Tag Archives: Tim Gunn

What Americans are like: Project Runway demonstrates the list

I discovered the other nightproject runway 05 at the Love Feast that I might lose a couple of friends if I betrayed who won Project Runway last Thursday. Life is now DVR’d so there is no shared sense of real time — I forget these things. I am forbidden to disturb the perfect isolation of someone’s relationship with the screen. So now that I am down a few lines and have issued the spoiler alert, it was Sean from New Zealand, not Amanda from Nashville, Kini from Hawaii or Char from Detroit.

The manual for my mission field

I don’t watch the show because I root for a winner. I never know why someone wins anyway (although I do think it should have been Amanda this time). I watch the show for it’s message. It is such a perfect piece of capitalist propaganda it is a priceless manual for my mission field.

heidi klum of project runwayI was talking about the show the other day and yet another person gave me that “I’m-trying-not-to-get-into-this-with-you” look. But they could not resist. “Why do you watch that show? Isn’t it about fashion design?” The unspoken question was, “Pastor, you are into fashion design? Aren’t all those fashion people the definition of godless?” I told them, “I watch it to learn things.” Yes, Heidi Klum is still beautiful and I am fond of Tim Gunn; and it is amazing that these artists can make practical art out of anything in no time at all — those are also good reasons to watch. But mostly, I am listening for what people are being taught, and Project Runway sums up America in 90 minutes each episode — 45 of which I actually view. (Thank you inventers of the DVR; I can skip most of the relational drama the film editors concoct).

The Wellstone International Academy in Minneapolis did the internet-world a service when they offered everyone the summary sheet they give their international students about U.S. Americans. They collected Concepts that Shape the American Way of Life, a “compendium of ideas developed by anthropologists and sociologists over the past 40 years.” As it turns out, the kids could have gotten the same thing by watching Project Runway for forty minutes. The show is a redundant indoctrination of all things Americans consider important. Here are seven of the concepts that we missionaries need to know about if are to have any hope of helping people learn to let Jesus shape their way of life.

Tell it like it is

1) U.S. Americans tend to be candid and outspoken in communication with others, and they seldom shy away from disclosing facts about themselves.  Thus, they make reality TV. They prefer “direct” questions and respond with “straight” answers. Thus, Heidi tells the designers each week that, “In fashion one day you’re in, the next you’re out.”  Thus, Tim Gunn is beloved for being gently assertive as he tells someone their design may need to be trashed. The dapper Mr. Gunn is also the one who delivers the news each week that the loser needs to pack up their stuff in the workroom and get out — pretty candid.

Don’t shy away from challenge

2) U.S. Americans assume that any challenge can be met, any goal achieved, if one works hard enough.  The motto of the Navy’s Construction Battalions (the Seabees) during WWII was:  “The difficult we do immediately;  the impossible takes a little longer.” Thus Project Runway gives the designers $100 at Mood and one day to make Heidi a gown to wear to a gala. And they do it! They will perform the impossible for the chance at $100K. “Make a look from things found in a movie theater or on a movie set? Sure! I can do that in a few hours; I’m in America.” We are all supposed to have a dream and fulfill it by sticking with it. Almost all the losers tell the camera on their way out that they are going to keep believing in their dream.

Don’t expect togetherness

3) U.S. Americans believe in individualism. They stress being separate. Thus, the designers always hate the dreaded group challenge. Americans stress personal responsibility and stress that each person must take their own initiative, so designers are always talking about “finding their voice” and Nina Garcia always says, “I can’t see you in that dress.” The show sets up the redundant formula to highlight these things again and again. We always see people hating group challenges (admit it, Amanda) and we always hear about people finding their voice. The judges reward them for individuality.

Expect greed

4) U.S. Americans measure their well-being in terms of the number of tangible things at their command which enable them to enjoy uninterrupted comfort and convenience. Thus, the Project Runway contestants are put up in posh NYC hotels, they make elegant clothes, they get a cool car if they win. Plus, the winners get the promise of a bit of money and fame to start their own brand so they can drive cool cars to posh hotels like Heidi. We are taught to desire these things. We know the people who have made it and who rule the airwaves (possibly rules our lives!) have these things.

Make it work

tim gunn of project runway5) U.S. Americans are deeply practical.  They want things, procedures, and people to meet the requirements of actual use in daily life.  The dreaded Project Runway critique is, “It looks like a costume.” Because someone, somewhere must be imagined wearing this thing to Wawa or the Emmys. Thus, Tim Gunn comes by when you’re halfway done, looks concerned and says, “Make it work.” You can get that saying on a T-shirt.   Other people groups around the world give more weight to tradition, theology, morality, or theoretical consistency. None of that matters to Americans if what they’re doing wins or sells. The contestants will modulate their “voice” to get into the pages of Marie Claire.

Get busy

6) The self-esteem of individual U.S. Americans is largely tied  to their ability to “get ahead” in terms of the recognition of their peers as well as material affluence and social mobility.  There is a deeply held belief in the U.S. that  anyone — through hard work, talent, and persistence — can rise well above the station in life into which he or she is born. Thus the creators of Project Runway comb the world for rags-to-riches possibilities and replay the drama so we will keep believing that piece of relative nonsense. Heidi Klum comes out in some fabulous (if often tasteless) dress — she’s made it! Tim Gunn somehow made a name for himself. That’s the story, again and again. Sean Kelly moves to Brooklyn from the land of the Hobbits and six months later wins Project Runway. Get busy.

Hurry

7) U.S. Americans tend to feel that time is relentlessly rushing past them. They attempt to “save time” by moving at a rapid pace, taking shortcuts, and improving their efficiency.  They become anxious if forced to waste time. The whole premise of Project Runway is about this anxiety. Only the swift survive. This season Kini remade much of the collection he brought to New York Fashion Week because the judges trashed it; we were impressed that he could sew like lightning.

