So, now fantasy is reality

This week, Fox floats “The Swan,” a makeover series whose press kit promises 17 “self-proclaimed ‘ugly ducklings’ the opportunity to realize their dreams” by springing for the services of a plastic surgeon, a cosmetic dentist, a trainer, a stylist and -- because what really counts is what’s on the inside (and what you do for a living) -- a therapist and a “life coach.”

All 17 women will undergo “physical, mental and emotional transformations” on-camera, but only those deemed most committed to change will go on to compete in a beauty pageant where the winner will be crowned “the swan” -- and the rest will probably feel kind of like losers again, no matter what the cosmetic dentist says.

It’s hard to say for sure (Fox wasn’t making tapes available as of this writing), but “The Swan” just may turn out to be the most morbid iteration of reality TV’s most seductive theme of the moment. Just as daytime cable now seems almost exclusively dedicated to transforming the wardrobes, rooms, gardens and hairstyles of an endless array of giddy, grateful guinea pigs, the vastly richer networks are doing the same thing for careers, egos, faces and booties in prime time.

In effect, TV has moved from passive consumer aphrodisiac to active wish-fulfillment destination, one-stop-shopping for people looking to make their lives look more like TV. Think about it too hard, and you may get dizzy and have to sit down.

After years of trying and failing to repeat the success of “Friends,” NBC has found its new must-see hit in “The Apprentice.” Slowly but steadily, prime-time programming has moved away from the traditionally aspirational sitcoms and soaps, and reality programming has moved away from the now almost quaint game show ethos of “Survivor” toward the instructional, even transformational, fairy-godmother programming offered by shows like “The Swan,” “The Apprentice,” UPN’s “America’s Next Top Model,” Fox’s “American Idol,” Bravo’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and even ESPN’s “Dream Job.”

The idea that viewers might be inspired to buy more Doritos or Toyotas in response to some remote, unconscious longing for friends like the ones on “Friends” now seems almost comically Freudian. Viewers can skip the dramatic or comedic pretense of watching altogether and just get their hair product recommendations from “Queer Eye’s” Kyan Douglas straight up.

Human interest sells

The appeal of reality shows, even the old-fashioned kind like “Survivor,” has always been at least in part about the participants’ stories. As the local news knows, human interest sells cars. But now, plastic surgery and other life-altering consumer services have made it possible to surpass the aspirational melodramas originally created specifically to sell soap, and simply to sell the life.

Traditionally, critical opprobrium has been heaped on the production companies that come up with this stuff and the networks that air it. And ever since the Tagi and Pagong tribes duked it out on Pulau Tiga on the first “Survivor” in 2000 and the first batch of lab rodents were willingly sequestered in the house of “Big Brother,” the more literal-minded have been mercilessly flogging reality TV for being unreal.

But while no one would argue that the genre has any similarity to real life, its spirit is far more attuned to contemporary reality than we give it credit for. For all of its visible cogs and gears, reality TV intuitively reflects a shared American fantasy life in which sharply honed commercial longings (Lucky magazine even comes with “Yes!” and “Maybe” stickers) commingle with the basic principles of the post-Oprah self-esteem industry to concoct the perfect cocktail of inadequacy and celebrity-sized entitlement in Joe TiVo.

In publicity interviews, “The Swan’s” creator/executive producer/”life coach,” Nely Galan, the glamorous former head of Spanish-language network Telemundo, talks about how a difficult divorce and the vanity blow of turning 40 sent her looking for “all these things that are available to women to change your life, transform your life. (“Life coaching” as a profession owes a great deal to “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which has been helping daytime viewers “find” and “discover” their “true selves” for ages now -- their “true selves” being, of course, somebody else.)

“Women need this entire team of people to help you put your life together, just like a Hollywood actress would,” Galan concluded after finishing her research. “What, are we worth less than a Hollywood actress?”

“The Swan,” which premieres Wednesday before moving to a regular slot on Mondays, is a production of Galan Entertainment and FremantleMedia North America, one of the companies that brought (and keeps on bringing) us “American Idol.” And “Swan” and “Idol” have more in common than just a producer. Both offer hopefuls the unique chance to shed their identities and enter the pantheon of celebrity (or look just like one).

“The most important part was women who were so ready to change, willing to do everything to transform their lives,” added Galan, which is why, in each of the episodes, the woman who moves on to compete in the pageant is the one who adheres the most strictly to “the boot camp of diet, exercise, therapy and inspiration.” (Of course, some of them also will have benefited from what one of the show’s surgeons calls “total facial reinvention” and all will be helped along by a therapist who works with “people who are in transition.”)

