Ephemeral Waves
Can I keep the Jenna Jameson?
With the following, one of two straight-to-video productions where you have fake unaired reality show pilots for American television deemed unsuitable to show, I was openly throwing myself into the meat grinder expected this to hurt. But let this not be political correctness review of the blog, but something beyond a finger wag and a necessary step into the time capsule of my teenage years. National Lampoon was once significant just in cinema, actually an American humour magazine existing between 1970 to 1998, who I knew only for their name being tied to films like Animal House (1978) held in good regard. Growing up as a teenage in the early 2000s however, their brand had gone to straight-to-video films and productions like this. This specific one is a surprising reminder, in my teens and thus not ancient history to me, a lot has changed and in some cases have not. Whilst less than an hour long or so, it will have to mean bringing back the list structure for a review. And yes, trigger and spoiler warnings ahead. Pointing out something is just wrong is shooting fish in a barrel and just pointless, but we will get into stuff you would not be able to get away with nowadays...
He Said, She Said: One woman, many potential male suitors in a scenario seen in actual reality television. The tone and presentation, in one virtue of Lost Reality, is pitched perfect, from this promo's voice over narrator to the cuts to confessionals to the camera. It is strange to think, at this point, reality television was still seen as a new creature rather than an everyday occurrence and commonplace. What has shown its age is the punch line - that Helen, our female lead, is transgender and specifically pre-op, which is not even necessarily transphobic, as we had not even reached an respectable place for the rights of transgender people into the late 2010s and 2020s, but homophobic as it is entirely about a woman having a penis as the joke. (Likewise, as Helen is Asian, I would not be surprised that is a stereotype too). Throughout Lost Reality will be a reminder how we have not really gotten as far as we may presume in terms of progressiveness, and if anything the unintentional humour, that Helen can drink the suitors under the table and their fragile heterosexuality, softens the blow a little whilst a fair warning this work, for anyone else, will become more harsher to sit through for a 2010s viewer.
Dying Dave: A man with terminal cancer decides on grainy video to do whatever he wants. Spray "Fuck U" with whipped cream on a random car; stealing a woman's spaghetti off her plate at a restaurant; get a piercing, go to a strip club, argue with one's boss; even defecating on his desk, which even leads to filming someone actually defecating on a desk, rectal close-up shot and all. It is crass but actually a compelling idea for a very black comedy, which Lost Reality will have once or twice throughout in-between misguided un-PC shock humour. In this case, the idea of a man pushed to a point of saying "Fuck it" and living even a grotesque form of free will; in this little fragment too, a street poet rapper steals the segment too even thought he is meant to be annoying.
The Amazing Racist: Yes, this segment appears I gritted my teeth, the joke immediately dead as a duck in the 2010s onwards with the increase of alt-right and white supremacy groups. It is neither from the perspective of myself being a PC, brainwashed cuck either, but that ironic jokes bating racism just come off not even as actual humour but very dumb and uncreative. Sadly this is the segment which returns later on and in Lost Reality 2 (2005), inexplicably the main attraction for both productions when it goes for cheap shock value.
Writing what happens will immediately offend some - our titular lead as a white guy dresses as a Ku Klux Klan member and drives by himself into a local black community - but like dosing oneself with petrol and running into a bonfire, I just think of the Darwin Awards, a dark humoured award given to people who kill themselves in very stupid ways, and think anyone trying this in reality, with the same level of racist language used for irony, made a really ill advise choice in life as a result. This definitely has not aged well, but if I kept typing this, I would be here all day; the reactions from the black (all male) bystanders, even a guy in a drycleaners when the lead tries to get him to wash the KKK costume, feel too real or well acted to ever be ironic.
It also returns to the idea of why racism in ironic humour does not work, if forced to have to have a more constructive critique. Laughter can be caused as much as a reaction, say an emotional response to something which shocks someone, even without actually being technically humorous as a result in the emotional, a safety net the body and mind does to adapt to something witnessed or a defence in a moment of anxiousness. Unless you can use this to a greater point, i.e. when dark comedy tackles very uncomfortable subject matter (like Chris Morris' fundamentalist terrorist satire Four Lions (2010)), you are just prodding the defence mechanism for a cheap reaction.
