Mr Personality–That’s Mr Freakish Personality to You

Mr Personality–That’s Mr Freakish Personality to You by Roxanne McDonald

Mr. Personality comes back in re-run on FOX REALITY TV, and it is just as bizarre, just as creepy as it was the first time around.

Mr Personality–it’s The Bachelorette with traces of NOSFERATU. It is classic symbolism yanked from literature and made part of the lives of one woman and twenty of her suitors.

The woman with the power to choose is beautiful. She is Hayley Arp, and she is dating and interviewing and occasionally making out with men in masks. Each of the men in the final group of ten are in colored masks, so Hayley gets to know their personalities rather than be influenced by looks (or does she?). But the very existence of and enforced wearing of the masks in most cases alters the individual male personalities.

Chris Berg is the exception. He starts the process by bringing to the house a book on hypnotism, and proceeds to tell the cameras how he will use mind control to influence the unwitting beauty. Other men not only rankle at Chris’s methods, but take turns flipping out, going ballistic, and breaking down – usually in front of Hayley.

One gets so drunk

he has to be escorted away to the suites. Stanley flips out at an elimination session. Another gets obsessive and does a peeping tom with a fellow contestant, peering from masks and from behind house plants as Hayley is courted by another masked man.

The producer of Mr Personality says this is what is creepy, not the masks but the men in their masks. If you haven’t seen Mr. Personality yet, and have seen The Man in the Iron Mask, for example, imagine twenty then ten men coming at you with the head wrapped as DeCaprio’s is in the movie. Or imagine ten men approaching at different times, trying to sweet-talk, seduce, and even lean in to kiss you wearing an S/M face and head covering used for slaves.

So the masks in the show are colorful, purple, green, yellow, blue, they are still not the innocuous primary color associations one has with kids’ crayons. They are shaped with angularity, are cold and rubbery looking, and allow for only the nostrils, lips, and eyes to show – making for a visage that appears to be bulging and staring and ogling.

Sure, the mask is a most clever device here, as it is in literature, in Shakespeare, in opera, in theatre and dance. But the implications of duality in literature and the arts becomes a suggestion of duplicity in the show. The mystery of identity in art is made spooky and horrid in the show. And given the questionable motives of the lotharios versus the nice guys on Mr. Personality, viewers identify with Hayley as she attempts to “unmask” her ideal mate without the benefit of literally doing so until she has chosen to send the man packing.

The superficial layer is

then revealed, but is the deeper personality ever accessed?

Strange and yet alluring reality show, which in every episode has a quirk or a heart-quickening moment that keeps us interested. Appalled, maybe, but interested nonetheless.
Sir Links Alot Mr. Personality Links

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