“Most were feeling very picked on as a child because of their looks,” says the transitional therapist in a video press kit. “They have incredibly low self-esteem.”

The idea that imagery of celebrity life has become the yardstick by which we measure our own happiness and success is not new. In his 1998 book, “Life: The Movie,” cultural critic Neal Gabler argued that the cult of celebrity has seeped so deeply into the framework of American culture as to have warped it and ultimately overtaken it. Published shortly before the onset of reality TV, the last chapter of the book prophetically touches on Donald Trump’s consciously constructed public “trophy life,” the emergence of professional life coaches, media role models as instructors of human behavior and “The Truman Show.”

“The great cultural debate that loomed at the end of the twentieth century and promised to dominate the twenty-first,” Gabler wrote, “was one between the realists who believed that a clear-eyed appreciation of the human condition was necessary to be human, and the post-realists who believed that glossing reality and even transforming it into a movie were perfectly acceptable strategies if these made us happier -- a debate, one might say, between humanness and happiness.”

Celebrities show the way

Somewhere, far off camera, no doubt someone is still debating this question. But on television, the idea that guided, strategic, sponsor-aided and celebrity-inspired transformation is the shortest route to happiness has emerged as the dominant philosophy and guiding principle of reality TV.

Even the young businesspeople who compete for a chance to work for Donald Trump (who, as Gabler pointed out, willingly turned his own life into mass entertainment way back in the ‘80s) on “The Apprentice” are vying for more than just a job working under The Donald; they are vying for the chance to be crowned “star mogul,” like Trump himself. Watch fired mogulette Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth vamp and scheme on “The Apprentice,” and it’s clear her mentor was Heather Locklear on “Melrose Place.”

Watching TV passes for on-the-job training. “This is what I’ve been working toward my whole life,” says Mercedes, the runner-up on “America’s Next Top Model.” But it’s unclear what exactly she means by “working,” unless it’s a word she uses interchangeably with “wanting.” The show’s winner, Yoanna, gets closer to the truth when she explains that she deserves the designation of America’s Next Top Model -- which, by the way, Tyra Banks confers without any irony, as though it were a title that she is able to bestow -- because she grew up watching fashion reporter Elsa Klensch with her grandmother and lost 40 pounds.

The superlative is built into the titles -- “America’s Next Top Model,” “American Idol” -- and it’s both silly and honest, because nowadays celebrity is bestowed, like a title.

Reality shows grant people their dream jobs, their dream houses, their dream wardrobes, their dream boyfriends and girlfriends, their dream faces and bodies, their dream lives for real. And for those not lucky enough to make it on the air, consumer tips abound.

The women of “The Swan” presumably will be returning to their normal, pre-glamorous lives once the series concludes. This notion -- major life change via national television before dazzling reentry into the mundane -- was nicely reinforced recently on “Average Joe: Adam Returns.” The formerly undesirable bachelor Adam (who was subsequently made desirable by almost-but-not-quite being chosen by the lovely Malena on the first “Average Joe”) had spent several days getting to know a group of average girls in the Palm Springs McMansion when the producers suddenly introduced six bikini-clad swimsuit models into the mix. Adam marched over to the producers and protested, casually exposing the artifice that used to be carefully concealed.

“I just don’t think that it’s fair,” the dewy innocent complained, standing among the lights, cables and crew members. “Can’t I just say no from the beginning? The first thing I said when I came on this show and you asked what I was looking for in a girl [and I said] ‘confidence, style, loyalty.’ You know, I have loyalty to people. I like the girls that have been here, and there are already at least five that I like. It’s just not fair.”

“Here’s our policy,” replies this Adam’s Higher Authority -- in his case, a producer in a baseball cap, going over the concept of free will and moral choice one more time. “Our policy has always been you make your own choices. You do what you want to do. And you follow your own instincts. That’s what we’ve always been about.”

Satisfied, Adam goes back to the hot tub and banishes the bikini-clad apples before the original girls get back from the spa. “As much as I feel like I’m living a fantasy life now,” he shrugs to the camera later, “I know that’s not real no matter where it is. I won’t be walking around with a girl like that in the city.”

Carina Chocano is The Times’ television critic. She can be reached at Carina.Chocano@latimes.com.