About Me

July 18, 2008

Free Speed-Dating; Arranged Marriage TV Show

This is short notice, but if any of you are interested in trying speed-dating, Date & Dash (http://www.DateandDash.com) is offering a FREE speed-dating event tonight at 8 PM at Alibi,116 MacDougal Street (& Bleecker) in Manhattan. Call Vilius G., DateandDash Project Manager, if you’d like to go: 773-495-0088. Keep in mind that the one and only Date & Dash event I’ve been to started late and was poorly run (see my July 2nd and July 3rd posts) -- but who knows, maybe they’ve turned over a new leaf.

Is arranged marriage threatening to become “trendy” here in North America? Well, apparently there’s going to be a reality show about it – a sign of a trend if ever there was one. Thanks to an anonymous commenter on my July 16th post, I have learned that HBO is actually planning a reality show in which people agree to have their family and friends choose them a husband or a wife (http://www.arrangedmarriagetv.com). The arranged couples promptly get married, and the camera crew follows them along their daily lives for an entire year to see how their marriages go. My first thought: WHO WOULD SIGN UP FOR THAT!? I wonder if these couples really will get legally married. I can’t imagine marrying someone I didn’t know from Adam, and then living with them in front of TV cameras for a whole year! At least your family and friends are choosing for you, and you would hope they have your best interests at heart, but that’s a lot of faith to put in their judgement. Here’s another article about the show: http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/hbo-now-casting-volunteers-for-upcoming-reality-tv-show-arranged-marriage Leave it to us Americans to take a sacred cultural tradition and turn it into cringe-inducing reality TV.

That said, if I were the creator of the show, I would follow both arranged couples AND “love match” couples, and compare how they do over the course of the year. That would be really interesting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll try anything at this point....

Anonymous said...

I actually worked with someone many years ago whose marriage had been arranged. She didn't seem to think it was a big deal at all. "I met him several times before we got married," she said. "If we didn't get along, we wouldn't have been forced to get married or anything."

SEECE