Gladiators, real housewives and the pull of reality TV

12:29Dr. Jana Scrivani:If you've never seen the show, here's the basic premise. You're on an island with a bunch of people you've never met before, divided up into competing tribes, and you have to find a way to survive. Sure, there's also a TV crew there, but you're still pretty much on your own, trying to build shelter, start a fire, find food, all you're given are the bare essentials, a few tools and a bag of rice, in case your search for coconuts and fish comes up short. The tribes compete in physical challenges, and the losing tribe goes to tribal council, where one person is voted off by everybody else. When just a couple people are left, everyone who got voted off chooses a winner who gets$1 million.

13:10Dr. Jana Scrivani:I always think about the importance of the year 2000 and Y2K and technophobia as being really sort of indelible to survivor.

13:21Goloka Bolte:I don't know that it's necessarily going to be a computer problem. I think it's going to be a social and people problem.

13:27Dr. Jana Scrivani:There is a lot of social anxiety about the fast and the rapidly increasing pace of technology and how that is impacting everyday life.

13:38Goloka Bolte:Have we become so dependent on computers that our society is at risk if they fail?

13:45Dr. Jana Scrivani:My name is Raquel Gates. I am an associate professor of film and media studies at Columbia University. I find it very fitting that then we get this show, which is all about, like, a return to nature and, like, can you build a fire?

14:12Dr. Jana Scrivani:I came from, you know, a working class neighborhood in Miami, you know, so I'm like, how bad could it be?

14:20Goloka Bolte:To quote the Lion King, I laugh in the face of danger.

14:29Goloka Bolte:I am Dr. Jatia Hart. I am a nuclear engineer. I was on Survivor Season 28.

14:41Goloka Bolte:We're doing three tribes this year, and they're divided based on qualities that it takes to win this game. Brains. I don't know the damn thing. Beauty, brains, and brawn. Brains, broody, brawn. I'll do that one time again just because I'm sure I messed up. I absolutely had a holy fucking shit moment. I'm hungry. Actually, the hunger was not the worst part. It was that I felt like nobody was being nice to me. Not only the people I was playing with, but I felt like the crew hated me.

15:14Dr. Jana Scrivani:You know, like when you walk into the cafeteria and you sit at a table and you just feel like people are just barely fucking tolerating you?

15:23Goloka Bolte:As a black woman in engineering, I've been at that table a lot. She has the decisiveness of a leader. She has the bossiness for sure. But she doesn't exactly have it all here. I felt kind of like a cog in the machine.

15:41Dr. Jana Scrivani:It feels like the fantasy of Survivor is that you have this like pre-civilization society that magically conforms to everything you already sort of believe about society, but it naturalizes it. So it's not like producer interference. It's not sexism. It just so happens to be that, you know, young dudes dominate the game over and over and over. In my tribe, I was the youngest woman.

16:03Goloka Bolte:And that, to me, is a position of weakness in any society. It's a show where you're supposed to vote people off, right? You're supposed to form a bond, a connection. And a very real bond and connection is shared history and shared experience. It's very easy to other people. In my season, three Black people, there were only four. Three Black people went out in a row. And I was like, if I'm going to go home, I'm going to go out with a bang. I was like the mental patient, and then you left the mental patient alone and I went crazy. You think listeners will get the Jatiyahs dumping her tribe's only bag of rice into the fire as an act of revenge?

16:52Goloka Bolte:That's what happens when you leave crazy people. It's entertaining. It's TV. So I don't feel bad for it. I wish I'd have been more careful talking about mental health. I think part of it was I was feeling like they were treating me like something was wrong with me. Everything that you saw on the TV show happened. But there were a lot more things that happened that you did not see that they have to boil down. And I understand. They had to make a character. They had to make a story. Fourth person voted out of Survivor Kageyan. Shatia, need to bring me your torch?

17:32Dr. Jana Scrivani:Good luck, you guys.

