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Who Wants to Be Retro? Multimillions
New York Times - March 5, 2000
By CARYN JAMES
"Oops."
That was Darva Conger's answer when Diane Sawyer asked for one word explaining why she married a so-called
multimillionaire and definite stranger on national television. It is an "oops" that echoes through the
culture.
If questions had not surfaced about her groom, Rick Rockwell -- first with reports that his wealth was paper-thin,
then with that pesky news about the restraining order a former girlfriend got against him -- the bride would
certainly have kept such second thoughts to herself. Instead, Ms. Conger and the Fox network are furiously
backpedaling from the crass special, "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" Fox has sworn off tacky
reality specials (we'll see), and Ms. Conger has gone on "20/20" and "Good Morning America" to
insist she is not a gold digger. Trying to recast a public image she did not even have a month ago, she is the very
essence of modern celebrity.
The "Darva and Rick" show was always zanier than "Dharma and Greg" and about as real as that
loopy sitcom, but let's not forget how hugely popular "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" was before
the backlash. Luring nearly 23 million viewers, the show borrowed more than its title from ABC's phenomenal
"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." The Fox contest, in which 50 women competed to marry a mystery
millionaire, cleverly tapped into the same retro impulse that accounts for the success of the ABC quiz show, several
other television series and much popular culture in general.
Despite its high-tech set and clanging music, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" offers the veneer of a
return to comfy old values, to the days when quiz shows were king and people pulled together to cheer on their
champions. Even its immense success is a throwback, uniting the country in a way that is nearly impossible in this
age of 500 channels and fragmented audiences.
Fox's "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" was typical of the network in putting the sleaziest
possible spin on a trend, as it reveled in the caveman ethos of the marriage contest. But both the benign quiz show
resurgence that ABC's "Millionaire" has led (several clones and counting) and the blatant sexism of the
Fox show are symptoms of a deeper retro impulse.
On television, the judge on CBS's "Judging Amy" has gone home to live with her mom, and the surgeon
on NBC's "Providence" has returned to live with her dad. (Oops.) The most alluring romantic films
recently, like "Shakespeare in Love" and "The End of the Affair," have been period pieces, while
the best up-to-the-minute movies, including "American Beauty" and "Being John Malkovich," are
about the impossibility of traditional, lasting, loving relationships. Romance, it seems, can exist only in the
past. (So let's parade women around in bathing suits and wedding gowns and pretend we're in the 1950's, the Fox
special implied.)
All these entertainments are part of the same cultural movement that has made old-fashioned heroism trendy, from the
movie "Saving Private Ryan" to Tom Brokaw's two bestselling books praising the World War II generation,
and even Senator John McCain's presidential candidacy, built on his biography as a prisoner during the war in
Vietnam. This nostalgia for a rock-solid past is partly an escape from contemporary problems. In a culture of
divorce and dysfunction, no wonder there is longing for the security of the "Father Knows Best" world that
preceded it.
Widespread though it is, the lure of a simpler past has been most evident on television, where simplicity thrives.
And, of course, the idea of that idyllic yesterday is a sham. Beneath Fox's retro glorification of marriage was a
cynical commercial ploy, whose hidden messages actually devalue marriage: because today's celebrity culture prizes
fame over almost anything, it wasn't difficult to get 50 women to sell themselves in a marriage market; an easy
annulment was promised in a prenuptial contract, so what's the big deal?
The turn against the Fox special was instant and unanimous. Forget earnest social critics. Even comedians reacted
with a scorn that saw through the innocuous surface. On Comedy Central's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart noted
the retro criteria the groom used to choose his bride; she was the one "least likely to talk back or form even
rudimentary sentences."
But this swiftly cynical view doesn't account for the special's gigantic ratings. The contest did not assume the
tone of a campy stunt. Its straight-faced, fairy-tale attitude was the key to its success, and the audience's
eagerness to buy into that attitude is more revealing than the morning-after jolt of realism. What
"Millionaire" and "Multimillionaire" share is the idea that television is the glass slipper that
can change anyone's life. They entice viewers with the appeal: it could happen to you, if you'll only give into this
cultlike retro fantasy.
"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is built on an upbeat, backward-looking message: that happiness does not
come from money alone but from the neighborly, call-a-friend, ask-the-audience dynamics of the game. This attitude
pulls in the opposite direction from the impersonal contemporary world of family dysfunction and e-mail romance. And
because the contestants are not brainiacs with arcane areas of expertise but ordinary Americans who answer
general-knowledge questions, the average viewer gets a vicarious thrill.
The producers have enough savvy to fret publicly about why there have been so few women and members of minorities
among their contestants. But their hand-wringing does not disguise the show's nostalgia for a slower, simpler era.
Typically, the Fox show didn't bother with the nicety of a social conscience. It just hauled itself back to the
past. The show's creator, Mike Darnell, has said that his idea was to blend the ABC "Millionaire" show
with the Miss America pageant and "The Dating Game." That's practically a definition of backward-looking.
The result was something that could have been a "Twilight Zone" in which someone was playing Barbie with
live women. Even the language of the show seemed to come from the 50's. The host, the ever-smarmy Jay Thomas, led
into a commercial by saying, "We'll find out which one of these ladies becomes Mrs. Multimillionaire right
after this."