I like the skillful people of Project Runway. It’s a fun, pretty-much-predictable-by-this-time show. But it is also so instructive! I need to keep my eyes and ears open. Because I am tempted every day to sink into the delusion that Americans live in reality. Reality shows remind me of just how crazy this place can be, and just how much we all need a Savior. That’s Who I am bringing into the mix, after all.

Endless Love Chooses Limits

My sister made a good point last Wednesday after we stopped playing Wii bowling and watched a few minutes of the news. She said, “I like it when the TiVo’s got nothing and I need to watch the commercials. They are educational.” It will be part of her book “$%!# People in the Last Years of the Baby Boomer Demographic Say.”

I am unlimitedBecause she said that, I listened to the Sprint commercial for their I-Phone 5 deal while I was looking for news about the Phillies (which was not good news). While I was reaching for a Rolo, my ears perked up, because the Sprint commercial actually said, “I need, no, I have the right to be unlimited.” I looked at Gwen and asked, “Did you hear that?” She verified that it happened. Then YouTube confirmed it.

I think the commercial is supposed to be a little ironic. But since truth is not a goal for most advertisers, one cannot be too sure — and ads rarely say something which isn’t supposed to resonate in thirty seconds. So I think being unlimited is exactly what the advertiser meant to promise. And even though it is absurd, I think they meant to tap into the innate, entitled feeling (that is becoming more prevalent all the time) that we have a right to be unlimited. Maybe that sense of entitlement is a legacy of those baby boomers I mentioned. YouTube also verifies they promised fame would make their children live forever (who all sing and dance), all while enjoying endless love. Now those well-educated boomers are working on how they will make it literally possible not to die.

Endless love

As a missionary, that thirty seconds was very educational. I also promise people can have eternal life, which is unlimited. I don’t think one has an innate right to it, but once it is given by the Giver I could say, “I need, no, I have a right to be unlimited.” My fame won’t make me live forever (or my children, as our brothers and sisters at Saddleback are pondering), but God’s fame will live forever. But what about endless love? The Bible records this teaching:

Romans 8:37-39: But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 John 4:9-12: By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

What about endless love? God has loved us from the beginning and will love us until the end. Nothing will ever separate us from God’s love. But what kind of love is this unlimited love? It is not like Sprint’s sense of being unlimited, which you can pay for and buy a right to. It is not something I can work hard enough to deserve, like people think of fame or scientific progress.

I suppose it could seem ironic that God’s unlimited love is the kind that limits itself. Nothing can separate us from the love of God because it is in Jesus our Lord; the love is expressed by God who became a limited human to serve humans. Nothing can separate us from the love of God because the one and only Son limited himself to life like ours, killed death, went beyond angels, undermined the powers that be, invested our present with hope and guaranteed our future. God-with-us, who knows the heights and depths and every possibility of our creation, put endless love in limited flesh and made limited flesh full of endless love.

Expressed in our limits

make it workOne the way home from my sister’s, I read a book on the plane about psychology (of course). It had a great metaphor for seeing our many inner “selves” as a family system. What the author suggested is that we get in touch with our true, inner Self with a capital “S” and learn how to let that Self relate to our many selves with honesty and understanding, just like a family therapist would help a family. That is a nice Hindu-ish idea that assumes that people can find the image of God in themselves and “make it work.” I think it was another example, like the Sprint commercial, of how we are being trained to see our potential as limitless.

But true, endless love from our true selves is a gift of God, who demonstrates how it comes alive in Jesus. We don’t make it work as much as it works in us. It is endless, but it limits itself to be expressed in us. Our sin gets us condemned to being in charge of forever. But God’s love demonstrates the alternative that saves the world.

For instance, tonight we are going to have a meeting about making a covenant with the other members of Circle of Hope. We would need an alternative commercial for our alternative kind of life: “I need, no, I have a right to be limited.”  I make a covenant with a visible group of Jesus-followers because I need to love in this time and place as one of these people — Christ in me, Christ as us. The meeting answers crucial questions:

  • How am I going to be a visible part of an actual body?
  • How can I not end up like some kind of imaginary god whose love is endless, a god outside an actual body, an aspiration I need to make work?”

God’s love is in us and is something that works in our limited condition; it is a life into which I can enter and from which I can live.

This is a big deal. The love of God is Jesus entering into our world and our lives. Expressing love like God’s is living fully in our world, entering the experiences of others, and living with Jesus in his body, the church. It is a love that serves within the limits of creation. It is limited by the need to be a receiver who gives as a real person to other real people. It is love that is not looking beyond what is to what isn’t, and so love that honors the person in front of them and doesn’t expect what has not matured to fruit yet, much less the impossible.

When we meet in our cells or public meetings we are not there to experience wonderful people whose fame should live forever (or to lament the undesirables we are stuck with!). When we meet, we are humbly emptying ourselves of self-aspirations to endlessness and entering in to the smallness of knowing someone and being  known, of discovering the goodness created in us and the new life given to us by Jesus. I am not going to “make the cell work” or bring all my endless demands for what I deserve to it. I am going to give of myself as love is given to me by God. I am going to honor the limited person and context and be used to fill them with whatever fullness of love they can contain.

That’s a lot of meditation on a thirty-second commercial! But I needed to do it. We are longing to be the body of Christ – not the only representation, of course, but a real one. I love the limitations of a love that empties itself of rights and gives out of God’s endless supply. Within those limitations is where the love of God saves us. It sounds reasonable, I suppose. But then my wife wipes me out at Wii bowling and I have to love her. Someone  messes with my I-phone and I have to make a choice. Someone invites me into a covenant of love like God’s and I have to reorient who I think I am!