17:34Goloka Bolte:When you're eliminated, and the minute your torch is extinguished, the music shifts. It goes to cobalt blue lighting, which is where they're walking off into the jungle and disappearing. It's a blue, cold, death color. figuratively, they're dying. And then there's a moment of vacuum, emotional vacuum.

18:05Dr. Jana Scrivani:Reality television is really predicated on sort of playing on our emotions. The emotional connection is the primary goal of reality television as opposed to some other forms of media.

18:22Racquel Gates:What keeps people coming back to reality television is there has to be some source of conflict and tension. So creating anxiety. Actually, what I'd love to do is take a little trip through psychological history. So let's go back.

18:49Goloka Bolte:Hiroshima, seen from the air after the atomic bomb blast that virtually erased this city from the earth. As far as the eye can see, stretch scenes of desolation and ruin.

19:05Dr. Jana Scrivani:Coming out of World War II, where, you know, not just this country, but the world had witnessed some of the most awful atrocities that one can think of.

19:14Goloka Bolte:I still have that smell of burning bodies, you know, in my nose.

19:21Racquel Gates:It smells terrible. You know, people were still grappling with questions about the Holocaust. Ashes. All the ashes.

19:31Dr. Jana Scrivani:There was a real desire, especially in this country, to sort of understand, like, what makes people do the things that they do?

19:39Racquel Gates:Could ordinary people do evil?

19:45Goloka Bolte:It is May 1962. An experiment is being conducted in the Elegant Interaction Laboratory at Yale University.

19:52Dr. Jana Scrivani:The idea is that you're going to record people being people and placing them in very sort of strange, bizarre situations.

19:59Goloka Bolte:The subjects are 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50 residing in the greater New Haven area.

20:04Dr. Jana Scrivani:And that's going to teach us something about what makes people tick.

20:08Racquel Gates:The Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram Experiments.

20:11Goloka Bolte:Two-thirds of volunteers were prepared to administer a potentially fatal electric shock when encouraged to do so by what they perceived as a legitimate authority figure. In this case, a man in a white coat. 375 volts. I think something's happened to the following there. Milgram's findings horrified America. They showed that decent American citizens were as capable of committing acts against their conscience as the Germans had been under the Nazis.

20:47Dr. Jana Scrivani:There's disagreement around the interpretations of these experiments, but... Knowing that that's in some ways foundational to what eventually becomes reality television, I think is really helpful because even if it gets diluted or warped, there's always this idea of we're going to help you understand why people do the things that they do or how people live.

21:10Goloka Bolte:uh let's quickly fast forward through some early reality tv let's start with the british documentary seven up world in action enters the struggling changing world of the seven-year-old during the next hour you will see the first in a series of programs entitled an american family we've brought these 20 children together for the very first time for seven months from may 30th 1971 to January 1st, 1972. The family was filmed as they went about their daily routine. But you're always kind of critical of yourself when you see yourself on TV. There is no question that the presence of our camera crews and their equipment had an effect on the louds.

21:57Goloka Bolte:Viewing yourself, you think, oh God, say something intelligent. Just don't sit there. Hi, my name is Peter Samoa. I came from Cuba in 1980. This is the true story. I'm an H-A-B-8 educator. True story. Seven strangers. Picked to live in a loft. And have their lives taped. To find out what happens. What? When people stop being polite. Could you get the phone? And start getting real. The real world.

22:30Goloka Bolte:The revolution begins here.

22:34Dr. Jana Scrivani:Stand by. Ready, three. Take three.

22:40Dr. Jana Scrivani:When you get to the 90s, we have the proliferation of cable channels.

22:49Dr. Jana Scrivani:We've sort of moved out of the period of broadcasting, you know, like sort of back in the day when there were only four networks. And suddenly, you know, there's tons of networks and networks have to figure out how they keep people's attention.

23:06Racquel Gates:No justice, no peace is what they're chanting.

23:09Dr. Jana Scrivani:News media itself becomes incredibly sensational.

23:13Goloka Bolte:If it seemed like war yesterday, the reinforcements showed up tonight.

