Is love actually blind? Such is the faux-philosophical query on the coronary heart of the runaway Netflix hit “Love Is Blind.” The fact TV collection, hosted by pop-star-turned-love-guru Nick Lachey and spouse Vanessa, offered viewers on a so-called relationship experiment that set it other than its many, many, many competitors.
My constant concern as a instructor and a researcher is actuality TV’s potential cultural influence.
The collection is on hiatus between seasons, however the public dissolution of the second season’s two “profitable” married {couples} — Jarrette Jones and Iyanna McKneely and Nick Thompson and Danielle Ruhl — pushed the present again into the highlight. And, I’d argue, it’s a reasonably unfavorable one, regardless of the present’s avid viewership. My constant concern, as a instructor and a researcher, is actuality TV’s potential cultural influence. And whereas “Love Is Blind” talks an enormous pop psychology recreation, such pseudoscience shouldn’t be confused with precise perception or moral analysis. If something, the truth that “Love Is Blind” tries to persuade viewers that it’s one way or the other smarter than different actuality TV reveals, with its occasional reference to educational research, makes its final outcomes that rather more miserable, and its strategies that rather more pointless.
On Twitter, loads of viewers expressed their lack of surprise about August’s double divorces, noting that these {couples} appeared poorly matched for many of the present. As a researcher of relationships and an avid watcher of nearly each relationship and marriage actuality providing from Netflix, the bulletins launched a helpful second of reflection on the repercussions of leisure programming that payments itself as an “experiment” that may “succeed” or “fail.”
Different social scientists have famous the shortage of something remotely scientific behind the premise of “Love Is Blind.” For one factor, the present insists that bodily attraction could be eradicated as a consider a profitable relationship and but casts virtually solely conventionally engaging folks. (The second season included just a few plus-size girls, however they shortly disappeared within the early episodes, by no means to be heard from once more.)
Not like an actual experiment, there isn’t any management group for comparability and no variables that would assist measure modifications in conduct. The shared dwelling area introduces a weird and synthetic sense of competitors, and viewers don’t have any relationship historical past past the narrative constructed to situate an obvious lack of success find love. (And naturally, as with all reveals, viewers don’t know if something they’re watching is even real.)
In fact, many social scientists like myself analyze the tales that individuals inform us. And even when the “Love Is Blind” tales are rigorously crafted, that doesn’t imply they don’t have one thing vital to show us about what it means to fall in love (or lust) with somebody in a (very) quick time frame and the way bodily attraction can improve or disrupt emotional connections.
However sadly, many of the classes that may be gleaned from this present are inadvertent. Fairly than inform us how one can make {our relationships} richer, showrunners have highlighted what to not do. Ample analysis on on-line relationship has illustrated how a lot lying goes on in modern dating culture — whether or not by means of enhanced pictures, catfishing or misrepresenting height or weight. Although the “Love Is Blind” singles are largely portrayed as earnest and honest, one of many season’s “stars,” Shake, spends your complete present speaking behind his fiancée’s again and complaining about how he’s not bodily interested in her.
“Love Is Blind” and “The Ultimatum” — like their many actuality relationship present predecessors — additionally situate heterosexual marriage as the head of dedication. The main target is extra on being able to marry anybody moderately than establishing stable, lasting relationships.
The present then performs on the seeming insecurities of its monogamy-loving members by introducing stress that ought to give most scientists — to not point out followers — critical pause. The concept that you have to get engaged to see your important different in particular person is inherently manipulative, even when it additionally makes for excellent TV. Add to this the dramatic finale through which {couples} are pressured to undergo a whole bridal ceremony, in entrance of family and friends, solely to face doable rejection on the altar, and we have now a present that isn’t simply ridiculous however borderline merciless.
As a result of the present is leisure and never science, there’s little consideration paid to how social inequality manifests itself. In each seasons, white girls have rejected a seemingly “browner” accomplice in favor of blonder, taller white males who didn’t select them whereas within the “pods.” I’m unsure that claims something notably optimistic about love being “blind.” This is just one of a number of methods the present communicates problematic concepts about race, ethnicity and desirability.
The present is contracted for a 3rd season, which I’ll positively be watching. But when this month’s divorces train us something, it’s that there’s nothing scientific — or notably particular — about “Love is Blind.”
