"Wedlock or Deadlock" is a 2-month-old show on Fox featuring Dr. Michelle Callahan. Couples who are considering marriage seek her counsel on national TV to explore whether they should be married or break up. I could list a million things wrong with this show. But to name a few: It's on Fox. Dr. Callahan has only counseled hetero couples. And the show reinforces the idea that marriage is the only option for long term fulfilling partnership.
The show features many people of color and even an inter-minority relationship here and there. This is both one of its strengths and one of its drawbacks. In a television environment where couples of color are more likely to be seen on court TV shows waging war against each other, Dr. Callahan is a woman of color whose show takes on a community problem-solving approach to relationship disputes. Instead of being portrayed as inherently pathological, couples of color are presented as conflict-resolution oriented. However, because of the emphasis on marriage, the show reeks of the marriage-promotion mantra that reigned during the Bush years. These policies, and Callahan's show, prioritize marriage between people of color over self-sustainability and evaluating a range of long term relationship options outside of marriage.
The one thing I do think is feminist about the show is the way she incorporates compatibility tests. She poses important questions that invite everyday people to examine their assumptions about gender roles in relationships. From division of labor in the household, head of the household, having children and money savvy, it is a rare moment in reality TV where men and women have to grapple with these issues.
This weekend I attended the first wedding reception I have gone to among my peers. They skipped out on a formal wedding to have a private ceremony in Hawaii, courtesy of their parents. They used the money that would otherwise be spent on a lofty wedding to put a down payment on a house. I couldn't be happier for them. I just wish that it wasn't just people of relative means, and heterosexual privilege, that could make this choice.
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Call me a hopeless romantic, but I hope that when I meet the women of my dreams and we've been seeing each other for a few years, she and I can mutually agree to appear on television and allow a stranger to decide whether we should get married or completely cut of all contact and never see each other ever again. It's like something out of a fairy tale.
I'm happy to see shows reinforcing the importance of healthy, supportive and positive marriages. If there's anything the black community needs its the resurgence of a strong black family unit. You can positively correlate single parent households with just about every pathology children face.
The skyrocketing of out-of-wedlock births has led to the frailty of the black community, and a host of social pathologies ranging from high dropout rates to drug use and teen violence. Moreover, these issues hit women hardest. Its a crime that my teenage nieces look at their everyday world & think its normal to be some man's doormat. And while these issues are at the crisis stage for the black community, they loom over the horizon for just about anyone in the working class.
It may indeed take a community to raise just one, but it all starts with a family.
"I just wish that it wasn't just people of relative means, and heterosexual privilege, that could make this choice."
A marriage license costs about $20-$50 and it's available to gay couples in several states.
The people who ARE privileged are those who can deride marriage as unimportant and then have their attorneys and accountants draw up whatever documents they need to give them many of the rights and privileges of marriage. It's frustrating to see an anti-marriage bias springing up on the Left, because it's going to hurt poorer people who buy into it and who can't afford to protect themselves. Marriage is a simple and inexpensive way to protect the person you love.
Voltaire: don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
This is an excellent point. Of course, marriage has a lot of drawbacks too (joint liability comes to mind). There are also some documents you can't draft for any amount of money-- spousal immunity comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_privilege
I haven't watched this show, but the if the title is accurate what a terrible idea! The last thing people in a relationship on the rocks should be doing is considering marriage. If you are at the point where you are trying to decide if you should even be together with your partner, marriage will probably not end well. But I guess "Break-up or Stay-together-and-work-hard-to-see-if-this-relationship-has-potential" doesn't have the same appeal for a television show.