23:17Dr. Jana Scrivani:A truck bomb exploded in front of a government building in Oklahoma City.

23:20Goloka Bolte:We've got some breaking news. The space shuttle Columbia was going over North Texas. Details still emerging of an accident in Paris and around midnight involving Diana Princess of Wales.

23:30Dr. Jana Scrivani:News media becomes a form of entertainment in a way that I think is really different than it had been before.

23:36Goloka Bolte:9-1-1, what are you reporting? This is AC. I have OJ in the car. One thing we haven't noticed, and again, it's a very slow pursuit, followed by numerous highway patrol vehicles. Enter the so-called Dream Team, Simpson's all-star defense, including his most trusted ally, Robert Kardashian. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

23:58Racquel Gates:Because what do those channels exist for? They have to get the image. They have to get the picture. They exist to make money. say I couldn't help myself. What do they make money on? They make money on advertisements. What do you need, right, to make money on advertisements is you need viewers. How do you get viewers? Simple recipe. Shock had turned to fear. You make them really scared.

24:21Goloka Bolte:Fear that the few possessions that Andrew had spared would be stolen by looters.

24:25Racquel Gates:You make them really angry. The army stands guard, M-16s in hand. And then you promise them that you can make them, that they have to keep tuning in in order to keep themselves safe. The rage machine is such a great term for it. It's just churning. Fear, rage, the promise of relief.

24:46Goloka Bolte:Sifted through its debris and counted its dead.

24:49Racquel Gates:Over and over again.

24:51Goloka Bolte:And seen up close. Why they call it terror.

25:00Racquel Gates:That spills over, right, into our perception of reality. And it becomes the reality TV formula, right? This is Survivor.

25:17Goloka Bolte:When I was producing the finale of Survivor Marquesas, I'd rented Trump Woman skating rink in Central Park, met Donald, he told me how much he loved Survivor, and were I to ever have any ideas for him, He'd love to hear it and love to work with me. And thinking about a job interview show, kind of survivor-ish, but it takes place in a city with the winner getting a job in big-time American business, and Trump was the obvious choice. Only one drama can make 18 nice people become... Vicious. Vindictive. Cutthroat. Evil. Evil. Who loves the oppressive? This Thursday, it returns. Boom, boom, boom! The Proudership.

26:05Dr. Jana Scrivani:Coming up, the rage machine collides with the American dream. It's like the American dream on speed.

26:18Dr. Jana Scrivani:I'm Sierra, and I'm calling from Cha Chingsau, Thailand. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

26:25Goloka Bolte:My favorite reality TV show is Survivor. I have in my head the sound of the host Jeff Probst's voice yelling, you've got to dig deep and honestly does remind me that I'm more capable than I think I am. This message comes from Warby Parker. Prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Glasses designed in-house from premium materials starting at just$95 including prescription lenses. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. This message comes from Angie. Tackling a home project, Angie can connect you with pros who do such a good job, you might ask them to be your kid's godfather.

27:07Goloka Bolte:Don't do that. Just trust them to get the job done. Find a pro for your projects at Angie.com. That's A-N-G-I.com. This year, for the first time in NPR's history, public media is operating without federal funding. That means NPR needs your support now more than ever. I'm Brittany Luce from It's Been a Minute. Please do your part to keep independent, reliable news coverage strong and support the podcasts that get you through the day by making a gift for public media giving days. Head over to donate.npr.org. Part two, will the real some shady please stand up? And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

27:59Racquel Gates:I am a real American.

28:02Goloka Bolte:I'm on that mountain top, and I'm waiting for you, Andre, and the hospital's gone.

28:07Racquel Gates:When pro wrestling was first in thing, everybody thought it was real.

28:15The mortal Hulk Hagen.

28:19Racquel Gates:They thought that these conflicts and these characters that the wrestlers had created I mean, Hagen is 6 '8". Andre is 7 '5".

28:27Goloka Bolte:were real people. The bell is gone. This one is officially underway.

