Stretching authenticity in times of restricted mobility: Transtextuality,place anchoring,and boredom in romance reality show 90 Day Fiancé: Self-Quarantined

Abstract

The article explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the production and narrative strategies of the 90 Day Fiancé franchise, focusing on its spin-off, 90 Day Fiancé: Self-Quarantined (2020). It examines how the programme adapted to mobility restrictions and lockdown policies through self-filming, remote interviewing, and focusing on mundane, pandemic-specific activities. Using theories of reality TV, documentary and authenticity, the study highlights the spin-off’s negotiation of authenticity via transtextuality, place anchoring and boredom. The article contributes to understanding how pandemic-era reality TV embraced flexibility and pragmatism, blending heightened authenticity with performative elements to maintain relatability and audience engagement.

Introduction

TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé (2014-), the popular and – often – controversial US reality TV franchise navigating intercultural romance between US citizens and overseas sweethearts, is known for engaging with issues of mobility and border-crossings. The show is structured around the timeline provided when one is granted the fiancé(e) K-1 non-immigrant visa, permitting ‘the foreign-citizen fiancé(e) to travel to the United States and marry his or her US citizen sponsor within 90 days of arrival’ (US Department of State – Bureau of Consular Affairs, n.d). The show focuses on the intense 90-day period as a couple tests cohabitating, adjusting to each other and planning a wedding. This period is especially challenging for the incoming fiancé(e), who is financially dependent on their partner and at risk of having their K-1 visa cancelled. By documenting their daily life, including sweet moments, conflicts and compromises, along with individual and couples’ interviews and input from family and friends, the show highlights the trials of intercultural romance.

With the COVID-19 pandemic imposing severe restrictions to travelling both within the country and across borders, the programme was forced to experiment with and implement alternative and remote ways of filming, focusing on how participants are coping with a destabilising event. This article examines how 90 Day Fiancé (henceforth 90DF) adapted to mobility restrictions and lockdown policies during the first months of the pandemic, by focusing on aesthetic and narrative strategies adopted under the rapid and strategic transition from a highly standardised reality TV format to more flexible documentary/self-filming modes. More specifically, the article focuses on the 90DF: Self-Quarantined spin-off (2020), featuring popular current and past participants on the show having to isolate at home, and closely studies how different strategies of adaptation, such as self-filming and remote interviewing, negotiate and reflect back on authenticity claims pertaining to reality TV as a genre. Specifically, the study’s main enquiry centres on what kind of authenticity work is performed in pandemic reality TV, with a particular interest in how the latter discursively and rhetorically constructs transtextual authenticity, place authenticity and narrative/emotional authenticity. As such, the study aims to contribute with an updated understanding of reality TV as a hybrid and reflexive, but also flexible and pragmatic, genre, and at the same time with an in-depth understanding of pandemic reality TV as a sub-genre characterised by augmented use of authenticity work, (re)legitimising the ‘real’ of reality TV.

90 Day Fiancé and the spectacle of family immigration

Since 2014, when it first appeared in the reality TV universe, 90DF has covered an important cultural space, functioning as commentary on challenges brought about by border-crossing romance, as well as on questions around migrant identity, assimilation and integration, while occasionally reflecting on the gendered, racialised and classist bias of contemporary border regimes. The franchise includes several spin-offs: 90DF: Happily Ever After (2016-) follows participants post-90 days, 90DF: Before the 90 Days (2017-) covers the period before the K-1 Visa, and 90DF: The Other Way (2019-) flips the script, focusing on Americans moving abroad. Other spin-offs like The Family Chantel (2019-) and Darcey & Stacey (2020-) follow popular or controversial participants navigating married or single life. Part of 90DF’s popularity has been attributed to the fact that the premise is built on high stakes (that is marriage or deportation), as well as a culture of suspicion, both intrinsic elements of the K-1 Visa (Soloski, 2019). In terms of reception patterns, it has been described as a highly addictive show (Ray-Harris, 2020); by providing endless amount of bingeable, cringe content and by embracing suspenseful editing, including soap opera-like cliffhangers, 90DF offers a wide variety of viewing, reading and engagement modes, often depending on which version of the franchise one focuses on.

While not extensively commented on in scholarly accounts, the show has impacted understandings of border-crossing romance, particularly in representing power dynamics between US citizens and foreign partners. Previous research highlights how the show dehumanises foreign partners, emphasises US citizens’ personhood, and attributes foreign partners’ differences to cultural factors, legitimating the resistance or scepticism of the US partner (Vesely, 2021). The show’s editing practices have been addressed as an important factor contributing to the establishment of a climate of suspicion toward foreigners (ibid.), while filming of and interviewing friends and family of US citizens have been discussed as further intensifying concerns around the disingenuity of the relationship – the latter being often framed as ‘a ploy to obtain American citizenship’ (Meszaros, 2018: 268).

