NPR – It’s been almost two decades since “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” debuted. The franchises can be sappy, sentimental and formulaic, but they created a market for reality TV dating shows and are still entertaining the masses to this day.
The love contestants seek in these shows is almost exclusively heterosexual love, and often involves stereotypical notions of gender. But one show is flipping the script on some of these conventions: MTV’s latest season of the dating show “Are You the One?”
What’s the value of representing the underrepresented in reality TV? Can we trust networks not to exploit those it claims to champion?
We talk representation and reality TV.