28:36Racquel Gates:And there's this cool word that I love that came out of the pro wrestling tradition called kayfabe. And what kayfabe is, is maintaining your character once you're outside of the ring.

28:48Goloka Bolte:What I am is what I am. I'm a real American. I love my family. I love my God. I love all my people that believe in me.

28:54Racquel Gates:Really, really good pro wrestlers will not break kayfabe. He got it!

29:01Goloka Bolte:Unbelievable! The world's heavyweight champion, Hulk Hogan, has proven to everyone what he's made of.

29:09Racquel Gates:So there's always this kind of question, right, about what is performance and what's reality. And I think it's no accident that one of the other things, right, that Trump was sort of heavily involved in before The Apprentice, and I think during was the WWE. He would make regular appearances. So when I think of this idea, right, of keeping kayfabe, I don't know what is his reality and what is he projecting. Your grapefruits are no match for my Trump Towers. People developed a parasocial relationship, right, a one-sided relationship with these people, but there's a great amount of distance between us.

30:02Goloka Bolte:Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the author of this book right here, Trump, the Art of the Deal, Donald Trump.

30:13Hi, Donald. Good to see you. Nice of you to stop by.

30:17Racquel Gates:For people who maybe didn't live in New York in the 70s, 80s, and 90s,

30:22Dr. Jana Scrivani:Donald Trump is the businessman who is cited in pop culture.

30:31Goloka Bolte:Samantha, a cosmopolitan, and Donald Trump. You just don't get more New York than that. I've got to go. I'll be at my office at Trump Tower. Good. Excuse me, where's the lobby? Down the hall and to the left. Thanks.

30:45Dr. Jana Scrivani:Donald Trump, both his name and his image, become synonymous with American wealth.

30:50Goloka Bolte:Donald Trump doesn't just live large. He lives, really, on top of the world. He is the American dream.

31:05Dr. Jana Scrivani:There's more than one version of the American dream. The early form of the American dream, which I would actually sort of connect to Westward Expansion, is the idea that any, like, young, able-bodied white man can come and, like, own land, right, and sort of build a home for himself and his family and own something.

31:25Goloka Bolte:I pledge allegiance to the flag.

31:28Dr. Jana Scrivani:The next iteration of the American dream

31:30Goloka Bolte:is that, you know, any immigrant,

31:32Dr. Jana Scrivani:if you come here and you work hard, you can make a really nice life for yourself.

31:36Goloka Bolte:Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

31:44Overland, overland.

31:45Dr. Jana Scrivani:Post-World War II, it's this idea that, hey, Young men, you have served your country and now you're going to come back and work hard at a good job that will allow you to buy, you know, a lovely home with a white picket fence and two cars and support your family.

32:04Dr. Jana Scrivani:Now, of course, across all of those, people are always left out. Like black people, for instance, are left out of every, and indigenous people are left out of every single one of those, those iterations. It's really like the straight white guys, you know, kind of fantasy. But I think what we get, especially in the 1950s and 60s, is the televised aspects of the civil rights movement.

32:29Goloka Bolte:The system is gradually breaking down, and this, I think, is a very hopeful sign.

32:34Dr. Jana Scrivani:Being able to see, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on television. Seeing black Americans being beaten by police and attacked by police dogs.

32:45Goloka Bolte:The inequality suffered by the American liberal population of the United States has hindered the American dream.

32:51Dr. Jana Scrivani:It's sort of like a reconsideration and a recalibration of what the American dream looks like.

32:56Goloka Bolte:It comes as a great shock, around the age of five or six or seven, to discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance has not pledged allegiance to you. it comes as a great shock to discover that the country, which is your birthplace, has not in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you.

33:21Dr. Jana Scrivani:And in the 80s, there's almost like this return to that 1950s ethos, but like a doubling down on it. We can, and so help us God, we will make America great again. And the dream itself being unbridled wealth, but also unbridled power.