In terms of its generic categorisation, 90DF belongs to the reality TV subgenre of docusoap (Murray and Ouellette, 2004), combining documentary and soap opera elements. Markers that point to the documentary tradition include handheld camerawork, synch sound and focus on everyday activities, while markers that pay homage to the soap opera tradition include short narrative sequences, intercuts of multiple plotlines, mini cliff-hangers, the use of musical sound track, and a focus on character personality (42). The aforementioned verité grammar is often complemented by the extensive use of close-up shots and confessional interviews (Deery, 2015), while a particular stylistic characteristic reminiscent of the soap opera is the traditional shot/reverse-shot camera work (Aslama and Pantti, 2006). In practical terms, 90DF relies on a ‘dancing-around-the-action’ filming style, where the crew follows subjects closely, minimising intervention while reacting quickly to events. While casual, on-the-fly interviews capture spontaneous reactions, the show also focuses on retrospective individual and couple interviews, where participants reflect on past events, share perspectives and express emotions. This often results in highly spectacularised emotional expressions or money shots, that is ‘moment [s] of letting go, of losing control, of surrendering to the body and its “animal” emotions’ (Grindstaff, 2002: 20).

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, TLC announced on 2 April 2020 a new addition to the so-called 90DF universe, titled 90DF: Self-Quarantined (henceforth 90DF-SQ). In an attempt to circumvent mobility restrictions, adapt to work-from-home directives, and continue producing content, TLC advertised the release of a five-episode mini-series following how current and past participants, singles and couples, cope with the extraordinary events surrounding life under the global coronavirus pandemic, framed as yet another challenge in the life of the participants. In the face of such unprecedented times, 90DF-SQ is addressed in this article as a ‘revelatory’ case study (Yin, 2018), providing the opportunity to critically assess pandemic reality TV as a unique phenomenon, previously inaccessible to empirical study. While the focus on authenticity is in no way an innovative take on reality TV as a genre, the evaluation of authenticity work in pandemic reality TV presents the opportunity to: (a) deliver an in-depth analysis of the discursive and rhetorical construction of authenticity work from the perspective of production adjustments and choices, and the traces they have left on the final product; (b) contribute to the ongoing discussion around authenticity from the perspective of genre and multiplicities (such as the spin-off); and (c) discuss the possibility of addressing reality TV as an archive of pandemic places and im/mobilities.

Reality TV: Hybridity, authenticity and performance

Issues of classification, including widely agreed-on boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, as well as between documentary and reality TV, have consistently troubled scholarly endeavours focusing particularly on deciphering the ‘real’ of nonfictional programmes. Documentaries are generally understood as ‘based on a degree of fact, and document [ing] the world, to a certain extent and under certain conditions’ (Hill, 2007: 101), while reality TV is broadly understood as the ‘presentation of real people and their experiences in an entertainment frame’ (104). Βoth documentary and reality TV fall under the wider category of ‘factual’ content which, in general terms, includes genres that ‘make truth claims and are based on facts’ (Hill, 2007: 3), to a variety of degrees. Generic evaluations can also be based on considerations around form and content that inform the ‘assertive’ or ‘fictive stance’ that a programme takes toward an ‘actual’ or ‘imaginary state of affairs’ (Mast, 2009a: 235).

Both documentary and reality TV have redefined their relationship with factuality due to broader restyling processes (Hill, 2007). Hybridity and genre borrowing have shifted the privilege from traditional factual genres to others. Corner’s concept of ‘postdocumentary culture’ suggests a ‘quite radical dispersal of documentary energies across the schedules’ to the extent that documentary status can be said to have weakened (2002: 263). Nichols (1991) notes that the ‘discourse of sobriety’ is no longer exclusive to documentaries, while Murray (2004: 44) observes that traditional documentary markers like ‘social weight’ are now found in other genres, which use rhetorical stances to endorse and authenticate themselves. Nichols (2017) and Mast (2009b) argue that the documentary mode, in its capacity to activate the sober mode of ‘epistephilia’, that is a desire to know, can still offer compelling narratives and fresh perspectives while blending with affective elements. In turn, reality TV’s entertaining and narrative-driven elements have increasingly influenced documentaries, challenging traditional notions of truth and objectivity (Bruzzi, 2016).

