'Finding Love' on Reality TV

Today on the subway I was sitting next to K, goofing off in the way we do, even in public, and a man sitting across from us smiled and said, "I've seen you two before, and you always look so happy. What's your secret?" That gave us both pause, to which I could only brush off an answer, jokingly: "It's only been six months...and it's all a façade!" Joking aside, it made us stop and muse about serendipity, human connection and the small ways in which the universe organizes itself to confirm things that feel right (or that we just make things into signs of that rightness by the power of our own will).

These small moments of kismet come in direct opposition to a theme in summer's reality TV, which seems overrun by programs in which people attempt to 'find love' on camera. There are three in particular on this trend that I've been consuming with abject fascination and just a little guilt lately: "Bachelor in Paradise," "Finding Prince Charming," and "Married at First Sight." The first takes former "Bachelor" contestants and puts them on a beach together with enough competition to pair off that the pressure is on to find a mate. "Finding Prince Charming" takes the "Bachelor" concept and mixes it up with all-gay contestants, and "Married at First Sight" does exactly what its title indicates: matching two strangers in a legally binding marriage, at the alter, and seeing what unfolds for six weeks, after which they choose to stay together or divorce.

meet Finding Prince Charming's (mostly basic) "gay Bachelor" and his suitors

These three shows are deeply formulaic in their orchestration of connection, yet their conflicts are vastly different, even though they all involve the almost desperate striving by participants, and some sort of achievement or competition that enforces compliance with the formula. With something so variant and unpredictable as love, why do these shows win us (or me, an ever-sappy consumer of romantic stories) over with their formula? Have we come to believe that the trappings of romance, and the repetitive way its stories play out in media, are legitimate enough to be mistaken for actual connection? Are butterflies enough to go on? The contestants on these shows seem to think so, judging by how often they utter the word 'connection' as the token or proof of something promising, and legitimate.

I actually don't think it's just a matter of enjoying these stories because our hearts have been pumped full of romantic comedies. I am legitimately interested in how we 'perform' love in conjunction with our expectations for it, and reality TV is a perfect medium to explore this phenomenon. Think about it: assuming we all desire romantic human connection, what better way is there than consuming it vicariously, sped up, on TV, as it happens to 'real' people? But we must remember the artifice of the concept of reality TV love, which may or may not have any realness involved, and here's where it gets juicy. You get to see people's emotional baggage affect their behavior, their dispositions create conflict, and their expectations for the future either enhance or sabotage their search for connection (or just fame), all under the pressure of performance. Also, if you're introspective like I am, you may be able to turn the camera's lens on yourself in the process and think of how your own history would inform your performance of love on TV; would you be able to stay authentic or exaggerate yourself as you get sucked up into the 15 minutes of fame? Furthermore, how do you, yourself, perform love in your life?

If I were still well-versed in film theory I might be able to dig up some scholar's argument about the documentary film's inherent alteration of its subject, but broad strokes may suffice here: reality TV either has verisimilitude, or it doesn't at all. My question is, does the performance of love on TV, or even the audience's consumption of that performance, give it some sort of validity if there is even a smidgen of real feelings involved? The love doesn't have to be of the mind-altering, love-of-your-life caliber, but just the enacting of an inkling of chemistry, and the television's documentation of it, perhaps makes it so, because it creates a trope much like how romantic comedies encourage us to buy roses and chocolate for our loved ones. In clearer terms, the love might not last, or withstand real-world circumstances, but in showing us an example of how we could act in our pursuit of love, we end up playing the part in our own lives too -- looking for 'a connection' on OKCupid, listening to the fluttering of our stomachs on a first date, or even dramatizing a conflict "like they do on TV." It's like the Kardashians, who've achieved truly blurred lines between their TV selves and their authentic ones.

Any good story has a conflict, too, and in an attempt to spin a story out of 'reality,' reality TV love consumes conflict like wind to a fire for the sake of storytelling. Conflicts go from fabricated to authentic back to fabricated in the pursuit of a story arc; Chris Harrison arrives with a new 'date card' for the player who's just kissed someone else, or the gay bachelor conceals himself as a contestant to get 'true' first impressions of his suitors. I love this finagling of reality to produce conflict, because we watch as artifice has the potential to spur on actual conflict between actual humans. The humans may ham it up on camera, but I believe anger and jealousy are hard to fake.Yet the key difference between your own conflicts and the ones televised on these reality programs is that the camera has the power to change the performance and content of them, as the behavior triggered by the problem becomes more important than the root of it. I would say that most of us value equilibrium over conflict in our relationships, so we try to resolve issues, while reality TV contestants are perhaps emotional masochists in which they mine the circumstances for conflict, hence enhancing it.

