BelMix Seminar Series] Aziliz Kondracki - The storytelling of heterosexual marriage in the production of the TV reality show Married at First Sight in Poland

The storytelling of heterosexual marriage in the production of the TV reality show Married at First Sight in Poland

By Aziliz KONDRACKI (EHESS, CNRS, France)

Date: Thursday 21 November 2024, 10 am – 11:30 am (Brussels Time)

Venue: Room Doucy (Building S, 12th floor) Campus Solbosch, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Avenue Jeanne 44, Bruxelles 1050

AND also live streamed online via Zoom

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Abstract: The reality TV format Married at First Sight subverts arranged marriage and offers a new way of getting married: single men and women rely on a “scientific” expertise to find love, and meet on the day of their marriage. Distributed by a German company, this Danish reality TV format Married at First Sight has been exported since 2013 to thirty territories including Poland.

Based on an ethnography of the transnational circulation of this format, and its adaptation in Poland, we will discuss the mediations at work for its adaptation to the local context. More particularly, we propose to analyze the conditions of production of “ordinary” television love stories by the producers of the Polish version of the Married at First Sight format but also by the candidates (in other words the bride and groom). We will thus analyze the way in which the restrictive framework of the format essentially conditions the heterosexual love stories that are presented on the screen – stories that are intended to be “realistic” rather than “superficial” or “staged”. From an analysis of the emotional repertoire that the production framework of the Married at First Sight format maintains, and the moral regulation that takes place, we in fact attempt to grasp the contradictions or ambiguities inherent in this production to understand how the people engage (in relation to each other) in this process of updating heterosexual marriage as a normative ideal.

Bio: Aziliz Kondracki is PhD candidate in Anthropology at École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Email: aziliz.kondracki@ehess.fr.