August 13, 2004

What if Ashcroft turns on his TV? Hey - I have a great idea for a reality show: take six undocumented immigrants, and make them do Fear-Factor style tricks for a chance at a green card! Oh, the laughs we could have at their expense! But oops! As they say over at the halfbakery, that's not half-baked; it's already been baked: it's a real show, called Gana la Verde.

It's showing in Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston and Dallas markets, and it uses contestants' real names. Says one regular viewer: (from the la times article) "There are things we do out of necessity, not because we want to. Eating worms for your papers is one of those things."

posted by flagdecal 20 years ago
  • Taco Bell 'meat' burrito - $0.59 Smuggler to get you across the border - $5000 Being explioted by 'the man' who rakes in shitloads of $$$ off your humiliation only to deport you later because of 'security concerns' - priceless This is a goddamned shame.
  • I thought we already had something like this going with the Cubans -- don't die on the ninety-mile trip, touch ground without the Coast Guard stopping you, win a prize!
  • Survivor: Camp X-Ray Fear Factor: Abu Ghraib Edition Western Eye for the Muslim Guy 'You're fired!': Homeless and Jobless Yep, there's a lot of entertainment potential in the genre...
  • Nah, they've fucked up the format. Old idea, poorly executed. Insufficient tension, repetitive, no twist or dramatic reveal. That's just clumsy TV making. The way we were going to do it would be that asylum seekers would have to compete in a variety of challenges (more psychologically dramatic than simple gross-out stuff, possibly based on the traumas of people smuggling), until in the final section, the winners would compete with a nationalist spokesperson (some xenophobe who advocates "kicking them all out") in a public vote to see who more deserved the place in the country. It tied in very well with concepts of citizenship testing and border control, which were really zeitgeisty a year or so ago. We were going to call it Taking Over The Asylum. Really hoping people appreciate the difference between thinking this shit and actually, god help us, doing it.
  • Utterly, resoundingly, mother-fucking repugnant. Bread & circuses indeed. Gladiator fights in 10, 9, 8... *cries*