To be paired with TheBody, an upcoming experimental animation:

When we talk about sexploitation in Western cinema, we’re talking about the golden age or boom during the '60s and '70s, even though exploitation itself came before that, this is generally the decades we imagine when discussing. Dating shows started to become significant at that exact time, with The Dating Game beginning in 1965. We could speculate that these dating shows were to negate or counteract transgressive sexuality and instill norms of the nuclear family because of the American conservatives’ fear of the growing acceptance of free love and nude liberation represented in filmmaking; along with the hippie movement. We can see growing evidence of this with the Hays Code (1934-1968) and the Roth v. United States case of the 50s. But, eventually, these dating shows, for the sake of ratings, would have to evolve with the people’s wants. Oh, and they want.

TV started to push the bounds of how to sell beauty and body, love and sex, while still balancing gender norms and family watchability. The constant search for a balance of sex/love under the guise of the family has been pushed so hard that we start to see a decline in open sexuality (which culminated with the erotic thrillers of the 90s) and feel this conservative sexual rut to this day. For more sexy detail in RS Bendicts’s crucial article, Everyone Is Beautiful and No One is Horny. The introduction of reality TV as we know it today (excluding Candid Camera) was in the 90s with the MTV reality drama Real World. It was the wild west of reality media and the first of the “social experiments.” And in true exploitative fashion, these shows began with low-budget, low-end video cameras to produce this newfound medium. This boom would carry over to the 2000s, and lovesploitation would evolve into two of the most prominent shows that birthed the modern formula: The Bachelor and Love Island. When soap operas, romance, erotica, fly-on-wall, and cinéma vérité meet for the revenue of love, sex, marriage, and lovesploitation.

In the beginning, we can see the difference between The Bachelor, for siding with love bombing, and Love Island, for siding with body softsploitation. This is also due to the different countries producing these shows. While the Euro-Love Island is more lax with the explicit, The Bachelor would start with a conservative moral of love and marriage. On the other hand, Love Island would edge its love with body gazing while maintaining gender norms. These shows would become household staples, but they are not precisely family-friendly in the traditional sense of dating TV of the 60s and 70s. However, they keep the gender norms in place enough to fool those who fear sex. A small amount of queer content has ever appeared and continues to be underrepresented. We now look into an endless void of this candy content. But no matter the skinniest see-through bikini, the act of passion is still held in secret, with only moments of lustful audio and maybe some movement under the sheets. Sex is hidden, and love is said in its place. Hard to tell how the majority of the US feels about sexual liberation. We could say the media is a reflection of what the majority wants. If we use this logic and apply it to the Bachelor, we’ve barely changed since 2002.

05/10/2024 davy walker