Sadly this comes back a second time, where he is outside a mosque selling materials meant to offend and saying Muslin women have beards. You would not be able to get away with this, with our more cautious relationship and treatment to Muslin culture, including the lead entering a mosque as a non-believer and even barging into the women's conference room. Yet it offers a though that we have not progressed as far in positive treatment of Muslins as we should: the cautiousness we have with how we tackle Islam as a religion and culture in the Western is blurred between actual empathy and respect for ordinary peoples' religious beliefs, Islamophobia as a concept that exists and used to brainwash people in persecuting Muslins, the issue of radical fundamentalists and fatwas and aspects of conservative Islam which have been raised in concern, and the concern of whether many even know what Islam is for someone of the faith in mind of Muslins being a people of regular society with their own individual lives, all deserving their voice as a large community in many countries. This is something we have not even gotten to by the 2010s let alone not long after 9/11 here.
As a result, it makes something like this segment tame if still misguided, still however a reminder that our perspectives of religion and culture are a tangled web we barely treat with thought and complexity in mainstream culture, let alone in a comedic light like this that has survived unscathed due to no one knowing Lost Reality likely existed. As low hanging fruit too, as I would hope a Muslim who encountered this segment would just roll their eyes and think the creators wasted their time on bad humour.
Casting Coach: Dick Tallwood shows us the "casting coach" of actresses; by now, I had come to Lost Reality knowing I what I was in for. Again, the 2000s when this was released was when I was a teen, and already this feels prehistoric in the attitude. The actresses, playing actresses, I have sympathy for and hope they were not actually exploited and were paid well, as a lot of this entire production per segment feels realistic with actual bystanders roped in. The thing is, to think beyond this, just within porn the idea of the casting coach has lasted as a concept even if the real thing is seen as a scuzzy concept of misogynistic men, so we have not progressed from Lost Reality's segment as we have thought. This one at least has the absurdity of topless reading of Shakespeare or talking seductively to coconuts, the later actually funny, in spite of this segment's tone and attitude.
Caught Stealing: Two contestants have to steal items like an Italian suit, the reality TV structure working here as well; all of them, low budget, use their structures fully, like hidden cameras here on the contestants trying to steal their meals and the forks out of a restaurant. How much of these segments used paid actors, or crossed a line with exploitation, does feel uncomfortable, as many manage to be insanely realistic in how people react. The realism is so accurate this one does feel morbidly compelling, such as stealing a car from a car wash, blurring lines to the point a lot of the work is more misguided as a result but this had something intriguing to it even if all staged. This also at least has a man trying to hide six porn DVDs and two dildos, one insanely large and with moulded cock veins, down his trousers and walk out of an adult store with them so it has some actual humour to it.
The Whore: Probably the most uncomfortable to watch, even over the Amazing Racist segments, as it is a dating show whose title already raises an eyebrow. All of the segments have black screen text explaining their origins and how they were cancelled, this a one episode pilot, where the audience is fully aware the woman our male contenders date is a sex worker, the "comedy" text onscreen telling her real career, pranking the male with telling him the truth in the midst of sex just after their dates. It is mean spirited, which is shooting fish in a barrel again, but we have a case here of something that, if done as an actual series, could have easily been an incel generator just for it playing to "slut shaming". That and the female sex worker character is so mean and cruel it makes the segment even more egregious to sit through. The more subversive joke would be one guy, who when told the truth, would shrug his shoulders...and at least punch the obnoxious male host too beforehand.
