Jerk those tears, hard

Wendy has been watching a lot of Queer Eye and got Pinkie Pie and I into it.  Queer Eye is a show about 5 gay dudes who find someone who is doing laudable public service but who needs help to get their own life together.  Typically the hero of an episode runs charities, works in non profits, or volunteers a ton of time towards community organizations.  However, they have a terrible wardrobe, messy house, ugly hair, and unresolved issues.  Also they can't cook.

Then the Fab 5 show up to make everything better.  Yay!  They do a makeover, renovate the person's house, buy them new clothes, teach them to cook, and help them figure out their life.  Then, with all problems solved, the Fab 5 move on... and presumably the makeover lasts a week, the clothes a couple years, and the reno ten years.  You can't fix everything, certainly not in a week.

And yet I end up crying most of the time watching these shows.  Something about watching a person who is dedicated to helping others but who is hopeless personally makes me desperately root for them.  Seeing their reaction to their messes being cleaned up, to their homes being repaired, and to a new vision of themselves as respectable, together adults gets me leaking all over the place.

I know the show is terribly formulaic and staged.  Not fradulent or anything like that... but obviously they choose the parts they show to generate maximum impact.  They are trying to jerk my tears, and the best way to do that is to have a real story and then tell only the parts that reinforce the main thesis.  I know this, but that doesn't seem to stop me having all the feelings.

Clearly it isn't just about 5 dudes with great intentions.  I could help people pretty easily too, if I had a $100,000 budget for a wild week of shopping.  I don't know shit about grooming or fashion but I can pay people to know that for me as well as anyone.  Much of Queer Eye is just a lesson in how transformative a giant pile of cash can be for people.

I will give them credit for being critical of people though.  The heroes all have big flaws, and those flaws are out there for everyone to see.  Sometimes those flaws get addressed in some satisfactory way, and sometimes not, but that is how helping people goes.  The show really does do a good job of portraying the heroes as people with good intentions and lots of issues.

The world is not made better by 5 random dudes showing up with a wad of cash and a pile of cameras to fix one person's hairstyle struggles.  It is made better mostly by silent, unacknowledged grinding by billions of people, day after day. 

One tiny piece, one nearly invisible change, over and over.  That is how things improve, not in a splashy, easy to film moment.

But Queer Eye does give us the sight of people being overwhelmed with gratitude for good deeds done.  Maybe knowing that this is possible, that we can be heroes ourselves, pushes people towards doing good things.  Certainly it is a better example than all the superhero vigilante shows I watch!