Dream Job? I Simply Do Not Dream of Labor

The Smithsonian and MTV have collaborated on a show together, The Exhibit, to find “the next great artist.” Each week the artists are tasked with a challenge to create a work based on a specific idea — gender! injustice! the pandemic! — and present it for judging. The prize at the end of this ordeal, besides exposure to an audience that is more accustomed to twelve hour marathons of Catfish episodes from 2013, is an exhibit at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn and a cash prize of $100,000.

Shot on the grounds of an arts institution – the Maryland Institute College of Art – that has been struggling with a budgetary crisis since the pandemic, accusations of institutional racism and misogyny in the post-MeToo and post-George Floyd protest era, and recent allegations of union-busting, the show serves as much as a palate cleanser for MICA as it does as a booster for visual artists in America. Here you see the college not as a site of exploitation and discrimination but as a forum for all, an important institution that creates, nurtures, and preserves the artistic tradition.

It joins an already chaotic reality programming space. What started as a couple of shows turning cooking and fashion into competitive game shows has expanded to include nearly every creative endeavor the human body can do with the hopes of financial remuneration. Blown glass artists, make-up artists, potters, visual artists, fashion designers, street fashion designers, online influencers, jewelers, blacksmiths, models, hair stylists, clothing stylists, drag performers, singers, filmmakers, interior decorators, florists, stand-up comedians, tattoo artists, piñata designers, dancers, choreographers, crafters, and stage magicians.

Cooking of course has its own whole category, with barbecue, mixology, chocolatiers, cooking for families, cooking by children, cooking snacks, cooking brunch, cooking in America, cooking in Mexico, Brazil, or Italy, cooking holiday foods, making pizza, baking desserts, baking bread, baking in a general sense, and baking in a tent. And that’s leaving out the whole Gordon Ramsay Mega Corp with its multiple overlapping cooking competition properties.

These shows help to create the dream of a creative life. In Project Runway, the seminal creativity competition show on which almost every show that followed was modeled, being a fashion designer looks like constant production. Life is a series of challenges of gamified creativity with your days spent dreaming up new fantastical creations and then hunched over a sewing machine making those dreams a reality. Your only limitation is how far your imagination can stretch (also your budget for fabrics at Mood). Project Runway has gone on so long (nineteen seasons and counting) that contestants have stated on the show that their initial interest in becoming a designer was sparked by watching Project Runway as a child.