The Beginning of the Contextualization of True Tori in Analytical Essays

This weekend, I spent looking at the entire first season of True Tori and the first episode of the second season of this show.

What a raw and revealing show.

Since the April 22, 2014 debut of the show, viewers, critics, commenters, etc, have been voicing that this reality series is fake and the Spelling/McDermotts are doing this for money.

Watching the entire show leads me to believe that these two people are not faking at all. If they were, damn, they are good actors and must get paid a huge amount of money to put themselves through the emotional ringer.

I don’t think it is fake at all; I think it is very much real. As I watching these episodes of a two day weekend binge, I discovered that there are some really hard hitting realities and lessons to learn from a couple like Tori and Dean….and what do I mean?

First, let’s take a lot at why Tori would do a show like this.

Tori grew up in the limelight. As some know, her father is the famous TV legendary Aaron Spelling. From her perspective, it would make sense why she choose to film this devastating life event on camera. She grew up around a television producing father, starred in her father’s shows when she was growing up, and as she continued on to adulthood, she continued to film her life. A couple of the shows, like Tori and Dean: Inn Love and the NoTORIous, were scripted reality series or reality series based on Tori’s life. However, the rest of the reality shows and the books are document records about her life.

And she has been very successful in the past by using her life as a medium to entertain people. Many viewers like watching reality shows. Even though many of them are scripted, edited, and manipulated, many people love to watch someone else’s drama because it is an escape.

To go further with Tori having a history of being expose to film and being expose to tabloid or celebrity news, Tori saw firsthand how stories are crafted using the television medium. Her father took stories and produce them into shows. Think about the story itself and what a story is: it is basically a creator, whether using writing, filming, etc., constructing a narrative for entertainment. Aaron Spelling made television shows from entertaining narratives.

And Tori has created stories by using her own life as a basis especially when she began having children with her second husband, Dean McDermott. Tori’s stories have created for her, in the past, a continuing a lifestyle that she has been accustomed to since she was a child. What her ventures have also fed into is her…

Idealistic belief about her own marriage and family.

Tori believed that she was marrying her “soulmate.” Because she was marrying her soulmate, she has justified her behavior in her how she aided in breaking up two marriages. One marriage break occurred between Dean and Mary Jo Eustace. The other marriage breakup occurred between Tori and her first husband, Charlie Shenigan. As I watched the six episode docuseries, the reunion episode, and the first episode of season two, Tori justifies that she cheated on her husband because Dean was her soulmate.

Examining it overall, Tori does not want to admit she did a horrible act, completely, to herself because she is protecting the constructive image of having her happily ever after. In reality, her second marriage is created from a foundation of inappropriate/immoral behavior. In reality, she broke up her own marriage while her now second husband broke up his marriage. From how I am examining it, in order to justify her actions, she looks at as Dean being her soulmate. Since he is her soulmate, they had to take drastic action in order to be together. That means…ending their marriages.

Think about the soulmate premises. In our society, the message we’ve been taught, if someone is your soulmate, it means that they “complete you.” Both of you will grow old together. Both of you are on the same page. You both understand each other.

Tori’s life has been glamourized by the environment she comes from in what I know. If you watch her reality shows and see the kind of family events she creates for her kids, you will hear her say that her mom and dad really celebrated birthday and holidays. They went all out. Because she grew up with them spellbinding her and her brother with magical events that later are magical memories, Tori feels she has to pass down the tradition.
Because Tori grew up in a lavish lifestyle, she must continue that extension of that lifestyle as an adult herself. She is carry forth family tradition…and family history that her parents expose her to.

Due to this type of family history and behavior, I see why she would construct this fairytale that she and Dean created. Like all of us, we create an illusion of what you think we are. Whether we do it on purpose or not, the way others see us…is the way we want them to see us. Looking at Tori’s entire life, she has been immersed in a fairytale like reality.
But the reality is that, again, she made decisions that aided in two marriages ending. The reality is that Dean cheated on his wife…and then, he married Tori to start a family with her. Pretty much, Dean went from one divorce and breaking a family unit a part…and started another relationship and family with another woman.
Yet, Tori got caught up in her feelings and wanting to alleviate her guilt by calling Dean her soulmate.

The reason why I harp on this is because it is huge trouble. Anyone who starts a relationship based on many red flags will have major trouble down the road.

Here Tori is…at major trouble.

Listen, I don’t judge her for not wanting a fairytale life. I don’t judge her for wanting to have domestic bliss. Yet, what I do judge her for is making the decision to bury her head in the sand and ignoring her instincts. Because if you watch any of her reality shows, the ones that are based closely on the truth, she mentions throughout that she is terrified that her husband won’t be faithful to her.

In True Tori, she tells her therapist, Lisa Wexler, that she had a feeling that Dean would cheat. She also had a feeling right after they were married that she saw early behavior patterns that existed with in him.

No, this is not about I told you so. This is about wanting something so bad that you cover up all the signs to get it. When you see signs that are indicators that some bad shit is about to go down, you are going to decide one out of the two choices: you are going to go into denial and ignore the signs and hope that everything works out your way. You are going to accept the truth and get the hell out of dodge.
Tori knew what was going on all along and decided to practice bad faith and ignore it. For those who don’t know about Sartre, “bad faith” means that you see signs/hints of bad or inappropriate behavior, but you decide to walk in the middle of the road knowing that you have a good chance of getting ran over.

Oh, I am not done, but there is so much to talk about in this series. Basically, what I am saying with this response is that Tori practice bad faith. And the ideal she has for her life is not an actual reality.

No one deserves to hurt so bad that they want to crawl in a hole and waste away. Yet, we also have to take accountability for her actions and own up to them…especially to ourselves. It is a heartbreaking matter to see someone devastated, but it also gives a person a chance to grow up and realize that when we live in the fog, we don’t make the best decisions concerning why we are living in the fog.
Best,
S

Last updated October 27, 2014