Blog post #11 for Monday’s reading on April 27, 2020

Reading Summary

Klosterman talks about fake love. It is impossible to compare fiction characters such as actors on a screen to a real relationship. Klosterman uses John Cusack as an example of an actor that women love because of his fictional characters. It creates an unfair advantage. The same can be said for musicians, such as cold play, that make melodic songs about fake love. These fake loves promote a fake feeling of love, lead people to want that feeling for real, but they cant have it.  “Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake”. Personality types can out grow their constructs due to media though, such as a nerd being able to get an attractive women because they are funny. Media leads us in to a point of misdirection that makes us need something more than what we want. 

Source: Chuck Klosterman (2010) “This is Emo” in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. New York: Scribner.

Outside Example 

The show Married at First Sight is a show where two people have a blind marriage. Four love “experts” (take that for what you will) find candidates that they think would match up well together. They then have the women plan the wedding. At the wedding, the man stands at the end of the aisle and finds out who his bride is as they are walking down the aisle. They have no idea who each other are, what they look like, nothing. It is a completely blind marriage. The show then follows them for eight weeks. At the end of the eight weeks they decide wether they will stay married or get a divorce. As you can guess the odds are not very high, but surprisingly higher than you would expect. 

Clip from show: https://youtu.be/-IvMysOD0IQ

Reading Connection

This show is a reality show about relationships. In the show the relationships are deemed as “experiments”. The show is not an accurate portrayal of relationships. The show is actually kind of scary to think about when you imagine the people that are watching see the show and compare it to their own relationship. Some of the relationships do have some bright spots and last, but the majority don’t work out. The fact that people leave it up to equations and others kind of ties into Klosterman”s idea of how people only want the basics, but seem to need something more. The best part of this show is seeing the couples individual idea of what a relationship is clash as they are forced to be married to each other.