Yet beneath its retro vision of women, "Multimillionaire" shares the fundamental secret of the ABC show:
that those competing on screen were ordinary people, that it could happen to you. "I work in hotel
operations," one of the contestants said, introducing herself. "I'm in telecommunications sales,"
said another.
As Mr. Darnell said in a phone interview before the firestorm of bad publicity hit, these women were "basic,
regular ladies."
"We were shocked at how nice and normal everyone turned out to be," he said. "They didn't look like
they came from a daytime talk show."
And it's true that as a group they did not look like supermodels. They were attractive in a down-to-earth way, not
wildly different from anyone's well-groomed neighbor. When the 10 semifinalists paraded in their bathing suits, most
did not wear revealing thong bikinis but modest little sarong skirts, as if to emphasize that everyone (at least
everyone average) has something to hide on the beach. In fact, Ms. Conger stood out from the start. With her
near-platinum hair and lip gloss that was exaggerated even by television standards, she looked as if she might be
more at home than most contestants in the garish world of Las Vegas, where the special was shot.
"Reality" shows are always artificial constructs, of course. "Multimillionaire" was the time
bomb that happened to go off. But the retro attitude that accounts for its success is in line with a widening
"chick flick" ghetto on television, where supposedly strong female characters are treated like children.
You would expect as much from soap opera piffle like "Providence," as sentimental and predictable a show
as there is on the air. What is new and disconcerting is that the smartest shows are following a similar pattern.
"Judging Amy" is so aware of women's rights that a recent show dealt with a Yemenite woman who was
beaten by her brother because of gossip that she was not a virgin. The show's heroine, Amy Gray (Amy Brenneman), is
a level-headed family court judge. And still her mother, Maxine (Tyne Daly), treats Amy like a child and tells her
how to raise her own daughter, Lauren. After Maxine tells Amy to be stern about Lauren's bedtime, Amy whines,
"Can I tuck her in?" and Maxine gives her permission. This crosses the line from typical mother-daughter
tension, which the show often does believably, and infantalizes the heroine.
This season "Sports Night," struggling in the ratings, has softened its attitude and its stylized
dialogue. The most conspicuous change is that Dana (Felicity Huffman), the producer of the show-within-a-show, has
become absolutely giddy. One week she comes to the office dressed in sexy biker leather because she is on her way to
a costume engagement party. Another week she makes slapstick football moves in the control room. She now wears an
inordinate amount of blue eye shadow and does everything short of singing "I Enjoy Being a Girl."
There are still female characters on television who can be tough yet emotional, like those on "N.Y.P.D.
Blue." But there is a definite trend toward making even strong women weaker. On "N.Y.P.D. Blue,"
Detective Jill Kirkendall (Andrea Thompson) recently jeopardized her job by trying to help her drug-dealing
ex-husband outwit the law. And the message of both the vapid "Providence" and the substantial
"Amy" is that however accomplished a woman may be, a return to her childhood home and a childlike role is
normal, that the old days of the extended family were best.
That image of the weak woman behind the facade of professional strength is precisely the retro idea behind "Who
Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" Much has been made of the fact that Ms. Conger is an emergency room nurse,
but here is the way her career was treated on the show. She described how she was injured when serving as a nurse
during the Persian Gulf war: she bumped into a pole during a training maneuver. Recently it has been reported that
although she was an Air Force nurse, she never left this country during the war; it didn't take that bit of
information to undermine any seriousness about her profession. As she walked across the stage in her bathing suit,
an announcer's voice said, "As a registered nurse Darva saves lives in the E.R., but she actually passed out
the first time she drew blood from a patient."
The message is that education is the veneer, not the reality of these women, fictional or real. As Patricia Ireland,
president of the National Organization for Women, said about the "Multimillionaire" pageant: "The
Playboy models always have a Ph.D. in something, too. What that says is that despite your accomplishments, how you
will be judged hangs on how well you look in a bathing suit." (NOW monitored the image of women on the four
prime-time networks during the February sweeps period and will issue a report on incidents and types of violence,
stereotypes, positive role models and the social relevance of themes. They could not have been luckier in their
choice of month to study.) Of course, the image of men hasn't exactly been brought up to date by the Fox special.
When Mr. Rockwell emerged from the shadows at the end of the show in his tuxedo, he acted the part of the sensitive
guy, apologizing for the inequity of a situation in which he got to choose a bride from among 50 contestants.
Compare that with clips that soon surfaced on "Entertainment Tonight" of Mr. Rockwell (who was born
Richard Balkey and invented Rick Rockwell as his stage name) wearing a black-and-orange tigerish jogging suit and
skipping antically across a stage during his days as a would-be comedian, or of Mr. Sensitive making Jerry Lewis
faces at the camera. Such moments give the so-called reality special a whole new dose of reality.
The ultimate proof of the backward-looking impulse behind all the "Who Wants to . . ." shows comes from
Nick at Nite, which is built on being comically and willfully nostalgic. It has packaged six episodes of the 60's
sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies" under the label "Who Wants to Marry a Mega-Millionaire?"
(starting at 9:00 tonight), with stories focusing on Jethro, the nephew of the oil-rich family, in love. Two of them
feature his friend, a movie star named Dash Riprock. If the show biz name Rick Rockwell seems an uncomfortable retro
echo of Dash Riprock, surely that's a coincidence.
Copyright © 2000 The New York Times. All rights reserved.
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