think the “problem” is getting better. In quite a few of the shows you mentioned, many of the main characters are average looking. Most of the cast in Mad Men, The Wire, and the Shield are average looking. Much of this is people liking, and being familiar with the character, rather then the person being particularly good looking. Do you really think people like Michael Chiklis, Dennis Franz, Elizabeth Moss, etc. would be considered incredibly good looking if they were not on TV?
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Nope. Especially Franz and Chiklis – combine their ordinary looks and their pudginess with their difficult personalities, and they’d be on the couch with Cheetos every Saturday night.
But those shows were the examples I gave in the OP as using not-gorgeous actors.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
First of all, America Ferrara can’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be called ugly, or even not-pretty. What she is, on Ugly Betty, is frumpy, non-enhanced, badly dressed, and awkward. Even if you only went so far as to take off the braces and do her hair in some other way, she’d be attractive by any real-world standard.
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True. She just looks ugly-by-comparison because she works at a modeling agency. Most of us would.
I agree with the general feeling here, I like to see more ordinary looking people on TV.
I’ll nominate one of my favorite shows as one that is better than most; Law and Order. Several of their stars are average looking at best; Sam Waterston, Fred Thompson, S. Epatha Merkerson. I also like that their ages seem reasonable. You expect a District Atourney and his top prosecutor to be old people and shockingly enough on law and order they are.
Even their clothes seem more ordinary. I recall an episode where Jack McCoy runs into an old girlfriend. She teases him about his coat saying she tried to get him to get rid of the ugly thing ten years ago. Sure enough his coat looked old and ugly and not something a “beautiful person” would be caught dead in.
[QUOTE=Aesiron]
I know. Despite not being one myself, I seem to have had my fair share of them as friends and was surprised to read that they’re supposed to be unattractive. They’re just people, just like any other (sub)culture.
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It isn’t that Goths are supposed to be unattractive, but the kids in Moonlight should have been, because of the way they served the plot. They were spending their time in a boiler room doing cockamamie blood rituals and having sex with their teacher because it was good for their soul.
The implication was that they were gullible loser types, social outcasts, so whether they were Goth or not, they should have looked like gullible losers and social outcasts.
I was going to suggest a couple of shows with “average” looking people…Knights of Prosperity and Corner Gas…except I just realized that on KOP that there’s only one woman on the show and she is a gorgeous Latina.
Corner Gas comes close…there’s a “frumpy yet tough” mom and a “plain looking yet tough” co-worker, but the female cop is drop-dead-gorgeous and the owner of the diner is always “put together.”
However, on Corner Gas the female cop is really really cool and down-to-earth, and the hot diner owner is pretty much blown off by everyone in the town. They sort of poke fun at the looks of the cast in an episode where everyone in town agrees that the pudgy, balding gas station owner is the hottest guy in town and the diner owner is “not good enough” for him.
What about The Office? Other than Pam, Jim, Ryan and Kelly, everyone else is “meh.”
[QUOTE=Zoggie]
The girl who played the telenovela Betty (who guest starred on “Ugly Betty”), now, her, I can see as plain
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In keeping with the OP, when Angelica Vale (the woman who plays Betty on the Mexican version “La Fea Mas Bella”) was on the show, it was a 5-second cameo, and her character was a bitch.
That’s why I couldn’t enjoy Boston Public. It’s not unrealistic to have one, maybe two “hot” teachers. But almost all of them were hot or at least cute (except for that old man character). Even Loretta Devine is kind of comely.
jayjay–Yeah, good point. I haven’t seen the Mexican version where she’s actually a bit plainer looking, but is she meant to be a sympathetic character there, too, or are her looks played for jokes? In the U.S. version, she’s clearly not ugly, and we’re meant to feel bad for her.
[QUOTE=monstro]
That’s why I couldn’t enjoy Boston Public. It’s not unrealistic to have one, maybe two “hot” teachers. But almost all of them were hot or at least cute (except for that old man character). Even Loretta Devine is kind of comely.
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Ah, come on now. No love for Fyvush Finkel?
Though I have to confess to having a slight crush on the vice prinicipal. And the kid who played the boy who chained his mother up in the basement…grrr…
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