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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Vicariously thrilling, coldly pragmatic and wildly popular, TV's new dating shows are the 21st century equivalent of medieval courtly love -- in a hot tub.
May 9, 2002 | In the past couple of years, "dating shows," those bizarre talk show/game show hybrids featuring lots of cleavage, cattiness and sexual humiliation, have sprouted like weeds on the manicured lawn of -- well, anyway, on TV.
Though relatively new, the dating show is now officially a phenomenon. After ruling supreme for 25 years, "The Dating Game," that sui generis grandpappy of the kiss-and-tell (or, in this case, tell, then maybe kiss later) genre, has been unseated by upstarts. Today, anyone looking to get a fix of scantily clad youths groping, licking, ditching or bitching at each other on camera can take his pick of "Blind Date," "Elimidate," "Change of Heart," "Taildaters," "The Fifth Wheel," "Shipmates" or "Dismissed." Add to this list such dating show miniseries extravaganzas as "Temptation Island," "Chains of Love," "The Bachelor" and "Love Cruise" -- all gone now, but surely not forever (ABC is getting ready for "The Bachelorette" as we speak). Don't forget the occasional one-night-only pageant spectaculars such as "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" or "Who Wants to be a Princess" -- the type of show that used to be known, quaintly, as a "special."
So there we have them. Now what do we do with them? It's a question that has been essayed and abandoned countless times. The most anybody can do is gawk and wonder and laugh and worry and weep and rant. Where "The Dating Game" was comparatively modest and circumspect -- a woman would ask questions of three hidden bachelors, then choose one based on compatibility -- a contestant on, say, "Change of Heart" won't even blush to relate that what initially attracted her to boyfriend was that he was "sensitive and sensual and has this big, tight ass that I can't keep my hands off." And I am quoting a contestant who appeared on the show at her mother's urging.
Something about the formats of these shows, not to mention the behavior of their protagonists, seems to defy analysis. Can these well-toned, glossy youngsters really be looking for love? Would not a glance at the Nerve.com personals yield better and less humiliating results? Is love really all about backbiting, put-downs and public groping? Is there nobody left on earth who does not aspire to hosting their own show on E! someday? Given the seemingly never-ending parade of young lovers who trot through these shows on a daily basis, one might draw some cynical conclusions about televised love. Where is the romance? Where is the courting? What, exactly, is the point?
These are good questions, and I didn't know the answers, so I looked them up. Or maybe my eyes naturally gravitated toward the bookshelf after spending several hours watching the nation's youth grope and put each other down in their quest for romance. However it happened, I found myself rereading my favorite chapter in medieval scholar Georges Duby's fascinating book on love and marriage in the middle ages, "Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages."
What I found was startling. The medieval practice of courtly love and the contemporary dating show format evinced shocking similarities. Both were pragmatic, schematic, erotic and vicariously titillating. Both seemed to follow rules and codes established by people far richer and more powerful than the young lovers. Maybe the comparison is a little far-fetched, but all other avenues, like my patience, have been exhausted. Then again, maybe I'm on to something big.
In attempting to define "the strange phenomenon called courtly love" as it was described in 12th-century French songs and romances, Duby set about trying to determine what kind of relationship existed between this type of literature ("a vicarious literature of dream and escape" in which a young man would try to woo and win over a married woman who was his social superior) and actual social behavior. In a similar attempt to understand the strange phenomenon of dating shows, I'll crib from him.
First, as Duby writes, "for these works to find an audience, they had to relate in some way to the concerns and the real situation of the people for whom they were written." Let's examine the dating show genre -- "a vicarious TV show format of dream and escape," and actual social behavior. Take "Blind Date," which involves two strangers meeting and embarking on some improbable activity before settling down to the apotheosis of all dating shows, "a romantic dinner." Daters on "Blind Date" are virtually guaranteed to despise each other, but are required by the rules of social conduct -- perhaps sharpened by the fact that they are alone together -- to keep their thoughts to themselves. "Blind Date's" writers then add their own schadenfreude-inspired humor to the proceedings through the clever use of superimposed thought bubbles and diagrams meant to illustrate all the nasty thoughts that the daters, or at the very least, viewers, must, invariably, be thinking. Relationship to reality: Check.