It's so easy to get disillusioned, though, about love when we watch too many of these shows, because the formula becomes too prescriptive. The danger of reality TV is that it goes for sweeping gestures, romantic or dramatic, instead of mundane ones that have the potential to be so much more powerful. I, for one, am learning to recognize the small moments that build upon the big stuff in my relationship with K, and trying to silence that desire for broad, symbolic moments that fit so nicely into a crafted, neat story about love. The funny thing is, in recognizing a promise to love the moment for what it is, you are inherently building it into a story you tell yourselves, warts and all.

The UnReal-ity of the 'Bachelor' Universe

It's been a hot minute, I know. Working in TV and social media makes it harder to dedicate your free time to TV and social media. Who knew?

Nevertheless, I am currently swept up in the faraway land known as the Bachelor/ette/inParadise franchise. There is something very interesting happening in this world, which I've written about before, but you might not know it unless you are an avid fan able to parse out which tropes and codes are being disrupted in the Bachelor-verse this summer. These disruptions fall under two categories; one within the series The Bachelorette, the other outside it, namely the seriously compelling Lifetime (what, did I say those words together?) show UnReal. 

Let's start with how Kaitlyn Bristowe, the most recent Bachelorette to be whisked away by the glamor of 'dating' 25 men on TV, purposely or purposelessly spun the show on its head. See, Kaitlyn seems to behave like a woman of 2015, meaning she has a sex drive that leads to certain events. A few weeks into the courtship, when there are still ~8 men left in the game, she sleeps with one of the contestants. Normally in this show, sex happens under verrrryyy controlled circumstances and locations that are actually called 'fantasy suites,' which serial viewers of the franchise will tell you only pop out when there are 3 guys left. Usually these 'overnight dates' happen on a tropical island, complete with pillows and candles and maybe some palm trees rustling in the wind. Everyone knows sex goes on, but it is never talked about, because the show seems to pander to what it believes to be Middle American values (for its Midwestern mom demographic, maybe). This season, Kaitlyn sleeps with Nick in Dublin, in a hotel room. It's so pedestrian in comparison, but so much more real, because the next morning the crew catches her on camera having a heart-to-heart with one of the producers on her balcony, reciting all those things we millenial women sometimes recite to ourselves and to friends after sleeping with someone too early. She doesn't regret it, but now she has to figure out how to break the news to the others. Furthermore, she had already told another contestant in private (Shawn, who would end up with her heart), that he was the one.

How did the production team approach this behavior? They sort of embraced it and altered the format of the show. Yes, they seem to have scrapped the other exotic locations in favor of staying in Dublin with a shorter schedule (could this have been a weird punishment? Nah, since producers will do whatever they can for ratings), but they actually gave Kaitlyn the go-ahead to have overnights with four men, not three. They also exposed all the slut-shaming tweets aimed at Kaitlyn in a reunion special (and my feminist heart whined as I heard this vitriol) in order to incite and maybe defend their now-controversial commentary on sex. Then Kaitlyn only met two families instead of 3, which was probably a good call on the producers' part when they must have known pretty concretely that Kaitlyn only really cared about those two guys. It may have been a misstep on the production's part to bring the 'loser' all the way to a proposal, but again, ratings rule.

 "raise your hand if you have ever felt personally victimized by Regina George Twitter trolls"

Why is this important? Finally, after a bajillion seasons of this show perpetuated archaic values, romantic inventions, and hegemonic gender roles, we're finally seeing the cracks in that rigidity. I wouldn't go so far as to say that we're getting a positive representation of healthy relationships, but Kaitlyn has ushered in a frankness about sexuality that is welcome on a show that has, for better or worse, dictated some standards around courtship and romance in pop culture. That this franchise is also responsible for Bachelor in Paradise is interesting because the otherwise proper values steeped in the Bachelor/ette are nowhere to be found in "Paradise," where sex, backstabbing, and manipulation are called "love" to hide the jealousy and competition that draws us in like any good trashy tv.

