Three female participants from one of Channel 4’s most popular shows, Married at First Sight UK (MAFS), have alleged that they were raped or assaulted by their on-screen husbands. And while the incidents they describe are appalling, the sad truth is that – given the prevalence of sexual violence in society, coupled with the powder keg set-up of the show itself – they aren’t especially surprising.
After all, one in four UK women have been either raped or sexually assaulted; of those who were raped, more than half were assaulted by a current or ex partner. As such, MAFS’s conceit of accelerated intimacy – in which participants are “married” on first meeting, quickly expected to share a bed, before “honeymooning” and eventually living together – could hardly be riskier. The thing is, those sky-high stakes are no accident: on the contrary, they’re precisely what makes the show compelling.
At its core, most reality TV boils down to asking “how will these people cope when [insert stressful constraint here]?”, and seeing what happens. In Big Brother, that’s a combination of isolation from the world and proximity to strangers. In I’m a Celebrity, it’s eating kangaroo penises and camping. And in MAFS, it’s taking a heterosexual relationship from stranger to spouse, nought to 100, overnight.
With participants necessarily subjected to extreme situations for an audience’s entertainment, a certain amount of exploitation is arguably baked into all reality television. Nonetheless, I’m a staunch supporter of the genre when it’s done well. Shedding new light on familiar dynamics and generating fuel for essential discourse, reality TV can tell us more about the world we live in than almost any other medium – but in order to do so, a show has to take responsibility for the issues it brings up, ideally by exploring them for viewers while safeguarding its participants.
While there’s a depressing degree to which MAFS was simply reflecting life beyond the screen, the difference between real world violence and that which happens in the context of a TV show is that the latter comes with a whole host of mediation: cameras, sure, but also – one would hope – psychological support, experts to consult and executives to intervene, as needed.
In this case, according to the victims, both Channel 4 (MAFS’s broadcaster) and CPL (its production company) fell short of those duties of care, despite serious concerns being raised both during and after filming; a betrayal of those women, but also of viewers with whom their experiences would have resonated.
Despite society’s collective preference for imagining perpetrators of sexual violence as rabid monsters leaping out of the shadows, the truth is that men hurt their female partners at rates that nobody wants to contemplate. What happened to the women from MAFS is harrowingly humdrum, which is why addressing it on prime time television could have been so impactful.
While the alleged assaults apparently all happened off-camera, incorporating accounts of them — even after the inital filming — would have radically changed the series’ proposition, allowing it to touch on a hugely prevalent (but rarely articulated) issue.
Describing her rape to the BBC, one of the MAFS women explained how her “husband” “kept saying, ‘You can’t say no, you’re my wife’. And he just did it anyway.” Around the world, millions of women have had the same experience, dismissed by societies that would rather look away.
Short of protecting those within their sphere of responsibility in the first place, MAFS could have used its platform to finally address and acknowledge them. Instead, the show joined the silent majority in averting its eyes.
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