EQ is just as important as IQ when it comes to having happier relationships and a more fulfilling life filled with accomplished goals. You know when you have emotional intelligence when you can transmute stressful situations into advantageous ones, when you are connected to your emotions and can express yourself coherently and make informed decisions with intent. Filmic representations help us to learn about humanity and the follies and foibles of life. Why are so many people interested in reality TV? Is this form of light entertainment endowing their emotional intelligence or is it numbing their brain? There are a stack of reality TV shows casting now from ABC’s Holey Moley to VICE’s Suburban Legends to Network 10’s First Dates. With ratings for these shows, especially the ones related to relationships being extremely high it’s definitely a pulsing space. Married at First Sight was often at the top of the most viewed shows through 2022 according to data from Mumbrella. Working on reality TV shows is great for steady work at Endemol Shine or TV1. The Australian team behind Love on the Spectrum US was a recent multi-Emmy award winner. We are constantly filtering water-cooler chit chat about what happened on The Real Housewives of Melbourne or who’s going to be cast in the next The Bachelor series. So how are these shows that class themselves as social experiments credible in shaping our relationship ideals and expectations. Sure, the old advertising trope sex sells is true in some ways as it attracts our attention and stirs our hormones. When people are not in relationships or dating sex can seem rather foreign or unrelatable to some. Despite popular assumptions not everyone is thinking about when their next sexual partner will appear 24 hours a day. Filmic representations help in naturalising sexual relationships and the drama and emotions involved in them, inviting people to explore them in their own lives. The media is a highly influential tool in shaping individual’s behaviour. This is where the cause for concern lies with the impact reality TV shows have on relationships in real life. We tend to imitate our parents or guardians when it comes to finding a love interests in our formative years, it’s a combination of mimicry, hormones and curiosity that drives us to explore relationships in high school and in our twenties. Conventions of society and the proliferation of the human race put reproduction and marriage on the top of the list of priorities for many men and women. Although the stigma associated with being single is much less, for many decades men and women were expected to get married no questions asked once they were in their twenties. Along with the greater acceptance of singles and the onset of the online dating revolution we could see that exploring relationships in reality TV shows makes sense.

However, they should be watched with a discerning eye as the pop psychology that is presented could create harmful ideals on relationship expectations for the younger viewers. It is still just television, it’s not genuine reality, it’s reality TV. As the American TV series UNREAL revealed, there is a lot of dramatisation and tweaking going on behind the scenes to create the highly emotional sequences, that in turn hook in the audience. Since the pandemic the new normal has involved much more video-calling and online dating in order to social distance. This led to more experimentation in relationships, with reports showing that sex parties were on the rise in the new normal as well as polyamorous open relationships. Killing Kittens a sex club in the UK had 40,000 more females sign up for sex parties after Covid, it was reported by The Daily Mail UK. The isolation of Covid has led to people wanting to stretch the bounds of freedom by exploring their sexuality. There are several levels that people connect on physical, sexual, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and it may be so that it could be difficult to find that all in one person. Many people are curious about alternative relationships such as the increasingly popular “throuples”. Although it’s really a matter ideological and religious regard as to how many people individuals should be having sexual relationships with. Reality TV allows viewers to vicariously live out experiences through the lives of those in the reality show. Has the moral compass of humanity been turned askew with the rise of reality TV guised as social experiment? Wife Swap, Love Triangle, Love Island and Open House are reality shows that explore polyamorous relationships. They can be seen as offering insight into how to manage emotions and behaviour when in unusual settings allowing for more ease when adapting to changes to circumstance. Just as reading books and watching films helps us deal with highly emotional scenes by remembering what the characters did or how the characters reacted and what they said. Reality TV can be seen as a template in how to behave in these non-normative types of sexual encounters. In this way reality TV can bring on more self-awareness when you identify with traits displayed by the contestants or people in the reality TV show. It also helps the curious to decide if it is for them, giving them a fly on the wall perspective to the mechanics of it. Reality shows which have intimacy and relationship experts on to discuss having healthy and safe alternative relationships offer insight into receiving therapy or couples counselling. Many people view getting help from therapists to be relegating to insanity or being under-par. Reality TV shows that propagate the benefits of seeking professional help and speaking openly about relationship concerns can prove beneficial for society.

The shunning of toxic masculinity and increased neutrality to gender roles and identity can be seen to have emancipated from the expansion of the reality TV sector. With society becoming more digital and people spending so much more time on their devices, light informative entertainment is in demand. The liminal space between where documentary and reality tv intersect is becoming more popular in recent years with Netflix’s The Female Brain and The Principles of Pleasure exploring female sexuality and the need to study the effect of hormones on females’ actions and behaviour. Advancements in technology are advancing more now allowing neuroscientists and psychologists to run more research on consciousness and how our brains, hormones, DNA and emotions work together to create identity. Female sexuality for many years and for many cultures has been a taboo subject. With women who were overtly sexual or expressed themselves through sexuality being ostracised and in some cases metaphorically burnt at the stake. Viva La Vulva which premiered in July on SBS Viceland delved even further into female body parts and the new confidence that is being canvassed around the female sexual organ. For centuries the phallus has been the reproductive symbol that has dominated our psyches. With the rise of the vulva will the devotion to the phallus have to relinquish? As they say what goes up must come down. I hope it will be possible to give our allegiance to both. The Netflix series Indian Matchmaking also portrayed marriage in India where many people have arranged marriages, rather than love marriages. In these examples reality TV and docuseries are both helping to raise social awareness providing for more empathy and compassion, leading to increased emotional intelligence. Livestreaming is finding its way out of the murky waters of the underworld in the new normal as social media sites have opened up their functionality to include live streaming. Live streaming also became a necessity as capacity was reduced for concerts due to social distancing and with the giant pivot to online shows. Prior to that web cams were used mainly for pornographic and below the belt entertainment. The new era of the internet which is empowering content creators to have more control over their metadata and finding new ways of distributing user generated content through the metaverse is opening up a new echelon of reality shows through live streaming. Many people are surprised at the types of videos that gain millions of views on Tik Tok, YouTube and Instagram. In many cases it involves people doing dangerous pranks that should not be emulated. Reality TV is offered some clout, compared to social media videos making it seem much more quintessentially acceptable as popular culture. Reality TV can be seen to aid in relationship management helping people to be aware of group dynamics. By watching the competitive nature of the contestants in shows viewers are shown tactics for leading the team, getting ahead and understanding how to influence people.

I’m produced a live stream first dates show in October 2022, PLAYDATE, on a US platform backed by Mark Cuban, www.Firsidechat.com. On each episode we watched a couple go on a genuine first date and receive coaching from a top dating coach. Episode one featured dating coach Samantha Jayne who has been featured on The Bachelor, Triple J, ABC, The Project and many other publications.  People learn from watching each other, that’s no secret. The internet made the world smaller in our perceptions due its ability to reach so many more people. Acclaimed television presenter and former CEO of award-winning creative agency Leo Burnett, Todd Sampson explores how the internet changes the human brain in Season 2 of his two-part series Mirror Mirror on Network 10. The new era of the internet Web 3 is harnessing the producers of tomorrow by democratising the broadcast industry by opening up new funding and distribution models. Platforms like Twitch, Fireside and Patreon allow independent content creators to share their stories in new ways, such as in the metaverse allowing us to watch ourselves and each other from a new level. Making us truly avatars in some aspects, a higher incarnation of ourselves.

By Sage Godrei

www.onthecuspprod.net