“There’s a Pattern Here”

The title of last week’s episode of Project Runway, “There’s a Pattern Here,” seemed particularly ripe to usurp, considering that I had never seen a full episode of the show and yet, everything on screen felt strangely familiar.  Part of the televisual déjà vu certainly came from the fact that the show’s narrative structure is one that is shared across a wide variety of competition shows, regardless of their objective (losing weight or baking a soufflé or performing a duet).  However, it was not simply the pattern of “buildup, competition, judgment” that seemed familiar, but the way in which emotional coding played a part in the narrative climax. As much as Project Runway is about showcasing the process of design, it is just as much about the packaging of marketable emotion to be consumed by a viewer in a way that is safe and familiar.  The ubiquity and formulaic repetition of interpersonal drama across reality TV competitions can be seen to support Eva Illouz’s characterization of consumption as an emotional, cultural experience, wherein the notoriously volatile desires of the television market consumer (what to watch on TV tonight?) are mitigated by the use of familiar emotional patterns, just as they are in the market at large.

Illouz suggests that from a semiological perspective, consumption is always emotional, as “in advertising, material objects are suffused with semiotic codes that in turn carry emotional meanings.” However, in order for emotion to be significant to consumption beyond the level of individual sign interpretation, we must separate the emotionality of the commodity-sign from the emotions experienced in the act of consumption.  In the case of Project Runway, I would suggest that emotionally-charged consumption operates not just through a personal identification with the contestants’ overtly emotional drama, but in experiencing the repetition of patterns of emotional coding common across reality TV shows.  The techniques used to solicit emotional reactions from the participants (and, by identification, the viewers) in this particular episode of Project Runway have been tried and tested on other competition shows: examining personal pictures or video, having participants self-analyze and take nostalgic mental walks, bringing family members into the competition space, etc.  These personal dramatic moments seem to function in three major ways.  First, the overt display of emotion evokes a cathartic sympathy from the audience. When contestants get teary-eyed looking at their photos or meeting their mothers, so do we, especially knowing that their stories are nonfictional.  Secondly, the dramatic extra-competition sequences succeed in filling time and building suspense, as part of the appeal of reality TV contests comes from the delayed gratification of seeing the finished product or performance and its judgment, in this case the completed design on the model.  Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the personally dramatic sequences have the effect of intratextually coding the finished products, heightening the show’s narrative climax and infusing it with meaning.  After the emotional narrative of Mondo’s HIV positive status, when his model walks the runway – and eventually wins – his finished product has been coded emotionally and literally – stamped with plus signs.  The presence of emotional coding is a way of making viewers care, and care about things they may have had no interest in otherwise: fashion design, culinary art, interior decorating, weight loss.  The proliferation of interpersonal drama and the ensuing emotional coding across reality TV competitions goes beyond individual identification with characters and shows and excites consumer imagination at the cultural level through calling upon and perpetuating a sense of mythic competition.  Evoking viewer emotion is of prime importance to the age-old formula of series television to give viewers “the same thing but different,” simultaneously providing the key sensations of both comfort and excitement, thus contributing to the compulsive viewing habits with which series TV is often marked.  In this way, last week’s episode of Project Runway, in which contestants are required to create a product infused with emotional significance, ends up modeling the show’s own marketing strategy.