33:46Dr. Jana Scrivani:That's that thing that makes the 80s and the rise of Donald Trump really tantalizing for a lot of people, both in the 80s and subsequently.

34:00Dr. Jana Scrivani:By the turn of the century, Donald Trump's larger-than-life persona had begun to fade. Before The Apprentice, Donald Trump was kind of a washed-up businessman.

34:12Racquel Gates:He had declared bankruptcy, you know, his casinos had failed.

34:18Dr. Jana Scrivani:So when the opportunity to host a new, survivor-ish business show came up, he suddenly had a chance to revive that persona. Kayfabe for the 21st century.

34:28Goloka Bolte:My name's Donald Trump, and I'm the largest real estate developer in New York. I own buildings all over the place. model agencies, the Miss Universe pageant, casinos, and private resorts like Mar-a-Lago. I'm looking for The Apprentice.

34:46Racquel Gates:People assumed, or Trump supporters at least, that if he's a wealthy, successful, powerful businessman...

34:54Goloka Bolte:You don't make a billion dollars being an idiot.

34:56Racquel Gates:He must also be really good at everything else. I think he's smart enough to run the country. I grew up with my family loving Trump. He's got a little Reagan in it, too, which is always a good thing. So make America great again. Make America great again.

35:13Goloka Bolte:The forgotten men and women of America will be forgotten no longer.

35:18Racquel Gates:That is the heart of this new movement. And then bringing it all back to the rage machine.

35:26Goloka Bolte:As the Trump campaign helps stoke America's outrage. Get her out of here. Protesters have always been part of the cost of doing business. Stoked. Anxiety, fear, rage. That little catchphrase is the candidate's version of what The Apprentice used to say. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired.

35:43Racquel Gates:And then promised he was the only one who could help.

35:47Goloka Bolte:This, in fact, is our new American moment. There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.

35:56Racquel Gates:See, it is the reality TV formula, right?

36:00Dr. Jana Scrivani:During the years when Trump went from apprentice host to president of the United States, reality TV also got a makeover, thanks to a couple factors. Reality television itself is becoming sort of focused on celebrities in a way that it hadn't been before.

36:17Goloka Bolte:Some jabroni just asked my daughter on a date.

36:20Dr. Jana Scrivani:That would be awesome.

36:21Goloka Bolte:No, she's not going out with it. Not as long as my name's Hulk Hogan. The Writers Guild of America went out on strike.

36:26Dr. Jana Scrivani:And a writer's strike in 2007 led to a boom in new, cheaper-to-make, unscripted reality TV shows. Kim, would you stop taking pictures of yourself?

36:36Goloka Bolte:Your sister's going to jail. Kim came into her prime exactly as social media was becoming the way of the world. That's lightning in a bottle, timing.

36:51Goloka Bolte:Hi, my name is Jeff Jenkins. I'm the founder of JJP, Jeff Jenkins Productions. I've been the executive producer of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and all of its spin-offs for the first decade of its existence. 911, what are you reporting? This is AC. I have OJ in the car. Mr. Kardashian was one of the attorneys representing OJ, and that unique last name, Kardashian, was kind of broadcast around the world. If you grow up with that, and it's seeping into your pores, it just becomes part of who you are. When I first saw video of the entire family, that bell goes off, maybe keeping up with the Kardashians is the reality Brady Bunch.

37:50Racquel Gates:I hate you all. Welcome to my family. I'm Kim Kardashian.

37:59Goloka Bolte:Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Kris, Bruce Jenner, Rob, Kendall and Kylie, baby sisters of a second marriage.

38:15Brady Bunch

38:20I will literally f*** you up.

38:22Racquel Gates:You're literally, I will literally f*** you up.

38:25Goloka Bolte:Like all of us, they're a dysfunctional family, just like ours. That's relatable. I'll punch you in your face. They may fight, but any outsider, you're not going to mess with us. I do think their dysfunction is kind of at a Shakespearean level. Kim and Kris headed for divorce just 72 days after tying the knot. Khloe was in rare form, especially when it came to her ex, Lamar. The world got its first look at Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympic hero turned reality star.