Then there's UnReal. A scripted series that draws quite tightly from the Bachelor universe (it's basically a fictional behind-the-scenes look at the Bachelor), it tells the story of the backstabbing, manipulative producers responsible for this good trashy tv. What's great about UnReal isn't so much the scandals and cat-fights the producers encourage, but that these producers are women living in the feminist/post-feminist media landscape, grappling with their conflicting desires: power and morality, danger and safety, love and lust. For example, the female showrunner Quinn is a ruthless yet intuitive boss gunning for her own franchise, and she wants to take her best associate producer, Rachel, with her, despite Rachel's paranoia that this world is drawing her irreversibly farther away from escaping the manipulations and destruction she happens to be good at.

 Quinn certainly isn't nice, but she knows people, and she knows what makes good TV.

Honestly, I sometimes feel like Rachel. It is difficult to work in media without internalizing a general feeling that the internet brings out the worst in people. Being addicted to social media, like many in my generation, has made me less patient, less able to be in the moment, less empathetic, and less able to think deeply about issues larger than 140 characters. Yet when I see complex stories on TV about complex women, I feel like at least I have a voice, because stories like mine are starting to be told in mass media. I'm trying to escape it all, but I end up sucking myself back in. Maybe it's a vicious cycle, condemning the hand that feeds me because media also tells the stories I care about, but the fact that dating shows actually resonate on my feminist scale gives me hope.

Feminist Guilty Pleasure: The Bachelor

Yes, I am ridiculous. I watch The Bachelor. I carve out a ghastly two hours a week when this show airs, even when exams and a thesis loom.

If you're unfamiliar with it, this reality television show features a hunky, toned-like-a-Ken-doll suitor going through the motions of dating 25 girls in hopes of finding a wife. NB: use the term "wife" loosely. Over 8 weeks (!) he is expected to propose to a fiancée by going on "group dates" and "one-on-one" dates all over the world in clichéd romantic destinations, and at the end of each episode he eliminates one whimpering girl at a "rose ceremony." The premise promises just as many cat fights as woozy romantic hyperboles, and the finale televises the ultimate choice between the two girls left standing. Can the man uphold his end of the bargain and choose one woman to be his (neverlasting) one and only? Which woman will convince herself she loves a man so much after two months that she'll say yes? Their engagement usually lasts just about as long as their 15 minutes of fame. Oh, and there's also The Bachelorette, the same idea but with 25 men and one woman.

Yet, although the show is steeped in inventive/insane delusions and producer-driven artifice--who can say "I love you" first? who has a boyfriend back home?--I watch the show because I am fascinated by the heteronormative gender roles it pronounces. Man: muscled, provider, family man, tough with a heart of gold. Woman: dolled up, husband hungry, destined for motherhood, emotional. Only recently (after about 10 years and over 20 seasons) have we begun to see any semblance of non-traditional paths, like--gasp!--unmarried single moms. In an era of groundbreaking television shows like Girls, The Mindy Project, and New Girl, which explore how varied (and also difficult) current young women's lives are, The Bachelor is stuck in a reality-tv deadzone that keeps gender in a box.

I don't know what it is that creates this changelessness on The Bachelor, but I've ventured some guesses:

• The producers actively cast naive women in their mid-twenties who were weaned on romantic comedies 
• Alcohol, cameras, and the promise of fame combine to lead the women to invent dramatic personalities that are an act 
• The producers peg the women against each other while making it seem like the Bachelor is perfect 
• Tricky editing makes us believe things happened as they didn't 
• Getting wined and dined on the world's most expensive dates will bring anyone to domestic dreamland just for a second 

Maybe I'm the one being naive for searching for some lingering truth in this "reality" show, but I do think there is something toxic but also telling about combining love and competition. It's a basic power struggle magnified twenty-five fold. The bachelor/ette holds the power over the 25 contestants, who jump through hoops to win affections. The girls bond/backstab, the men wrestle/worship, and it all plays out like mating or courtship behavior. You could call the gender performance here instinct or socialization (I prefer the latter), but there is definitely a ritualization of traditional gender roles that all the parties involved repeat. 

Finally, the show magnifies the great fears a lot of single people face: that we'll never fall in love, and that we'll be rejected. In this case, that can happen instantaneously, in a very public way. So, as a result, it's desperation mode. People go on this show searching for attention and hopeless love. I think the contestants who choose to air their dirty laundry on TV (both men and women) have an especially strong exhibitionist side, but then again, we're all on Facebook. 

So, mock me all you want, but the feminist in me isn't ashamed to admit that I am fascinated by this show.