This is not good TV. It’s sad and pathetic
WHAT does it say about us in Australia that we delight in witnessing a marriage selfdestruct?
In fact, we not only delight in it, but many of us are prepared to spend hours in front of the television, emotionally invested in the random lives of people we have never met, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I’m not talking about the Barnaby Joyce scandal. No, the issue at hand is instead the ongoing juggernaut of relationship wreckage that is Married at First Sight, which has brought the twists and turns of others’ adultery, betrayal, and heartbreak into our homes to be consumed in between scraping the last dollop of curry off your plate and putting the bins out.
Meals at the table where families could engage in actual dialogue and relationship building have been replaced by laptop dinners in front of the TV, lest they miss a moment of the latest reality relationships show. And at the moment that is Channel Nine’s Married at First Sight, or MAFS for the experienced viewer.
Cheating is the new black, at least in terms of colossal TV ratings, and MAFS certainly delivered that on Sunday night – 1.35 million viewers across five major capital cities.
But the reality of this reality franchise, I offer, is this: They’ve annihilated their romance model because this season – number 5 and counting – is not about happily ever after so much as happy for right now.
Yes, the show’s producers admit the marriages are more of a commitment situation rather than a legally binding agreement but the emotional dynamics are the same. And yes, real people are cheaper than actors.
And you might argue that the reason networks pump out franchises like this is because viewers demand it. But do we really?
On a recent episode conceited groom Dean Wells decided to enlighten his Perthborn wife Tracey Jewel that Sydney was a swinger’s paradise. We’re all into it, didn’t you know? Global leaders apparently. Sorry, must have missed that memo.
How is this reflecting on our children, this easy-come, easy-go approach to marriage moulding their young minds? Confusing at best. Don’t be naive to think they haven’t watched it, are referencing it or absorbing it via catch-up apps.
But parents are also watching it for enjoyment whilst presumably tutoring their kids on how to have healthy relationships.
While in early seasons viewers held fast to the promise of love stories blossoming, now the show has become a sordid game of car keys in the fishbowl.
Ironically, just months ago we were debating the issue of same sex marriage. We heard impassioned speeches about the importance of equality and everyone’s right to be able to enter the sanctity of this union.
As it turned out thankfully the majority of Australians agreed. Yet now we have a reality show ripping right through marriage’s core principles that rates off the Richter scale.
A true love story is as yesterday as Barnaby Joyce’s first Akubra and actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s assertion that splitting spouses can in fact “consciously uncouple”.
The reason this show pierced our psyche is the sheer improbability that a happy ever after could result from marrying someone the first time you met them.
We were hungry for the challenge.
But is it acceptable to overdose on someone else’s humiliation because it makes us feel a little better about our own relationships and our own life choices and satisfy our guilty desire to feel better than we really are? No.
Doing the dirty is crowbarred into the MAFS plot even before the brides have been dragged across the threshold of some truly hideous bachelor pads now fronting up as marital love nests.
And if we all want the happy ending as we say we do, won’t we just switch off?
Relationships are challenging enough without being sucked into more of it on the idiot box.
Who is happier – the woman in the loving, long marriage who quietly goes about her real life in real world or the embittered deluded woman like cheating bride Davina who preaches Me Me Me and hell, what do you think about Me?
This week’s eye watering Commitment Ceremony episode, where Dean backed out of a plan to dump his wife Tracey for Instagram model Davina, was the most popular episode in the history of the series.
Davina thought she had a pact with Dean to leave their respective partners. Like a seasoned pro, Dean of course was thinking differently.
If marriage is a disposable item, why buy it?
Why exchange rings, the talisman of solidarity and love and on the fourth finger of the left hand because that links straight to the heart, when you are just going to hurl them at your spouse in a fight?
This is not good television. It’s sad and pathetic.
The only thing that truly anchors society is family and marriage is the glue that holds it all together. I want my kids to grow up both realistic and optimistic to know that falling in love – while not always clean cut – can lead to tying the knot and a happy ending.
You can still laugh, cry and be entertained without the parade of social dysfunction.
Some things should remain sacred, and marriage is one of them. It’s the happy ending without the idealistic schmaltz.