Indeed, ‘flux’ and ‘mutability’ have been discussed as reality TV’s key attributes (Kavka, 2012: 8), not least in tandem with how the genre is informed by ‘socio-political contexts, cultural shifts, technological innovations and industrial practices’ (9). Hybridity alone, however, can neither satisfy nor explain scholars’ (and audiences’) intrigue regarding the ‘real’ of reality TV. Hill describes the debate about what is real and what is not in the popular factual as ‘the million-dollar question’ (2005a: 57) and suggests refocusing our attention on the concepts of authenticity and performance as potentially more productive ways of conceptualising and evaluating the truth claims produced by and in reality TV. Both terms are elusive and multidimensional. Generally, authenticity means ‘to feel something (sic) with honesty, integrity, and vitality and to express in one’s life the truth of one’s personal insights and discoveries’ (McCarthy, 2016: 243). As Enli argues, mediated authenticity is ‘a currency in the communicative relation between producers and audiences’ (2015: 1), as well as the media companies and regulatory authorities. These partake in a process termed the ‘authenticity contract’; this mechanism for constructing authenticity includes ‘authenticity illusions’ created primarily by the production side and ‘authenticity puzzles’ that audiences are engaged in (Enli, 2015). In the reality television economy, commodified authenticity can be seen as a response to audiences’ desire to observe real people (Calvert, 2004), as an eternal source of ambiguity fuelling audience negotiations, gratifications and disappointments (Rose and Wood, 2005), as well as a reaction to threats of authenticity intrinsic in postmodern culture (Firat and Venkatesh, 1995).

Rather than a quality inhering in persons, events, places, experiences and objects, authenticity is often discussed as ‘centered on its in situ (sic) social construction, as operating in practice and in relation to local relevancies’ (Gubrium and Holstein, 2016: 123). It is also understood as a set ‘cultural practices’ or ‘collective displays of emotion in different social and institutional sites’ (McCarthy, 2016: 243). The study of strategies and discourses of authentication has therefore been proposed as a fruitful path toward a deeper understanding of how authenticity is constructed by different actors in multiple interrelated spheres of ‘authenticity work’ (Aslama and Pantti, 2012; Van Zoonen and Pantti, 2010), that is activities diffused in production logics and practices, in participants’ performances, in textual/narrative choices and strategies, in promotion and marketing activities and in audience reception.

A concrete tool of reality TV where such debates around hybridity, authenticity and performance are actualised is the ‘confessional’, a ‘self-induced examination of one’s prior actions and, even more importantly, of one’s thoughts, feelings and relationships with others’ (Aslama and Pantti, 2006: 176). In a piece examining the cultural power of the ‘reality TV confessional’, Moylan refers to MTV’s The Real World’s (1992-2019) use of confessional interviews as the moment when reality TV was established as a distinctive genre, explaining that reality TV is not just about fly-on-the-wall practices that make it possible to observe what is going on in a given context, rather ‘[i]t’s about asking the people how they feel about what’s happening to them. Confessionals give us these thought bubbles from the cast, which is far more interesting than viewing the raw footage alone’ (Moylan in Staples, 2022). Historically, the confessional has been conducive to the emergence of the individual, as a ‘self-conscious person equipped with subjectivity and moral standards’ (Skeggs, 2004: 120). When considered within the framework of reality TV, the confessional has been said to exemplify a powerful monologic device where participants freely express emotions and their true self appears; rhetorically, it functions then as ‘a truth-sign of direct access to the “real”’ (Aslama and Pantti, 2006: 175). Such televised confessions, often taking the form of sentimental, intimate, spontaneous or painful experiences, are ‘central to the promise of intimacy and authenticity’ (Murdock, 2000: 199). ‘Emotion-based authenticity’ can then work in favour of reality programmes’ truth claims, as it informs understandings of both what happened and how it was experienced (Aslama and Pantti, 2006: 175). While confessionals too can be staged, the fact that they borrow both from documentary and melodrama activates authenticity puzzles and, by extension, poses bigger questions about reality TV’s epistemological claims to authenticity and truth (Wood and Skeggs, 2008).

Performance, like authenticity, is a concept best understood through its operating principles rather than binary questions. In reality TV, performative elements can both undermine authenticity by raising scepticism (Hill, 2005a) and engage audiences in a search for truth (Hill, 2002). The genre’s paradox is that while entertainment can diminish perceived authenticity (Eitzen, 2022; Hill, 2005b), overly glossy production and manufactured drama can alienate viewers. However, dull content also fails to align with reality TV’s premise of extracting entertainment from everyday life (Lindemann, 2022a). Recent trends have seen a return to ‘boring reality TV’ (Lindemann, 2022b) due to pandemic-related production challenges, such as new safety protocols and virtual workflows (Williams and Reynolds, 2020). This shift has made reality TV more intimate and relatable, revealing the genre’s theatrical cracks (Dries, 2021).

