Blind Date depends for its success upon the encouragement of gender, social and cultural stereotypes Essay Example For Students

Blind Date depends for its success upon the encouragement of gender, social and cultural stereotypes? Essay How far would you agree with the opinion that Blind Date as a formulaic programme format depends for its success upon the encouragement of gender, social and cultural stereotypes? Write a critical and analytical review of one episode of the programme. You may consider:  · Use of character types  · Language  · Arrangement of the programme  · Technical aspects Blind Date is a popular, intellectually undemanding, Saturday night show that attracts over eight million viewers every week. But why? Is it Cillas contagious laugh? Or is it the interesting, exotic places the couples visit? Or maybe it is the fact that you realise there are people more desperate than you are and they are declaring it on TV. Whatever it is, it works. But how much of it is real? The contestants seem to be definite characters rather than real people. They fit into the moulds of various stereotypes that have been set. The first stereotype we see is the ordinary bloke. This is Tony from Reading, he is a working class Royal Mail manager, He goes to the pub for a quick pint with his friends and he is known as the common Joe. He stresses that he is a lad because he wants to emphasise his heterosexuality and this is because a homosexual male is still not fully accepted in society and is the subject of ridicule among his male peers. The next stereotype we encounter is Jack the Lad; a working class male who likes a laugh, his beer and chasing birds. He is Mike the metal worker from Devon. He has quite a strong Devon accent, which can sometimes make him sound a bit stupid. His answers are obviously scripted because he uses alliteration, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦I like my birds and my boozeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ He is speaking in his natural voice, which is laidback but shows him to be loud and cocky. He is an extrovert and loves the reaction he gets from the infamous pork pie story. He links back to this in all his answers and the canned laughter is overplayed. During the show, the use of sexual innuendo is common and here is no exception, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦and Im meaty on the insideà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ The last male contestant is Pete from London who is a surgeon cue audience: Oooooh! He is middle class but is trying to cover this so he can be just one of the lads. He is wearing an eye-catching shirt, which is casually left untucked out of his fake leather trousers; he also displays some designer stubble. He puts on an Estuary English accent to sound more proletarian. This results in his saying such words as nipper and youll be larfing, but he cannot hide his background when he says words like portfolio and elegant. The lucky lady who has the chance to choose one of these three lads is Vicky from Coventry. She is quite confident and uses lots  of sexual innuendo. This is obviously scripted as she is describing her car and she says it is like Cilla, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦and when she goes, she goesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ She also greets the boys with Hello Boys the trademark phrase of Wonderbra. This is titillation for the male audience. Another example of this is, I would be the Eiffel Tower. You can scale the heights with me for a bit of ooh la la and the views from the top are amazing. The couple from the previous weeks show return smiling and walking together so the question of whether Cilla should buy a new hat is still on the viewers minds. The two lovebirds on this particular show were Natalie and Chris. Chris is the good catholic Irish boy who looks very similar to the presenter Craig Doyle. He is the type of boy your mum would love you to bring home. He looks innocent as if he needs a girl to mother him. He has the all-important happy go lucky Irish charm. His accent is mostly perceived as funny, friendly and approachable. Nevertheless, as soon as he gets the chance, he starts to badmouth Natalie and reveals he had a very interesting time with a singing waitress. Animal Farm - Lord Of The Flies EssayNaomi is self-conscious, spoilt and of mixed race. She expected Richard to have a tanned surfers body, blonde hair and blue eyes. When he calls her a whale she is almost in tears as you can see that weight is an issue for her. He later explains that is not what he meant. She does not seem to accept this and is very angry. This couple go beyond the usual stereotypes, he is not a typical Australian and she is not a typical demure girl of mixed race. This may confuse the audience but  they accept it with out question because it does not occur to them to query the stereotypes that have been set. We were given an article written by an undercover reporter posing as a contestant on Blind Date who was able to confirm that our suspicions of pre-planned answers are correct. She also revealed that the make-up artists and researchers give the contestants advice and clues on whom to pick. They do this by underlining the intended winners number on the script. The contestants all have their lines to learn and if these are said wrongly, it is cut out. In the article, we read a woman explained the one of the male contestants kept on fluffing his lines so they had to keep reshooting that piece until it was correct. That does not sound like reality TV to me. Cilla always has to be shown as the funnier, clever one. If anyone disregards this, it will be edited and cut out. She is not a specific stereotype; she is a scouser who made it big. The answers or character information that is given are always easy targets for Cilla and our Graham, the commenter, to make jokes about. The holidays they win seem to be very expensive and the camera work accentuates this by filming the entrances of grand hotels and the beautiful landmarks. This makes the show look classy instead of brassy. The holiday video is careful not to give too much away and always leaves the audience wondering if this is the one in a million couple that fall in love. They also use background music to create a certain atmosphere and make the show seem modern and trendy, but to me this fails. The show is popular for various reasons. Some people watch it and realise their prejudices are correct; some watch it to have these prejudices confirmed. People are naturally inquisitive and like to know what other people do with their lives. Blind Date gives a painfully accurate view of youth culture today. People watch it and believe it is real when it is more similar to Coronation Street as opposed to Big Brother. In the world people are always going to be judged and then pigeon holed. Blind Date obviously encourages this but it just shows the mentality of the eight million British viewers who watch it every week. The people on the show are pretentious and fake but they are encouraged to be like this. Surely, this is wrong because when the programme is seen by its target audience they will believe that they too have to fit into a certain stereotype. Blind Date crushes your individuality and the only thing it is good for is to raise your self-esteem by reassuring yourself that you will never be that desperate.