38:57Dr. Jana Scrivani:Her hair appears to be styled like an afro. Teens are using a shot glass prescription bottles to plump up their lips like Kylie Jenner.

39:05Racquel Gates:Critics say that the photos are an example of cultural appropriation. Kim Kardashian breaks down in tears over her marriage troubles with Kanye West on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

39:16Goloka Bolte:They're coming up on being the longest-running reality show period in history. And they have built a multi-billion-dollar brand off of sharing their lives.

39:35Dr. Jana Scrivani:Some have nicknamed them America's royal family. Others see them as more of a brand than a family. And that, at least, isn't totally new. We're so used to seeing the Queen as head of state. There's almost something unreal about her. It's actually her family that make her real. The divorces, the scandals, the family rifts, the fallouts. And back in the 1960s, John F. Kennedy, who came to power at the same time TVs became a fixture in every American home, used his made-for-TV smile and charm to captivate the country.

40:06Racquel Gates:People just really not only loved Kennedy, but developed a parasocial relationship with his family.

40:14Dr. Jana Scrivani:People wanted to know everything about them. And the gossip mill was always turning with some new story. Did Kennedy smoke pot? Why was the Queen of England mad at Jackie? Was Kennedy having an affair with Marilyn Monroe?

40:28Goloka Bolte:Folks like Marilyn Monroe, perhaps unwittingly, were in some ways also living in a reality show.

40:38Dr. Jana Scrivani:But what makes the Kardashians different is they didn't start as politicians or actors or singers. Their story began with a high-profile murder case and a sex tape.

40:49Goloka Bolte:Q, Ray J, sexy, can I? I'm just kidding. We're going to keep it classy.

40:54Dr. Jana Scrivani:And the reality TV machine transformed them into one of the most influential families on the planet. A symbol of a new version of the American dream. One of wealth, excess, and celebrity. Tailored for a world where we ourselves are branded content. But making it work is a dream that's attainable for only a very few.

41:16Racquel Gates:The facts bear out that there is very limited economic mobility in our country. but because of American exceptionalism, individualism, pull yourself up by your bootstraps culture, people really believe that they can.

41:33Dr. Jana Scrivani:The trade-off? Constantly having a camera track your every move, watching you in your most vulnerable moments, and letting the world judge you for it.

41:43Goloka Bolte:Kim, whose destiny is this experience of being on television and sharing, had very few boundaries. She will reassure me, no, keep rolling.

42:00Racquel Gates:Honey, I'm the Marilyn and the Jack. What is performance and what's reality?

42:12Welcome.

42:14Goloka Bolte:You've got mail.

42:16Racquel Gates:When I think about myself as a teenager, first on the internet, what was the number one rule? You don't share personal information about yourself with strangers on the internet. And, you know, fast forward 20 years later.

42:31Goloka Bolte:Goodbye.

42:33Racquel Gates:What are we all doing? We're sharing everything about our lives with strangers on the internet. Everybody has a smartphone. Everybody has a camera on them at all times. There's this intense expectation that not only are you going to record every aspect of your life, but that it's going to look absolutely perfect and beautiful and there's no end. Just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling forever and ever and ever.

43:09Dr. Jana Scrivani:Do you think that people today in our modern worlds are more lonely than they've ever been? I do.

43:25Dr. Jana Scrivani:Coming up, the realities of love and loneliness.

43:42Goloka Bolte:This is Eric Massey from Amsterdam, and you're listening to ThruLine, one of the best podcasts there are. This message comes from Angie. Tackling a home project, Angie can connect you with pros who do such a good job, you might ask them to be your kid's godfather. Don't do that. Just trust them to get the job done. Find a pro for your projects at Angie.com. That's A-N-G-I dot com. Part three. You found love in a hopeless place. I almost sang the Rihanna song, but I wouldn't do it because I feel like that would be the take you use. Here he is, The Bachelor. Why on earth are you doing this? I was thinking that I want to meet someone great.