Analysing authenticity work in pandemic reality TV

The sections that follow provide an analysis of how authenticity work is performed in pandemic reality television by focusing on three concrete facets of authenticity work: transtextuality, place anchoring and boredom. Authenticity work is addressed as interwoven with a variety of textual, including stylistic, narrative and rhetorical choices employed by the case in point. By performing a close reading of the whole spin-off focusing on style, including settings, filming strategies and the narrative structure of the programme, not only as a sum of aesthetic choices, but also as ‘active’ rhetorical strategies, the final product is seen as the result of numerous processes of selection and intervention (Pollak, 2008: 79–80).

Specifically, the analytical toolbox is based on a working typology for the study of how authenticity work is performed in everyday life (Gubrium and Holstein, 2016), consisting of the following components:

Direct claims

Explicit claims that work toward making accounts that surround statements or events more authentic, genuine or believable.

Authenticity checks

A search for uncontrollable expressions or behaviours, believed to ‘give off’ actors’ actual interests, motives or selves in contrast with ‘given’ expressions that are more easily controlled or manipulated (Goffman, 1959).

Privileged positioning

A sense of ‘being there’, functioning as an insider, eyewitness or participant in relation to the situation presented, including using references to specifics of situations, e.g., events, locations or characters.

Detailing

The provision of rich and abundant detail, vivid representation of a scene; detailing allows audiences to visualise what happened with clarity and specificity as the experiences are narrated.

Mundane embeddedness

The inclusion of mundane details that sometimes accompanies the recounting of extraordinary events, including but not limited to displays of routine, local knowledge, eyewitness expressions of doubt and emotion, all working toward lending ‘narrative authenticity’ to eyewitness reports.

Importing dialogue

Recited talk that lends additional genuineness to authenticity claims, as in these words were really said, this situation really happened, it was not imagined or fabricated.

Showing true commitment

The presentation of one’s ‘true self’, in the form of actual feelings or conditions of the heart, not simply overtures to fashion, social pressure or momentary preferences.

Stretching authenticity in times of restricted mobility

Modification strategies and transtextual authenticity

The first analytical section looks closely into the ways that the 90DF-SQ spin-off was brought about by discussing the concept of the spin-off, its financial logic and cultural function, as well as its potential impact on authenticity work. The spin-off is part of a larger economy of multiplicities, including reboots, remakes, revivals, spin-offs, prequels and sequels. Such multiplicities invigorate long-standing debates around the valorisation of popular culture, based on the value of originality, uniqueness, aura and high art on the one hand and repetition, continuation, profit and low art on the other hand. Multiplicities have also been discussed as a phenomenon adjacent to the increasingly transmedial nature of contemporary screen cultures, as well as a response to audiences’ needs for extension of enjoyment and engagement (Loock, 2018; Verevis, 2006). Multiplicities encourage audiences to recognise the novel within the framework of the known and previously endorsed, enabling interpretations that traverse textual boundaries (Klein and Palmer, 2016).

Cinema and television have employed spin-offs to streamline production and leverage viewer interest in previously successful or sensational story properties (Klein and Palmer, 2016). As a particular kind of ‘televisual afterlife’ (Loock, 2018), the spin-off refers to a new programme that is derived from or based on an existing one, often featuring characters, settings or concepts from the original programme. Spin-offs can focus on specific characters, storylines or elements from the original series and expand upon them in a separate programme/series. As such, they are not entirely self-contained texts; they can be properly understood and valued only when their connection to their predecessor(s) is acknowledged (Klein and Palmer, 2016). Transtextual authenticity, then, entails authenticity work that builds on ‘the textual transcendence of the text’ (Genette, 1982, 1997: ix).

As a programme developed and produced during the pandemic, the 90DF-SQ spin-off provides a good case for exploring the impact of the pandemic on reality TV production, as well as the function of the spin-off in the reality TV economy and its contribution to the franchise’s authenticity capital. A mapping out of the ways that the programme incorporated a number of modification strategies provides a deeper understanding of how reality TV responded to concrete production challenges and can enrich preliminary typologies that have emerged. An example of such a typology of modification strategies includes the following areas (Jupowicz-Ginalska, 2022): changes in the process of programme production; suspension of programme production/broadcasting; modification of existent dayparts/programmes; introduction of new dayparts/programmes; rebroadcasting; resumption of programme production; renewal of broadcast; and other solutions. In the case of 90DF-SQ, the following modifications were observed: The programme was advertised as a special edition, featuring a name change to signal the spin-off character; it was required to develop and implement a number of security procedures, including protocols and processes that facilitated remote work; it spanned across five one-hour long episodes, which is not in line with the usual format of the franchise (that is more and shorter episodes per season); it changed its thematic focus and, instead of focusing on intercultural romance, it became primarily concerned with everyday life during the pandemic; it showcased a change in the quality of the image, as it was shot with different kinds of equipment and by amateurs compared to the more professionalised production standards that usually define it. As a result of the aforementioned modification strategies, TLC President and General Manager Howard Lee prefaced the show with the following disclaimer:

