Media Storm - Polyamory in pop culture

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Starting point is 00:00:39 RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-dash Canada. Conditions apply. Hey everyone, it's Matilda and Helena from MediaStorm. And today we're bringing you some bonus content on the topic of polyamory. Last week on MediaStorm, we spoke about how a lack of legal protection affects polyamorous people and how relationships outside of monogamy are portrayed in the news. If you haven't heard it yet, just head over to our feed. This week, we're continuing the

Starting point is 00:01:14 conversation with our special guest, Leanne Yao, who can be found online at polyphilia. Now people are trying a little bit harder to include polyamorous people, like full real in the media. We're discussing polyamory and pop culture. So how does TV, film and the world? wider media, shape our views of polyamory. Helena, take it away. I remember in an early series of friends where Chandler meets this woman called Aurora and he goes on a date with her and then on the date, she casually discloses that she's married and that she has a boyfriend.

Starting point is 00:01:48 But what is so incredibly interesting about this is that all the other friends pretty much react with like a mild form of disgust or like, or definitely they react with shock. Ethan is my boyfriend. What? Except for a dozen, is it Ross or Joey, go, man, this is the dream. Right, so then Chandler says, oh, this is every man's dream, like you get to have sex with somebody

Starting point is 00:02:13 but have none of the emotional parts. I mean, this is twisted. How could you get involved with a woman like this? Well, you know, I had some trouble with it at first, too, but the way I look at it is I get all the good stuff, all the fun, all the talking, all the sex, and none of the responsibility. And then, like, he kind of realizes that, like, he needs those parts and he doesn't want to share and then he breaks up with her.

Starting point is 00:02:36 But looking back on it, I think, like, what sticks out the most as much as the friend's reactions to it is that Aurora is portrayed as, like, very sexy and very sexual. So explain something to me here. What kind of relationship do you imagine us having if you already have a husband and a boyfriend? I suppose mainly sexual. And then when Chandler finds out that she has other partners, he has actually only ever considered her for sex. He hasn't actually tried to have any of the emotional connection. And that was one of, I think, the earliest forms of any kind of polyamorous character I saw on TV.

Starting point is 00:03:13 And I just thought, shock, horror. There are 10 seasons of friends and a lot of scope for exploring all sorts of relationships, which, you know, they do. But that is what we see of polyamory. It's five minutes of, oh, great, loads of sex. No emotional commitment. Oh, no, I'm jealous and cuckled it. That doesn't work.

Starting point is 00:03:30 Yeah. And also, no people of color in New York. I would say, like, just growing up, I probably saw a lot more examples of just love triangles. What if you change your mind again? I won't. You just did. I didn't change my mind.

Starting point is 00:03:45 You two slept together. That is off. Some. Look, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have feelings for you. Someone else, then you know who that is. Sometimes in life, we hit a crossroads. and are forced to choose which path we want to take. You know, main character has, like, two love interests

Starting point is 00:04:03 and then, like, discovers one has a super fatal flaw towards the end, and so picks the other one. You know, I think, you know, so many of those rom-coms exist, and it's always like, oh, yeah, like, it's a choice, and it's just like, wait. You know, couldn't you just come to some arrangement? Like, I don't know, like, did you have to wait for one of them to, like, massively fuck up, like, to pick the other one?

Starting point is 00:04:22 I don't know, it never made any sense. We could also look at reality TV because... Oh my God, I'm so much to say about it. So I recently watched this reality TV show called The Ultimatum because my followers were begging me to watch it and get my reaction. And basically, the premise of The Ultimatum is that, like, there are all these couples who have been together

Starting point is 00:04:41 for, like, a reasonable amount of time. And one of them wants to get married, like ASAP, and the other one doesn't. I want a ring on this finger. One partner is ready to get married, and the other isn't sure. You'll each choose a new partner. You'll move in together for three.

Starting point is 00:04:56 weeks at the end of this experience you guys will have to choose to marry person you've arrived here with or to split forever you have to make a choice to marry the new person who you have known for three weeks marry the person you came onto the show with but have already technically cheated on them with or leave the show alone and it's genuinely the most bad shit thing like I have ever seen sorry about my snort laugh just there the human mind is the wonderful I mean, it's, it was genuinely just like, I think it really, like, perverted the concept of polyamory, right? Because what these people were doing was essentially, like, yeah, like, a very unethical kind of form of polyamory. They also, like, created so much drama where, like, everyone was going on dates, like, in the same room.

Starting point is 00:05:40 So, like, you could either choose to, like, focus on the new person that you were speaking to and try and form a connection with them to see if you could live together for the next three weeks. Or, Pete, corner of your eye, your potential fiancé, like, flirting with someone new. And it was genuinely just, like, it blew my mind. Did anyone marry the new partner of three weeks? Yeah, like some people got with like their new partner, some people ran back to their existing partner as soon as they could. I mean, at the end of that process, you probably just got people who are now in love with two people.

Starting point is 00:06:06 Yeah, and traumatized. And ultimate, yeah, destined for trauma. But actually so many of these shows, like Love Island, Married a Fair Site, The Bachelor, Temptation Island. Like, the ultimate reward is monogamy. And that is, to coin your phrase, batch it. Yeah, and it's also like, you know, marriage is not the end goal.

