I feel so ashamed...

...but Bravo's Work of Art makes me want to blog about reality TV again. But! It's hard, because as ready to "take sides" as I feel (the fact that one "side", as I see it, includes Ryan, Mark and Erik - the macho, egotistical, often vaguely homophobic, transphobic and misogynist dudes who hate on the hot girl everyone's desperately trying to treat like a dummy despite her current climb and the one non-normative-ish male who gets called a "pussy" for having insomnia and, I don't know, wearing sweaters and mumbling? is making it so easy.), I know this is a show and they edit this shit to death in order to create drama, and beyond that, this is probably not how this people would actually treat each other if left to their own devices (i.e. not in a contest, not on television, not on edge all the time).

Jaclyn made this point with a great blog post about how unnecessary Erik's exit was, if it weren't for producers messing with him.

They also edited out scenes of Jaclyn doing math, but left in the scene of Erik claiming she brought everyone snacks. A real mystery, what they're trying to do there...

Ok. Forget the drama this past episode (and the way it carried into twitter, which is why I included Mark on that list of people I'm jumping to side against). I want to talk about my problem with this show in general.

WHERE. ARE. THE. QUEERS?

WHERE ARE THE QUEERS, BRAVO? Do you forget why I and an enormous portion of your audience started watching you in the first place? Of course you have. You're a soulless reality machine now. After Queer Eye ran out of juice and Project Runway ran out on you, it's all housewives and fashionistas and straight, straight, straight people who want to do violence to each other. You're so far from home. Kathy Griffin is all you have left, and you can only absorb the residual queer off of her. Bravo, if Work of Art gets another season: QUEERS. And don't you DARE Zulema them out this time. I'm still pissed about that.

Seriously. The most shocking thing about the "shock art" episode was how shockingly fucking heteronormative Ryan has to be to think dressing up like a "tranny hooker in bondage" is innovative and outrageous, instead of casting him as an immature bigot totally devoid of an original thought.

I am OVERWHELMED but how straight this show is. I can't think of an artist I know who isn't queer! Art and queerness go hand in hand. But if any of Work of Art's artists are queer, the subject has been avoided. Forget this evil editing bullshit, next time, just. hire. queers. We make good television.

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