The aesthetic of ‘90 Day Fiancé: Self-Quarantined’ will be somewhat experimental. This series will look very hot-off-the-press — it will look like the paint has not dried […] I think our audience is incredibly forgiving right now, and I’m hoping that they accept the way it looks. It will be messy! (Aurthur, 2020)

Whether the show’s messiness is intentional or a compromise, the modification strategies intersect with authenticity claims in the franchise. Unlike reality shows with unknown contestants, 90DF-SQ participants have some celebrity status, complicating viewers’ ability to judge authentic behaviour. Authenticity now relies more on prior knowledge and (trans)textual comparison, as the participants’ ‘personalities’ are already familiar (Hill, 2005b). This presents reality TV with a unique opportunity to intensify authenticity work that potentially legitimises both the spin-off and the franchise overall. With the pragmatic change in production routines being recognised and the premise of institutional control (rhetorically) weakened, the participants appear exposed in a way that makes it possible for audiences to observe and compare potential continuities and disruptions that occur between texts, especially in terms of the display of the self. In other words, the participants are not only evaluated on the basis of their authenticity/performance in one self-contained context, but rather in a broader textual and temporal universe.

According to press releases, the participants were taped for confessional interviews by production company Sharp Entertainment (an Industrial Media company) over video-chat and provided with camera equipment to facilitate self-taping (Harnick, 2020). The focus on self-filming allows the footage to appear less curated by institutional conventions and editing control and more steered by the participants’ agency. Freed from the expectation to follow the narrative structure of the original series, the participants are allowed to ‘perform the everyday’, enabling, by extension, different selves or ‘different levels of performance’ to surface (Roscoe, 2001). While most of the participants still appear within the constellation of a couple/family, the ‘self in love’ takes a back seat, giving the possibility to additional selves to claim their space in the mosaic of the participants’ respective personalities. As such, more screen time is devoted to aspects of one’s life that goes beyond the romantic context; for example, we see the participants as remote workers or students, as responsible and compassionate citizens, and even as bored individuals struggling to reconfigure their everyday lives amidst a pandemic.

The fact that the show is no longer (exclusively) about intercultural, border-crossing romance enhances the ordinariness of the situations depicted and thus the potential relatability that is built between participants and audiences. Serving authenticity work through privileged positioning, onscreen testimonies activate the witnessing mode, especially in terms of how the pandemic has affected participants’ everyday lives, employment possibilities, social relations and more. Witnessing has been argued to encompass fundamental questions of communication, including ‘truth and experience, presence and absence, death and pain, seeing and saying, and the trustworthiness of perception’ (Peters, 2001: 707). It has been argued that the term ‘witness’ itself implies witness suffering; as such, it is also implicated with questions of empathy, ‘the process by which emotions are experienced as the result of an encounter with an other, whether immediate or through the distanced audiovisual process of witness’ (Ellis, 2011: 131). In the show, participants are portrayed both as experiencing suffering and witnessing it in others. For example, David and Annie distribute toilet paper to friends in episode 1, Chantel discusses claustrophobia and suffering in episode 3, and Russ breaks down over his grandmother’s death in episode 4. By positioning themselves as witnesses to unfolding social realities, participants convey a ‘historical world’ beyond mere representation (Nichols, 1991: 110). While witnessing does not by default mean suffering, the witnessing mode in 90DF-SQ is heavily invested with affective qualities meant to make the participants align with the general feeling of pandemic-induced emotional distress.

Apart from enhancing the possibilities for relatability through broadening the scope of the show beyond the romance, the backstage ambiance wafting in the spin-off appears to function as evidence of authentic content and authentic personalities. This is particularly evident in footage that includes filming difficulties and failures, for example in episode 1 when Colt and his mother are struggling with making the camera zoom in, or in episode 3 when Chantel’s recorded video call with the family is of very poor quality. In some cases, the backstage claim also takes an investigative tone; in episode 3, Caesar reveals that he has been keeping secrets from the production team and that he has travelled to Ukraine to meet a woman he has been romantically involved with. However, since he cannot provide evidence of their meeting (Caesar claims the photos that they took together disappeared), he comes out as a somewhat non-authentic person, possibly manipulating the production team in order to continue being on the show.

