Barrelhouse TV Workshop: Love is Blind Part 1

In the Barrelhouse Television Workshop, writers look at the way we tell stories across media, the way those "writer moves" work, and why they may or may not work in certain situations. Next week, we’ll be discussing “Love is Blind,” the Netflix dating show.

Previously: meet our panel

We loved this show so much that we had to break the workshop up into installments. Today: what is it about this show, love in general, MySpace love, Amazing Race love, and aural pheromones.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS SHOW?

Sian Griffiths (SG): Because I asked my students if any of them were watching Love Is Blind. About two thirds of them had no idea what I was talking about, and the other third had heard of the show but not watched it. I mumbled something along the lines of, “yeah, I guess there’s really no reason you should watch,” but I am pretty sure I lied and that, just possibly, this show gets at something much bigger. Why should they maybe watch?

Jackson Bliss (JB):  Same here. My colleagues gave me a blank, almost sad look like they pitied me when I mentioned it in a recent colloquium (yes, it came up during one of my answers in the Q & A) & i suddenly realized I’d gone too far.  Fuck it. Anyway, for me part of it is the premise: we are just voices trying to connect in an age of social fragmentation. In this show, that’s literally true. So the idea of backgrounding physical attraction is wonderfully counterintuitive & also tricky AF. 

Kate Mead-Brewer (KMB): You can ask my obsession with romance novels: I’m pretty shameless about the things I enjoy. It never bothers me to admit what shows I’m watching or what books I’m reading. As long as it’s not hurting anyone, enjoy what you enjoy. Talking in-person to people about this show, I get the weird/pitying looks too, but then usually people seem oddly relieved that I’ve brought it up. As if I’ve given them permission to enjoy it, too. I think I was drawn to this show for the same reason I was drawn to The Circle: it’s about communication at a distance, about trying to figure out how and why we form the relationships we do, and at what point we feel safe to declare things like trust, loyalty, and love. My mom met my stepdad in a chatroom. I have multiple friends in long-term relationships due to apps and long-distance dating. I’m super into the idea of love-at-first-voice as JESSICA put it. 

Tyrese Coleman (TLC): I am also a hopeless romantic (hello, I edited an entire Barrelhouse issue about LOVE for goodness sake!). Also, I kind of met my spouse this way. We communicated on MySpace for a year before ever meeting one another and sort of fell in very strong like, leading to love, without meeting. Though we did have photos of one another and he admitted to not being interested in me until I posted a photo showing my cleavage, but still LOVE IS BLIND *weeping emoji*.

Michael B Tager (MBT): My wife and I got together via AIM! We kind of knew each other IRL, but we communicated almost exclusively through the internet before we finally dated. 

Erin Fitzgerald (EF): I will watch pretty much anything that toys with how people organically get to know each other. Shows like that always have the potential to offer insight into a Real Life process that is actually so much weirder and harder to describe than twenty men sitting on a set designed by Pier 1 Imports with no phones and a lot of champagne. In this case, I think I stuck with it for the Twitter entertainment. But also, I happen to be a content creator (like Lauren, but a lot less charismatic!) who is married to a scientist (like Cameron, but with much longer hair and Star Wars knowledge!). We met in person, so that’s where the similarities end, but it’s an occupational combination I don’t recall seeing anywhere else on TV. I got very curious about what edits they’d get and, of course, where they’d end up in the end. 

SG: Yeah… I think that’s what I’m feeling. Like, despite its title, the show is less about love/marriage and more about how we can even know one another without a physical interaction? Is an aphysical experience real? Is it the realest? And at the same time, I really enjoy that we, the viewers, see behind that screen. We know exactly how full that wine glass is, and who’s sharing it with their dog.

MBT: I can’t really disagree with Sian’s take. My wife and I have been having legit conversations about our relationship and love/life in general after watching these ridiculous people say and do ridiculous things for this ridiculously high-concept show and that’s actually valuable. I think the premise itself is idiotic and if they really thought love was blind, they wouldn’t have stacked the deck with model-looking people, but there is some validity in exploring the intersection of physical appearance/personality/core values in reverse order.  

Plus I get to watch people reference “pods” unironically. And there’s always JESSICA who is, somehow, a character on a tv show that I’ve never seen before. I’m admittedly a new entrant to these kinds of reality tv shows (previously, I’d watched Project Runway, Top Chef and Survivor).