44:31Goloka Bolte:Well, really the easy part is going to be meeting these 25 women. The tough part is deciding which 15 you're going to invite to get to know you a little bit better. These are real women, and they are really looking for a husband. I mean, if this is going to be a fairy tale, how perfect would that be?

44:50Dr. Jana Scrivani:The idea of a soulmate, of the one, was around way before The Bachelor.

44:56Goloka Bolte:No matter what I ever do or say, Heathcliff. I've loved you since I was 11. We'll always have Paris.

45:01Racquel Gates:I hate it when you make me laugh. Even worse, when you make me cry. You complete me.

45:07Goloka Bolte:But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.

45:15Dr. Jana Scrivani:The Bachelor, which has been on TV for more than 20 years now, fused reality with that fantasy and made us believe we could have it too. I want to be everything to you.

45:27Goloka Bolte:I want to be everything for you.

45:30Racquel Gates:And then it comes right to this romantic fairy tale conclusion. it ends with a proposal and a beautiful diamond ring and so what we're seeing right is is the

45:44Goloka Bolte:fairy tale bring in bachelor producer like a lot of people think it's because it's like oh let's just find the craziest you know person to get good ratings but it's actually not because to have

45:59Dr. Jana Scrivani:people watch, you have to buy into the fantasy.

46:02Racquel Gates:And then to buy into the fantasy, you have to know that, you know, there are potentially great matches for people.

46:15Dr. Jana Scrivani:Sometimes when something's really hokey, it almost gives us permission to get lost in it because it's kind of like, you know, this is silly, right? We all know this is a construction, right? Okay. Now that we've gotten that out of, out of the way, we suspend disbelief. It allows us to sort of lower our defenses and kind of fully indulge. But also, I think the real always seeps out.

46:39Dr. Jana Scrivani:Even before the pandemic struck, this was the lonely century.

46:44Goloka Bolte:Technology has led to substituting online connections for offline, in-person connections, and ultimately I think that has been harmful.

46:52Dr. Jana Scrivani:The lonelier we get, the more seductive the fantasy that will find real human connection becomes. And the easier it is to feel invested in shows like The Bachelor, where the engagement ring is the ultimate grand prize.

47:06Racquel Gates:We have our favorites, right? Our proxies, who we want to win, who we start to form parasocial relationships with.

47:13Dr. Jana Scrivani:And as modern love becomes increasingly online and competitive, reality TV has evolved to mirror today's dating dilemmas.

47:26Dr. Jana Scrivani:In my head, it is really easy to sift out F-boys, but y 'all be so confused. You'd be like, how did this happen? Oh my God, I thought he was this. And it was like, sis, is you blind? And that is why we're here. F-boy Island.

47:44Goloka Bolte:24 men are coming right.

47:46Dr. Jana Scrivani:They're not really about love and dating. They're about something else, and they're really just sort of competitive shows anyway. They're more like, they're kind of like Survivor in some ways.

47:56Racquel Gates:It's almost like an enactment, right, of the dating apps. It's just like, kind of swipe. I mean, certainly there's a lot more physicality, but just going through partners. He was making me feel uncomfortable.

48:10Goloka Bolte:We're going to be sweet buddies. I've been in, like, situation shit. I'm kidding.

48:18Racquel Gates:You know, I have a couple seconds where I'm deciding if I want to swipe left or swipe right. and they're kind of curating this image and if you can't curate that image right does that mean that that avenue is closed to you and I think different people you know some people will say no I don't have a problem with it but I think the majority if you ask the majority right they're going to say if you're not conventionally attractive and don't meet sort of x y and z criteria you're not going to get any matches and then what do you do right where do you go to actually meet somebody that you can make a connection with.

48:55Dr. Jana Scrivani:That question has led to frustration, hopelessness, and a sense of grievance that's flourishing online and reflecting back into our TV shows.

49:06Goloka Bolte:Cue the razor machine. Okay. You interrupted our date because you couldn't handle me and her alone. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine.