It is worth noting that this is not the only attempt on behalf of the franchise to come up with ways that guarantee the authenticity of participants and situations, or at least offer the audiences the possibility for authenticity checks. At the end of every ‘regular’ season, the participants are invited to a special ‘tell-all’ episode where they all sit together in a studio in a reunion/talk-show setting in order to comment and reflect on the happenings of the season. The tell-all episode is hosted by a journalist who moderates the discussion, making sure all participants get the opportunity to tell their side of the story, while at the same time steering the conversation toward controversial events, behaviours and soundbites that were a part of the regular episodes. The tell-all setting contains multiple layers of backstage performance; apart from the discussion itself, the participants are also shown reacting to segments of the episodes, as well as in intermissions, where they have the chance for more relaxed and spontaneous talk, often in a dressing room or in the corridors of the filming studio. While the participants know that they are filmed all the time and that they are there to perform, the overall framing of this material as bonus/backstage footage reveals the production’s intention to utilise such opportunities to capture more spontaneous reactions which can potentially contribute to authenticity work. In the case of the pandemic spin-off, the backstage claim functions in a similar fashion but takes different forms. Self-taping instead of face-to-face interviews with producers, raw footage of everyday activities like working out, shopping, cooking and eating instead of centring the action and dialogue on the theme of intercultural romance (and its challenges), and looser editing techniques that focus less on the creation of narrative arcs and more on capturing the mundane, all testify to the ordinariness of the participants and the authenticity of the franchise. This, in turn, contributes to claims toward narrative continuity, both in terms of the stories and the personalities of the participants. The visual repetition allowed by the spin-off logic, in terms of returning characters and storylines, contribute to a sense of coherence regarding space, time and action, despite the stylistic shifts occurring between the original and the spin-off. At the same time, as we saw for example in the case of Caesar, non-authentic personalities are exposed.

The degree to which performance transcends every aspect of the onscreen events is not a simple endeavour. In theoretical terms, this question is perhaps an impossible one, as it has been argued we are all performing all of the time on various different stages (Goffman, 1959). In practice, this can also be done by following the participants on social media, thus adding a transmedial dimension to the authenticity work performed with varying degrees of agency on behalf of the participants. The cultural work that is performed by the spin-off that is important to notice, however, is that it aspires to establish itself as some kind of backstage (that undoubtedly has its own backstage) to the original, glossier, non-pandemic version.

Authentic (?) encounters with pandemic places

The second analytical section of this paper focuses on representations of pandemic places, addressed here both as settings, that is semiotic resources strategically employed by the production (Ledin and Machin, 2018) and as socio-spatial intersections, that see place not just as a container, but rather as a particular constellation of social relations meeting and weaving together (Adams, 2009). One of the key ways that 90DF-SQ negotiates authenticity, both in terms of the pandemic experience and the private lives of the participating couples, is by incorporating ordinary places that have acquired pandemic-related meanings. The pandemic undoubtedly had a significant impact in the reconfiguration and reinvention of place globally (Devine-Wright et al., 2020); social distancing and self-quarantine recommendations, lockdowns and curfews, remote working and studying, the shutting down of businesses and so on forced people to develop new routines and to redesign their everyday life according to external temporal and spatial restrictions. What is more, people were also forced to embrace new virtual spaces and ways of communication, including video-chatting and conferencing apps, in order to facilitate professional and personal communication.

Places such as the home, the workplace, as well as the outside, function in 90DF-SQ as important visual anchors that point to a specific assertive stance that the show is taking: the projected world is not fictive, rather it resonates the viewers’ world, that is the pandemic world that we were all living in. Given that the participants of the show spent the majority of their time at home, adhering to recommendations about physical isolation and social distancing, the home constitutes both the central context where people make sense of the pandemic and the primary setting for action. The majority of the participants do the filming at home and the footage documents both ‘traditional’ perceptions of the home as ‘estia’, that is the centre of family life and activity, as well as pandemic-informed reconfigurations of the home. Processes of home-making and un-making take central stage (Devine-Wright et al., 2020) and ordinary activities such as cooking, cleaning, working out and getting ready for bed receive more screen time than the franchise’s regular focus on drama and high-stakes romantic negotiations. The home as ‘estia’ discourse is reverberated by a number of participants who speak of the stay-at-home order as an opportunity for the family to spend more time together and rediscover the pleasures of family life and cohabitation. In episode 4, for instance, Karen and Thomas are featured in a compilation segment where they are, in company of two of their three adult children, gardening, practicing tai chi, stocking up, while at the same time expressing gratitude about having the chance to do all those things together as a family.