JB:  Interesting fact:  I met my wife on MySpace while I was working on my MFA thesis. We emailed each other for six months straight before meeting IRL.  For the first time in my life, i became friends with someone before i fell in love, which is part of the reason I think this shows pulls me in so closely. It examines how our mind actively sabotages our heart (just look at Jessica), how our physical attraction to people can complicate our emotional reality, not necessarily simplify it, how we blind ourselves to our connections with others, and how social constructs of gender, sexuality, marriage, & community can be used to restrict ourselves & judge ourselves at the same time they simplify our lives.  It almost feels like the love part is the easy part for the couples in Love is Blind, but once they have to situate it, shit gets real.  

TLC: Aw we have mutual MySpace love stories *heart eyes emoji*

JB:  Right back at you, Tender Loving Care.  *various heart & fist emojis*

KMB: It’s so interesting to me how many people are meeting online without ever meeting each other irl. I think my person and I are in an almost reverse position of Love Is Blind, because I saw a photo of him on Facebook before ever meeting him irl and knew immediately, he was it, it was him. I (respectfully) pursued him after that for over a year before he agreed to go out with me, and now we’ve been together for almost a decade. I wonder if I would’ve recognized him the same way on a photo-free platform.

Melissa Ragsley (MR): I want to first say what it is about this show and for me it fills the void of The Bachelor which can no longer be watched firstly because it’s so bloated and Disneyfied that I’d rather just watch a spoof like Burning Love but also because The Bachelor was the last thing I watched in the hospital before giving birth to my son practically alone, none of my family answered their phones and the staff didn't believe I was in active labor so The Bachelor equals literal trauma and excruciating pain for me! And yet I need a show that is akin in my life! 

The concept of the show, if taken seriously, is a valid experiment, Is love blind? It can be, meaning, it doesn’t have to be all about the physical. But when you take not just the appearance of someone away, but the interaction between two people, the looks, the body language, being alone in a pod there is no choice but to fill in all that yourself which forces you to assume things based on your own hopes and past experiences and the chances that you are filling in all that information correctly is not great. It’s basically setting yourself up for disappointment. As the obviously Nick Lachey says, “emotional connection is the key to long term marital success” and emotional connection is not created in a vacuum. Emotions are physical. You feel them. 

Leonora Desar (LD): Kate, that’s so weird, I “met” my husband in the same way: saw his pic on FB, somehow knew he was the one. Maybe Zuckerberg should hire us to do some ads. 

As for the show, I am always looking for ways to avoid what I should be doing. Typically, this is writing, though sometimes it’s doing laundry or moving one stack of mess over to the other room. Love is Blind is my escape. First of all, there isn’t any writing involved—well, at least I didn’t think there would be at the time. (This probably doesn’t count….Does it?) 

Secondly, there are lots of 🔥 messes on the show, and they are greater and messier than myself. Whenever I am feeling down on myself for not writing, I can always turn to a certain MESSICA.

And third: Weirdness. I love this. I love the unusual premise. It’s like if The Bachelor and Black Mirror decided to have a love child, on LSD. In spite of myself, I find myself itching for the pen. Or for my phone. A blank note to write down this idea: “What is MESSICA’s life like in 20 years from now? Narrate from the POV of her wine glass, or her dog.”AND: “What if Giannina were to LITERALLY rise up from the ash?”

MBT: OMG. Let’s recast the last X-Men movie--Dark Phoenix--with GiGi in the title role. I’d watch the hell out of that. 

LD: Hell yes! 🔥 (insert phoenix emoji)

ON LOVE

SG As people who care about words, what do we do with the sloppy use of the word “love” on this show? Or should it be broader, more expansive?

JB: On one hand it feels like love is used on this show interchangeably with like, but OTOH, I think it’s totally possible to fall in love with someone quickly & intensely and some of these people are sprung.  So when they are declaring their love in the pods tightfisting a drink & then, you know, on a beautiful secluded beach en México, it feels (mostly) real to me, though you can’t discount the conflation of love with a romantic vacay, beautiful people, free booze, constant adrenaline, the silent fear of being alone, & reality TV fame either.  What I want to believe is that if love is a large body of water, maybe their first declarations come after they dip their toes in it. Some people like Amber & Mark are going to swim in the water for life, others like Lauren & Gigi are going to run in & run out. But I define love capaciously and I’m also a huge romantic, so what the hell do I know?

