Project Runway's long, litigious journey from Bravo birthplace to its new home at Lifetime Television for Decidedly Un-Ferosh Women ends on August 20th, when the fashion design contest debuts its sixth season. In order to ease their audience into the proceedings, the cable network created a promotional campaign that tweaks, ever-so-unsubtly, the image of Runway as a show made by and for Bluefly-wall-accessorizing BravoGays™.
Managing to pack more images of heterosexual reinforcement into this 60-second-spot than a Clockwork Orange-style Exodus International recruitment video, you'll see cops, firemen, farmers, and businessmen mixed in among the hundreds of workaday women, all affecting their best Tim Gunn impressions and describing emotionless executioner Heidi Klum as "a darling angel," while trying their best not to burst at the seams with anticipation of the tulle-and-organza miracles to come.
Now obviously, the rational mind dictates that there exist no dairy farmers, or Sheriff's Dept. officers, or firefighters (with their wives and girlfriends!) who actually watch and enjoy Project Runway. There exist only actors -- talented actors, skilled at sounding completely off-the-cuff as they repeat a demographically scrutinized script. In that way, the spot isn't unlike the flip side of that much-parodied National Organization for Marriage ad. Only this time, the point is to merely distract from and not cruelly highlight the unnatural and outlandish ways of the Gays -- as if to say, "A hot tranny storm is gathering. Let's make it work."
· Project Runway [Lifetime]