Familial contexts are described and depicted as ‘safe(r)’ places in contrast to the dangerous, virus-infected outside world, but also as pure places worthy of protection at all costs. In a number of instances, the footage includes filming of the disinfecting routines that mark participants’ re-entering into their home after having been ‘exposed’ to the outside world. As the participants film themselves and at the same time narrate their processes – the latter showcasing a ritualistic character rather than the application of official and strict hygiene protocols – the show documents facets of everyday pandemic life, namely activities such as changing clothes, spraying with disinfectants and showering, without elements of pretence or spectacle. As the action unfolds in one take, with the participant often talking directly to the camera and taking the audience through the respective routine, the illusion of unmediated filming is created. Without claiming that such scenes are completely unstaged or unrehearsed, the ordinariness and relatability of the onscreen happenings enhance the sense of authenticity by means of mundane embeddedness. Along the same lines, the pandemic home is represented as a hybrid place fulfilling multiple functions at once. Through detailing, both verbally and visually, a number of participants explain the numerous and – at times contradictory – home experiences. In episode 3, Chantel is shown filming her living situation a few weeks into the pandemic; using the camera as a sort of objective record of the first chaotic weeks of remote work/study and cohabitation with her partner, Chantel’s sardonic narration, in combination with a virtual tour walkthrough, reveals the effect the pandemic has had on the home in terms of merging functions and activities: ‘Welcome to my office slash kitchen slash TV room slash game room’. Detailed footage is also provided in instances where various participants are shown working out, like in the case of Colt in episode 1, Sasha in episode 2 or Russ and Pao in episode 4. In line with reality TV’s labour economy, the home functions as the makeover epicentre (Colt) (Moseley, 2000) or as a laboratory for future careers (Sasha, Russ and Pao) (Deery, 2015).

An additional place that functions as real-world cue and authenticity marker is the professional environment, including workplaces that stayed open or closed down, virtual/remote workplaces, and workplaces whose function was modified during the pandemic. While, according to sources (Anon, 2023), 90DF participants get paid for appearing on the show, the majority of them is shown to also have a day job. As such, the programme documents the parts of their lives spent at work and/or the struggles associated with limited employment opportunities during the pandemic. Molly, co-owner of a lingerie business specialising in custom fittings, was featured in episode 2. Her store’s in-person service shut down during the pandemic, prompting her and her partner to adapt. They developed virtual fittings via video-chat to continue serving customers and dedicated resources to designing and donating face masks to organisations in and outside the US. The strategies of mundane embeddedness and detailing are once again present in this footage, as Molly and her business partner explain how their day-to-day life has changed and exemplify that through a video-chat with a client. The latter works as demonstrative proof (Nichols, 1981), providing the audience with an example that verifies the narration that preceded it.

A third category of spaces that features inscribed pandemic experiences includes publicly open spaces, such as public spaces such as streets and privately-owned places, such as malls and supermarkets. Filming in these spaces provides participants with the opportunity to add yet another layer to their ordinariness, and gives the show the opportunity to document the ‘actual state of affairs’ (Mast, 2009b). In such instances, the participants are depicted to film the world with a predominantly observational style that aims to capture actual events in a transparent and objective manner, thus enacting the documentary mode’s ‘sober’ aesthetics. In episode 1, popular 90DF couple Elizabeth and Andrei (and their toddler) visit a grocery store. While Elizabeth and their toddler stay in the car, Andrei records his shopping routine and captures the toilet paper shortage during the pandemic, with images of empty shelves representing global hoarding practices. The hand-held movement of the mobile camera, emphasising the documentary element in ‘docusoap’, in combination with filming inside a store, adds to authenticity claims through the mechanism of privileged positioning – there is little reason to doubt the situation is different than what is shown onscreen.

A final spatial context that participants are shown to navigate in the show is virtual spaces, primarily for communicating with distant family, partners, or the production team. While video-chatting isn’t unique to this spin-off, as it’s common in the original show due to couples often being apart, its inclusion serves as an authenticity marker. The inclusion of mundane recorded video calls does not contribute much to the overall (back)story of the respective participants, friends and family members, it does however work as an authenticity marker in the sense of re-creating the ambiance of direct access to intimate thoughts and feelings commonly activated by the ‘confessional’.

The realness of pandemic ennui

Moving on to the ways that temporal aspects weigh in the work of authenticity, this section looks at how time, passing time and boredom is represented in the show, how this is communicated with filming and editing strategies, and finally how these play into the relationship between entertainment and authenticity. As mentioned in the previous two sections, 90DF-SQ is both clearly connected to the texts that precede it and significantly differentiated, primarily in terms of thematic focus and stylistic approach. A dimension that attaches additional meaning and potentially works in tandem with authenticity claims is the issue of the overall tempo of the show, an aspect of the final product that is to a large degree associated with purposeful editing. The majority of the defining elements of the docusoap sub-genre, such as short narrative sequences, intercuts of multiple plotlines, mini cliff-hangers, and shot/reverse-shot camera work are largely absent. Instead, the show is defined by long (er), self-contained sequences, not necessarily driven by important events. With the original being about the challenges of intercultural romance, including issue of incompatibility, difficulties in adjusting in a new country/culture, and shadows of suspicion regarding the genuineness of the romance, it is not surprising that the ‘regular’ seasons generally subscribe to a practice of ‘emotional dramas of intense feeling’ (McCarthy, 2016: 244), including both verbal, visual and corporeal expressions of emotions, such as rudeness, crying shots and physical conflict, in ways that connote loss of control and disruption of social norms, typically associated with authenticity (Aslama and Pantti, 2012; Dubrofsky, 2009).