Starting point is 00:06:31 Like, I mean, it shouldn't be, right? Like, these young women, like, on this show who are like, if he doesn't put a ring on it, it doesn't mean anything. And it's like, why are you thinking like this? Like, you've been together for, like, three or four years and just because, you know, they're not ready to, like, kind of, like, sign some documents with you,

Starting point is 00:06:46 like, suddenly your relationship means nothing. There's a concept in the polyamorous community called the Relationship Escalator. It was coined by someone called Amy Gowran who runs Solopoly.net. Huge props to her. So the relationship escalator is like this concept where there's like this kind of designated progression of a relationship. Right. You date and then you become exclusive and then at some point you like move in together or get married. and then you have kids

Starting point is 00:07:23 and then you have an old, you know, white picket fence and you know, stay together until you die. And, you know, basically it's the relationship escalator not the relationship stairs or the relationship ladder because it's effortless, it's almost unconscious. You know, you feel like you're just kind of supposed to you and you're kind of swept along in the throng

Starting point is 00:07:38 of like everyone else who's doing the same thing. And, you know, I think the ultimatum encapsulated that to, you know, a huge extent because people were obsessed with the concept of marriage, obsessed with the concept of, you know, like becoming like legally, bound to like affirm the validity of their relationship and ignoring you know and willing to throw everything away like for this one thing and I think um all of us really you know would do

Starting point is 00:08:01 better to divest ourselves from you know associating like love with marriage or love with monogamy um because yeah like I do think it is destroying us all I mean it's so normalized it is so so normalized I I think some representations of polyamory on reality television have got slightly better potentially. I'm interested in what you think about Channel 4s. They recently had a reality show called Open House, the Great Sex Experiment. If you haven't seen this show,

Starting point is 00:08:29 monogamous couples come to a luxury retreat to test whether opening up their relationships and having sex with other people will strengthen their bond. Under the guide of a psychologist and a sex and an intimacy coach, they speak about how opening up their relationship makes them feel.

Starting point is 00:08:45 In a way, it could be said that this show was good for people to see poly curious couples exploring, but there's also, I imagine there were huge downsides because, I mean, the name of the show, for one, the great sex experiment, once again, just linking polyamory to sex, right? So I do think that open house, like, primarily focused on kind of sexually open relationships rather than polyamorous ones. So, you know, in that sense, like I don't think it was, like, a misnomer to call it the great sex experiment. You know, I actually enjoyed the show. Like, I thought it was, I thought, I thought it was. I thought it was pretty good. You know, having the psychologist to guide the couples, like, through, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:23 like navigating the treacherous waters of opening up a long-term monogamous relationship was really instrumental in making the show good because it showed that, you know, it wasn't like the ultimatum or like whatever other kind of Netflix, you know, reality TV shows you've seen where, you know, you just put a bunch of traumatized, chaotic people in a room and just see what happens. You know, like the people on the show were really invested in the long-term success of these couples. you know the long-term sustainability of like their open relationships in terms of like whether they were ready to whether they were doing it for the right reasons you know how whether they were like communicating effectively and setting boundaries effectively and you know I liked that at the end

Starting point is 00:09:58 like they also showed you know like whether the couples like went on to like continue practicing open relationships and you know how they fared like afterwards obviously it had its flaws like I think that there could have been more like you know queer couples on the show like they were mainly just like MF couples, and I would have liked to see more diversity there, you know, gender or kind of race-wise. And I also thought it was a bit strange that essentially they hired a bunch of people to like essentially be a unicorn market for these couples to like hunt a person to have a threesome with from. And I don't think that was a particularly great introduction for them to kind step into the real dating world, which is very much not like that. But yeah, I think the way they

Starting point is 00:10:37 explained it, the way they helped the couples, you know, on their journey, the way they like talked through their feelings, you know, in the aftermath. If they, there was like a rupture or conflict. I thought it was actually quite good. I thought it was very sensitively portrayed in that sense. So it can get better. Reality TV, you can be better. Another surprising bit of representation was the Gossip Girl reboot.

Starting point is 00:10:58 What? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which was the last show that I expected this from. Oh my God. Yeah, but the Gossip Girl reboot, like season one, there is like a polyamorous triad, but instead of, you know, one man with two bisexual women, it's one woman with two bisexual men.

Starting point is 00:11:12 So firstly, bisexual male representation. on screen you rarely see that but also like it was I mean you know how they got together was a little bit chaotic but like but you know it's gossip girl yeah yeah yeah yeah but like I thought but I actually thought it was how they count you know how it ends and you know how they resolve like their differences like was really adorable wow I mean it's not going to be gossip girl here a really functional and non-exciting triad relationship end of episode can I just say that this is the second week in a row that gossip girl has come up in our recording because remember we We were talking about Dorota from Gossip Girl last week.

Starting point is 00:11:47 We were talking about representations of Eastern European people in pop culture yesterday. And last week, and we were just spoken about Dorota. Apparently, we're just sponsored by Gossip Girl now. What does the exploitation of Eastern Europeans and Pollyamory have in common gossip girl? Thank you for listening. Have you heard the latest episode of the Guilty Feminist Culture Club? with the amazing Juliette Stevenson talking about The Doctor, which is in the West End now. Plus, the next episode of Media Storm on menopause and the tough combo of ageism and sexism

Starting point is 00:12:25 will be out next week on Thursday the 24th of November. See you then.

Media Storm - Polyamory in pop culture

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