Give them what they need, not what you want to give them.

I love TIVO. TV watching is so much better now that I have choice about when and what I watch. Combined with hundreds of channels, programming is plentiful. What I especially like is the ability to record entire seasons of a show and watch a series in its lifespan over several months. I did this with CSI. I didn’t start watching CSI until its sixth season, then I watched (courtesy of SPIKE TV) all six seasons in about 3 months.

I’ve had a similar experience over the past couple of months with America’s Next Top Model (ANTM), Tyra Banks’ popular show that takes a handful of aspiring models and puts them through developmental pathway designed to call forth the Top Model in them. I use those words because it’s not just about teaching modeling, rather about “becoming” a model. Given the contextual frame I live in, I find ANTM to be an interesting education process for me personally; translating the experiences on the show to my own developmental desire; to bring forth to the surface, through behavior, the inner world, not of beauty per se, but radiant, vibrant life found in the fullness of human expression that makes even awkward girls beautiful.

I have an interest in developmental pathways, anyway. So in watching this show, I look for the design elements and the conditions that seem to work toward this end. There is a mixture of vmemetic conditions, content and context used in the ANTM design, seemingly built on top of strong base of Orange conditions. The ANTM pathway, does seem to require a descent amount of Orange code in its contestants. At it’s core, if one has the Orange code operating in them, they are aware and demonstrate a capacity to change…a worldview that includes an understanding that individuals can change things in this world, themselves, primary above anything else. On this show, over the 12 week cycle, there is ample opportunity to develop and change as Top Model qualities are exercised, critiqued and nurtured.

This excerpt I find fascinating. From the developmental lens I look through, with the limited exposure to the reality I have through the TV editing and showing, it looks like a classic case of too much complexity relative a persons ability to handle it. It’s like demanding that someone use algebra to solve a problem when the haven’t gotten past multiplication and division yet.

This scene is really more about Tyra than the contestant. From Tyra’s perspective, she has offered these girls a chance in lifetime, with an abundant environment of resources and support for them to achieve their supposed dream. When this opportunity is disrespected, Trya drops into Red like a bomb (with the archetypal Gen-Xer battle cry “take responsibility for yourself”) Exactly where her contestant is stuck, powerlessness to change. Tiffany, the contestant, doesn’t seem to have the self knowledge nor the thinking to know how to change herself because it comes with the Orange code. It doesn’t matter how much yelling you do, particularly from on high, nor how good the anger management program is, it won’t produce the orange code. In fact, I’d bet from this encounter Tyra’s rant more than likely embedded Tiffany in her powerlessness as the result of this very public shaming.

The answer? I don’t know, that’s why I watch shows like this!

For more insight into the color codes used in this post, click then read here.