The absence of such tensions and supposedly uncontrollable outbursts of emotion does not work against the spin-off’s authenticity claims; rather it enhances it by making the uneventfulness of people’s lives more salient. Stuck as they are in place and time, it is only mundane events that seem to be taking place and drawing the participants, and the viewers, out from their pandemic ennui. With their personal time being suspended because of the lack of mobility, the breakdown of daily routines, as well as the destabilisation of filming possibilities, the self-display is de-spectacularised and de-dramatised. This deceleration of the overall rhythm and the flatness that characterises the spin-off confirms the paradox that lies at the heart of reality TV: the more entertaining a factual programme is, the less real it appears to viewers. This means, by extension, that by providing a less entertaining, more boring, version of the show, the more authentic it might appear to viewers.

In this climate of flatness and meretricious messiness, authenticity is not to be exclusively sought after in transitory ‘moments of truth’ (Hill, 2002); rather it could be argued that authenticity transcends the show in its entirety. The impression of unobtrusive filming is accentuated by the inclusion of micro-events that take the form of uneconomically edited, unscripted, blooper-ish content. Bloopers, as in short clips of mishaps, mistakes or slips of the tongue, are typically removed from media narratives; however, they can function as important backstage talk that adds authenticity and truthfulness to the person and situation on screen (Matwick and Matwick, 2020). Such micro-events are included in episode 2 when a wasp enters Molly and Cynthia’s working space and disrupts the filming, as well as in episode 3 when, as a reaction to the toilet paper shortage, Pedro attempts to install a bidet in his and Chantel’s place, but his plumbing skills fall short, or even when Darcey and Stacey’s spa day at home fails. In those examples, authenticity is at work through facilitating the participants’ showing true commitment, in terms of appearing as their true selves without any identifiable pressure or guidance from the production team. Such spontaneous footage demonstrates producers’ limited power over what happens in the show, and it is precisely this ‘loss of control’ (Andrejevic, 2002) that partly recovers the aura of authenticity.

Conclusions

As the global pandemic posed restrictions to border-crossing travelling and forced modifications in production practices within television industries, 90DF came up with ways to circumvent these obstacles and continue to deliver content to its fanbase, while at the same time performing authenticity work. The pandemic-informed spin-off 90DF-SQ moves away from spectacularised, dramatic content performed in staged settings and embraces a slower pace, a flatter style, and a focus on mundane activities occurring in ordinary places. While not entirely abandoning the main premise of the show (that is the centrality of intercultural romance), 90DF-SQ functions as transtextual legitimation, humanising the participants and their relationships, while recontextualising their lives in a (pandemic) world that feels (more) real. This article has argued that, by doing so, it intensifies the authenticity work adjacent to the genre of reality TV, in the following ways: 90DF-SQ adopts an assertive stance by documenting the world as if without production intervention, enhancing the perceived authenticity of the footage despite its pre- and post-production processes. It embraces production imperfections, with ordinary, uneventful content that avoids the typical reality TV chaos and dramatic elements. The show’s focus on mundane details validates its authenticity, showcasing real couples with everyday lives and subtly exposing those with ulterior motives. This approach harks back to early reality TV’s focus on the mundane and boredom as a strategy to counteract the hyper-staged nature of modern reality TV. Finally, by presenting boredom as a form of emotional authenticity, 90DF-SQ offers content that, while not always entertaining, is relatable and possibly more genuine.

As Gubrium and Holstein argue, ‘[t]o expect a final answer to the question of what is genuine or authentic is to expect the impossible in practice’ (2016: 135). Indeed, judgements of authenticity are considered susceptible to ‘contingent relativity, often located in new technological affordances and discursive opportunities’ (Tolson, 2010: 286). With the COVID-19 pandemic destabilising television production routines, the turn to modifications, innovations and compromises confirms reality TV’s mutable character (Kavka, 2012) and rejuvenates authenticity work within the reality TV genre. This article reiterated an understanding of authenticity as part of a ‘distinctly sensate, dramatic, and media-based “cultural package”’ (McCarthy, 2016: 245), while at the same time subscribing to the idea that authenticity is much more than lack of production (Rose and Wood, 2005). While keeping in mind that performances of authentic selves in flexible, casualised creative economies are inevitably compromised by their commodification (Hearn, 2013), this article has also illustrated that authenticity work can be performed in ways that rely less on self-display and more on textual and transtextual dimensions.