American Porn Star: In which the pilot is to find the next porn star, actually something which has become a real thing, such as the porn site xHamster starting a web series called Sex Factor (2016) where they could have uncensored content. Real porn stars are the panellists such as Ron Jeremy, and he is the reason I have even gotten to Lost Reality; this is tangentially connected to when I covered Sex: The Annabelle Chong Story (1999), a documentary on the adult actress, and found a lot of curious oddities that were available on old British DVDs connected to its cast. This segment is meant as a joke but there are real shows, probably more than one, about this, so it does not come off funny but regular day.
Money: "Everyone has a price for the Million Dollar Man", to borrow a quote from another source, wondering if you would do anything for money. Would men kiss Little Prince, a gay man with dwarfism, or suck his toes for money? He is clearly meant to be a joke but is too charismatic to be dragged down by, especially in his neon green top and blue headband, so this question is complicated. Likely to have been done for real somewhere, and it is a theme in terms of the power of money tackles in fiction, so there is nothing necessarily original with the idea but you do have someone offered $100 to eat dog food from the dog bowl, more money to pee up a tree. One moment I did nearly mishear this segment's segment and think Pink Flamingos (1972) was going to be involved for its infamous ending with real dog poo.
This segment definitely made me wonder how much of the entire production was based on non-actors, unaware of what was happening being involved in the show...but there is however the moment involving one man being paid to drink IPECAC, a real life chemical which is designed to induce vomiting, which does not look faked in the damndest even if he was an actor. Who he is turned out to be Lance Ozanix, lead singer and songwriter of the thrash metal band Skitzo who was infamous for his stage show stunt of puking on command, which did unfortunately lead to him being on an episode of Judge Judy where he had to pay damages to a female audience member unprepared for being vomited during a performance. Whilst it is not recommended to try this at home, at least you had someone in Ozanix who, especially with the delayed reaction, who did this before and made the moment actually memorable now with hindsight.
From here, there is the end credits (with a reggae song of all things), and Lost Reality thankfully ends. A huge contributor to this project was The Jay & Tony Show, a duo of a two man operation of Jay Blumenfield and Tony Marsh who worked on reality television even into the proceeding decades, such as Restaurant Stakeout (2012-), which is likely why the production looked as accurate as it is. In terms of the realism, knowing reality television is mostly faked and staged, they were accomplished at the joke, but alongside everyone else who worked on the production, this is definitely a work which is culturally obsolete even if I had not spent the review criticising it.
There were bonus segments on the version I saw, playing immediately after the credits. Psych Ward, where mental health patients complete games for prizes in rounds like "New Job or Nut Job", definitely has not age well. There is Take That Drug, a creation of three roommates where their friends are challenged to take drugs, from cocaine to unlabelled prescription tablets, and then try challenges like piercing their own ear1. (I suspect people have done this in real life). There is more of Money, where a man is dared $400 (eventually $800) including a paid meal to defecate his pants during a date at a restaurant, emphasising a running gag of the only show that punishes its host as much. Finally, Old Age Home: Caught on Tape, which sounds exactly how it sounds, with surveillance footage of events in care homes like fights between residents to a disgruntled staff member masturbating into their food; as someone who worked in a care home, this should be offensive, but really is not, especially as considering we have had shows about road rage and car accidents, only confidentiality laws prevents stuff like this actually being a real show.
Thus Lost Reality is finally out of my life, but I am aware there is Lost Reality 2 (2005). If these reviews have a point, here we have a reminder that irony got away with so much it should have not done, and considering into the 2010s we still had this type of humour, we should not think we got off scot-free from this. Considering as far as 2016, when the controversy of Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace took place, a show bankrolled by Adult Swim, the home of ironic, only for it to have been a production by alt-right followers who managed to get in through the back door and cause an in-house controversy among collaborators, it makes something like Lost Reality not as obscure as you would think. It makes a lengthy review like this one, which some may find off-putting just for the word count, still worth having just to show what we thought we could leave in 2004, and what we actually still kept with us.
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1) It also led to me wondering what a purple hooter was, as it is evoked, only to learn it is a cocktail with vodka and black raspberry liqueur among other ingredients, which sounds delicious.
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