If you can’t already tell, I’m not a fan of this show. I watch the Kardashians, Gogglebox and a few other reality TV shows, but I don’t watch Married at First Sight or the Bachelor or any shows that have that same kind of theme. I find those kinds of shows to be a huge mockery of marriage and love, so they don’t interest me at all.
Depsite my views on the show, my interest was piqued this week when Married at First Sight came up on Twitter’s trending page for Australia. Curious, I clicked and watched the 30-minute clip of one of the experts, Mel Schilling, calling out a man by the name of Bronson for calling his “wife” Ines and cunt because of how she was acting. Based on that 30-second clip that Channel Nine had put out, I was willing to back Schilling because I did agree that calling someone a cunt for no reason is not on in my book. I also agreed with her that Bronson needed to learn how to talk to women.
Then I did what I normally do and I started to scroll down to see what other’s thoughts were and I saw tweet after tweet defending him. It took me a while before I found a tweet that explained everything.
And I had to watch the episode.
It was hard to watch but I made it through and suddenly I found myself switching sides. Over the course of the wedding and the honeymoon, Ines was really horrible to Bronson. She was constantly swearing at him and belittling him over the course of the week and it seemed as if on the night he called her a cunt, he’d just had enough of her behaviour.
He called her a cunt once and was called out on national television. Ines on the other hand was given a pass.
I got mad. I really did. It seemed like such a double standard to me that Bronson was called out on his one comment and Ines, who had done a lot more, was allowed to just sit there and watch as Bronson was lectured on how he spoke to women. It seemed ridiculous to me that this was even happening.
Over the past few days I have been watching things unfold. Since the episode aired, many people have called for Shilling to be taken off the show. I was willing to agree with that point of view until I was looking into things today and learn that Schilling and the other experts are not privy to the footage is done outside of certain segments of the show. At the time she made those comments, she had no idea that Ines had been acting how she was acting. Her comments were based solely on what she had seen earlier. She saw that Bronson had made a disgusting comment and she decided to call him on it.
Knowing that information now, I can understand why she did what she did but it brings up more questions for me.
Why aren’t the experts looking at all the footage? If they were truly trying to use this as a social experiment, wouldn’t it make sense that they see all the footage in order to truly understand the decisions behind them staying or leaving? It just seems stupid that that is not the case. If experts are able to watch five-year-olds to better understand how they think on The Secret life of Five-Year-Olds then surely the experts on this show should be able to watch everything on Married at first sight. Surely that would give them better insight into whether their social experiment is a success or not? It would also allow people to see that the experts aren't being biased.
While I don’t think at this point in time that Schilling should be fired, I do think what the experts are seeing should be changed so they can get the full picture. I also think that in the next episode something needs to be done to address what had happened. Right now Channel Nine is in damage control and unless they do something people are going to continue believing that Schilling is biased.
The only bright side I’m really seeing to this whole thing is that have actually started people talking about domestic violence against men.
When we look at Domestic Violence, we tend to focus more on women and children being the victims and men being the abusers. We don't often see campaigns where women are the abusers. While statistically women and children are more likely to be victims, we also have a problem with men not reporting abuse against them in the home or any abuse against them that isn't physical (punches, etc).
In case you're wondering, I'm not going to watch any more Married at First Sight. I still have no interest in the show for reasons that I have already stated and this episode has not inspired me to want to watch any more. I will, however, be watching Twitter to see if things end up being rectified in the next episode.
Until next time,
(aka - Sophie)
No Comments Yet, Leave Yours!