49:18Racquel Gates:That's not fair. and I don't want it. We may experience, right, this emotion, right, of schadenfreude. Such a great word. It's happiness of the misfortune of others. When they get into fights, when they get too drunk and embarrass themselves. You've embarrassed me in front of everyone. You've made me look stupid in front of everyone. So yeah, I'm going to react.

49:42Dr. Jana Scrivani:I think that it's fascinating that a lot of contemporary shows around love are much more focused on relationship dynamics 90 Day Fiance, Married at First Sight.

49:56Goloka Bolte:This is a revolutionary new social experiment. This is the first time an experiment like this has ever been done in the U.S. Four experts intend to use scientific research to arrange three marriages.

50:09Dr. Jana Scrivani:Essentially what happens after people find each other, as opposed to treating marriage, for instance, as the ultimate goal or the end of the story, right? We're kind of like picking up after Cinderella and Prince Charming get married and being like, so what were the expectations like now that she was back in the castle? Like, what happened then? Why, it's like a dream.

50:34Racquel Gates:A wonderful dream, coach. So sick of this. Go away, then. Go away. Are you happy?

50:42Goloka Bolte:No.

50:43Dr. Jana Scrivani:The fantasy is breaking down. And to keep us hooked, reality shows about love are acknowledging more and more just how hard it is not only to find human connection, but to sustain it. Like, I really would love it if you could just kind of, like, get more into, like, a husband mentality. Those quieter moments when people are having a conversation about, I can't believe you did, like, that's when the reel slips out.

51:08Goloka Bolte:Like, what's your expectation? Do you think you're just going to build me into who you want me to be?

51:12Dr. Jana Scrivani:I view these shows as acknowledging for viewers a growing cynicism, quite frankly, around like traditional models and narratives around love and around relationships.

51:33Dr. Jana Scrivani:Whether it's reality television or like classic Hollywood cinema, media has always been a site of fantasy projection. It's a place for us to work out our hopes, our desires, our anxieties, our fears. And I think reality television serves that purpose really, really well.

51:53Racquel Gates:Life is a series of events that don't make narrative sense. There aren't neat conclusions. So reality television provides that for us.

52:01Dr. Jana Scrivani:You know, there's a way that people talk about television and media and reality TV within that as being a reflection of reality. I actually think it's a refraction of reality. It's taking things that are happening in real life and sort of skewing them and sometimes presenting them back to us in ways that are perfectly aligned with reality and in some ways are skewed in such a way that make us question what we thought we knew about reality.

52:39Goloka Bolte:Okay, cue the final scene of the Truman Show when the show's creator finally speaks directly to Truman after televising him without his knowledge since the day he was born. I have been watching you your whole life. You can't leave, Truman. You belong here. Say something. Say something, goddammit. You're on television. You're live to the whole world! Bring up Do Line ending music.

53:19Goloka Bolte:And roll credits.

53:25Dr. Jana Scrivani:That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. Do Line was created by me and Ramtin Arablui. This episode was produced by me and...

53:34Goloka Bolte:Lawrence Wu.

53:35Dr. Jana Scrivani:Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Yolanda Sanguini. Casey Miner. Christina Kim.

53:41Goloka Bolte:Devin Kadiyama. Amiri Talun.

53:44Dr. Jana Scrivani:Jennifer Etienne. Thank you to Cher Vincent, Nigeri Eaton, Tamar Charney, and Anya Grunman. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. This episode was mixed by Gilly Moon. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Anya Mizani.

54:03Goloka Bolte:Naveed Marvi. Sho Fujiwara.

54:06Dr. Jana Scrivani:And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline at npr.org. And if you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number, too. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode. Also, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening.

54:31Goloka Bolte:This message comes from Angie. Tackling a home project? Angie can connect you with pros who do such a good job, you might ask them to be your kid's godfather. Don't do that. Just trust them to get the job done. Find a pro for your projects at Angie.com. That's A-N-G-I dot com.