Relic Hunter and AbTronic

As Frank Perdue wisely said, "Parts is parts." And the world of daytime weekend television is listening. The tag-team combo of the syndicated action show "Relic Hunter", and the new infomercials for any version of the electroshock abdominal workouts work together to prove that TV is no longer content to commodify people as objects, but is now reducing them to components.

On "Relic Hunter," proudly airing since 1999, Tia Carrere stars as Sydney Fox, an Indy-Jones-meets-Lara-Croft incarnation. She travels the globe searching for relics along with other well-endowed costars from her university archaeology department, all the while wearing the tightest tops wardrobe could find that say both "adjunct professor" and "sex kitten layout."

"Relic Hunter's" signature flourish is its use of direction to eliminate the female body in favor of disembodied breasts. The composition of nearly every shot places breasts center stage — if not Carrere's, then those of her blonde sidekick or guest star. This focus leaves just enough room to allow the viewer to see a face to account for the speaking, in case anyone cares. The monotony of cleavage is broken up every once in a while by a fight sequence, during which the camera draws back to include another torso into the frame, but soon returns to more chest-oriented plot underdevelopment. Breasts are the pivot upon which the scenes turn.

If there were any way to deny the obsessive centrality of detached breasts in "Relic Hunter," doubts are soon refuted, and a whole new disbelief instilled, by the follow-up two-minute commercial for miracle breast enhancement pills. Following the same camera techniques as the show, the commercial displays inadequate, isolated breasts. The audience is left to contemplate its own physical deficiencies.

The AbTronic infomercials pick up on the obsession with human parts. The pitch is that now you can get your ab component in shape by simply wearing a shocker belt that sends a jolt of electricity into your system, effectively passing off the same kind of treatment a shock therapy patient receives as an ab workout. You don't have to plug in, for this Ab Shocker of the Future runs on batteries. There's no need for the camera or viewer to focus on any body component that AbTronic isn't zapping, and there is never a shot of a body without the handy-dandy electrical device on some part of it. So the infomercial's scenes move from abs to thighs to buns and finally, back to where "Relic Hunter" left off, chest.

To show an entire body — one that isn't chopped up into parts or covered with electrodes — would be to show a normal human unshaped by technology. In the future, when we all become cyborgs, we will be valued for our components. For now, we'll just have to watch human parts become the future of daytime weekend television.

— Taylor Carik (cari0021@tc.umn.edu)