On Home Shopping yesterday, while the salesfolk were hawking nylon tote bags “in all of today’s most trending colors”, they began asking the shoppers who called in an additional question, on the air: “If you could change places with anyone in the world for one day, who would you choose?”
Many people chose the Pope, which may reveal something about the Home Shopping demographic, although I kept wondering: why did these callers want to be the Pope? Because they admired him? Because they’d use their Freaky Friday body-swap day to declare divorce, birth control and gay marriage to be just fine? One caller was flustered by the question and then firmly replied, “Walt Disney’s wife” (who died several years ago.) Again, I wondered about her choice: was she too modest or afraid to want to become Walt Disney himself? Walt met his wife Lillian when she was a secretary at his studio, and she also worked as an ink artist on several cartoons. Walt originally wanted to name his most famous creation Mortimer Mouse, and Lillian is credited with encouraging him to use Mickey. The Disneys had a long and happy marriage, and after Walt’s death Lillian remarried. She became a philanthropist, donating fifty million dollars to build the Disney concert hall in LA. Which of these attributes had attracted that Home Shopping caller?
Here’s my thinking: it’s a terrible question. On one hand, the question may simply require a natural curiosity about someone else’s life. But since the callers tended to name famous people, the question seemed to be more about dissatisfaction. The Home Shopping sales staff was pretty much asking, “If you could be someone better, someone rich and famous and powerful, someone who didn’t have to buy cheap nylon tote bags, who would you be?”
I once overheard two actresses chatting, outside an audition room. One of the actresses, who was otherwise a gifted and delightful person, asked her friend, “So tell me – who’s having your career?” She was serious, and this struck me as one of the saddest and scariest questions I’d ever heard.
Everyone gets depressed and cranky at times, and everyone’s felt pangs of envy. Personal re-invention can be necessary and thrilling. But sincerely wanting to become someone else is a surefire route to madness. At one point the perky Home Shopping salesladies asked one of the young showroom models who else she’d like to be. At first the model refused to answer, which I applauded. But since she’d been put on the spot, she finally sputtered, “My Mom.” I think this choice was just a loving tribute to her mother, but it’s also a Freudian arcade ride.
That’s Walt and Lillian pictured above, with their rodent goldmine. Now that I think about it, maybe all that Home Shopping caller wanted to be was obscenely rich.