KMB: As someone who was always terrified of telling boyfriends she loved them--in high school and college I was the queen of “I like/really like/adore/appreciate you”--until meeting my person, which was love before I ever met him outside his Facebook photo, I remain shocked that people were willing to say the L-word inside the pods. I know people fall in love in all kinds of ways and time frames, but man!

TLC: As the person who always said “I love you” first in ALL of my relationships, I am going to keep my mouth shut on this question...

MR: I’m shocked at how easily some people can say they love someone but yet, I find it really easy to say it when I don’t mean it romantically. So is it possible they are saying it because they don’t actually feel it? That it’s a line they are supposed to say with cameras filming them? My biggest problem concerning love and this show and shows like this and society et al is that the end result of love is marriage and it’s either say “I Do” or it isn’t real. We need more shows that don’t contractually make you stand at an altar. We need shows that make you understand marriage is sometimes for tax breaks. Is that anti-romantic? Yes but I stand by it! 

There was one moment on this show when I felt love and it was not romantic but if we are talking about the word love, I can’t remove other variations of it. Post Damian saying “I don’t” and after Gigi muddies up her gown running to the dumpsters, her mother, the beautiful Milady, comes to her crying more than her daughter is and says, “Ideally, he would have said yes and you would have said no, not the reverse, because this way hurts more,” and gives Gigi a heaving hug, I felt that. That was protection, that was knowing that the marriage wasn’t going to happen, that was comfort. THAT WAS LOVE. 

SG: Totally. The parent love on this show was consistently the most potent and compelling. I came around to believing the romantic love was sincere with Lauren and Cameron, but I have to admit, it made me squirm every time JESSICA used the word. 

I’m also with you, Melissa, on finding it easy to say in a non-romantic setting. Generally, I’m for more love in the world.

EF: I’m an Old and it’s been fascinating to watch the shifts in how marriage is perceived by American culture. I remember (amusedly, don’t worry) having our child after being married for eight years and thinking “Well, there’s another 18 right there!” But of course now, I have friends and family who have children, but hold off on marriage. It’s becoming something that isn’t about social shaming or scrutiny or even health insurance sometimes. While obviously you’re dead on about tax breaks and legal statuses, Melissa, in some situations it seems like there’s this new depth to the whole thing.  

MR: I agree, Erin, I think people are thinking about it in different ways now, but yet television shows still present it as the goal. Because they need that narrative “happy” ending or “tragic” ending. And yes, I suppose we wouldn’t care as much if the stakes weren’t set at that level. But what if it was you can get married or you have to immediately go on the Amazing Race together to further test your “love” or break up? Give us, and them, a third option that meets current cultural context levels.  

EF: This has to be the next step in shows like this, for sure. The most “successful” couple from Love Is Blind is the one who seemed to have the least amount of pod time on the show. Looking back now, I’d be a lot more interested in that content.

MBT: I also think the most successful couple on the show is also possibly the most attractive. I mean, Cameron and Lauren are both total smoke shows. Like, it’s easy for love to blind when people are well adjusted, model-ass, upwardly mobile people with smiles of shining light. I mean, yeah I want to see more time in the pods too, I just wonder.

LD: I love the way you subtly switched “love is blind” to “love to blind;” the writer in me appreciates that as well as the reality show fanatic.

I think Love is Blind allows for P.C.F.P. (Perfect Conditions for Projection): 

-It’s dark

-You can’t see the other person

-You are in this electrified, heightened environment where everyone is telling you: not only is it ok to fall in love, but you should. 

-As you point out, Michael, we have these “total smoke shows”—so when the darkness lifts, one’s projections are reinforced. You didn’t fall for someone ugly.

That said, part of me believes there might be something to it. If not love, then something that can predate it. I think of people who bond through traumatic experience: they may have only just spent hours trapped in that elevator or in that writing class or at war, but they’ve been through something that no one else can get. 

Also: This might be a little unrelated, but I think they’re picking up subliminal cues. This speaks to if love is in fact blind. I’m thinking of Amber and Barnett. These two look alike, from coloring to body type to even mannerisms. They look like, had they met in person, they would have chosen one another. In other words, I think that the darkness couldn’t cancel everything out. I believe clues slipped in about appearances: through voices, projected confidence, verbal cues.

MBT: That is a great point, Leonora. What kinds of cues do we project with our voice timbre, our accents, our values? Like aural pheromones.

LD: “Aural pheromones,” yes! I love that. I think some of these might be more blatant while others slip in through the subconscious.