TV trash or a social comment?

So what’s E4’s latest cultural offering? Playing It Straight, the dating game show with a difference. In the group of eligible bachelors there are a selection of homosexual men hiding in plain sight and one lucky lady looking for love has to single out the homosexuals from the straights. If he is straight, they both get £25k and presumably will fall madly in love. If the contestant she picks is homosexual, however, he gets the whole £50k and she receives nothing. Nobody knows the contestants’ sexualities; the female object of affection has to tune her ‘gaydar’ to ultra-sensitive. Sounds like the ultimate incarnation of trash on TV? Well, no one’s going to tell you you’re wrong, but is there a deeper cultural meaning to the show?

Upon first watching Playing It Straight, it’s hard not to dismiss it as philistine crap. The premise of the programme leaves little room for any intelligent input, and in some cases The Jeremy Kyle Show might prove to have a higher educational quality. Despite treading new ground, the show trivialises everything to such an extent that it becomes the programme you might watch at 4am, drunk and hardly able to see what’s happening. From the outset, Alan Carr bombards the audience with making everything he can into a badly executed pun.

Furthermore, surely the concept of the show is highly offensive, rewarding homosexual men for hiding their sexuality, and consequently being forced to perform the norm expected by society. The absurdity of the show is summarised in the first episode when one contestant decides to have a diva outburst because he is served paella for dinner – the show is set in Spain. Obviously this is all done within the context of a TV game show and isn’t designed to be taken seriously, but the concept and its execution strike me as slightly adrift from any form of cultural enhancement; it is merely crude and ridiculous.

On a deeper level though, is there a form of social commentary to be gained? None of the men know which of the other contestants are homosexual and which are straight, so when they are told the twist in the show, they become preoccupied with a sexuality witch-hunt (or as Alan Carr refers to it, an “outing”). It seems that when someone’s sexuality is blatantly apparent and overt then that’s fine, but when speculation needs to be undertaken because it’s not in-your-face obvious, then it would appear that it becomes unsettling for some. So as well as the bachelorette having to differentiate between the homosexual and straight men, the male contestants undergo the same process, citing their speculations in private interviews with the camera based on body language and their perception of typically female behaviour. Indeed, any form of feminine behaviour, such as taking care in their appearance or flamboyant mannerisms is instantly converted into grounds for that person to be gay. As a result, Playing It Straight can be considered an interesting indictment of society’s perception of gender roles and sexuality because it unveils what people consider to be typically homo- or hetrosexual. Yet these criticisms can be seen as rather hypocritical because as a viewer, when you’re watching the contestants, you can’t help but be drawn into speculation as well. So is the show turning our own opinions of sexuality and gender back at us?

Ultimately, however, the programme is a light-hearted game show and all speculation on sexuality is designed to be exaggerated to the point of stupidity; the show is designed to entertain, not to educate. However, it is clear we can also see the ideas involved in the programme operating within society. The question is, therefore, whether its trash TV credentials obliterate any serious interpretation.