Playing with Scripts: Social Experiments and Reality Television

This chapter is premised on the idea that gender and sexuality are performative, that is, that there are a set of codified and regulated scripts that are socially designated appropriate or inappropriate when it comes to flirting, intimacy, and sexual relations. As a dominant form of entertainment, screen media chart these codifications and their transgressions, and we show this through the romance reality television show Married at First Sight. This is a show that skips flirting and starts with marriage; that is, flirting is latent, or deferred, as an experiment with social scripts. We propose that the show flirts with science as a field of expertise that teaches us techniques of intimacy and negotiation, and its viewing pleasures are manifested through the medium, the spectacle, and the awkwardness of intimacy on screen.