Kieran says that in the ‘battle between bioethics and religion. The final score was Bioethics 3, Religion 1.’ This, I would say, was about the score in last night’s Wifeswap: Leierwoods 3, Patricks 1. The Patricks changed their own behaviour more than the Leierwoods did — a lot more. The Leierwoods would have won by more if only they hadn’t raised their son to be a bumptious clever clever, who spent the entire show trying to prove to American conservatives that liberals are a bunch of know-it-all insensitive bastards.
This was particularly annoying to me because he systematically got the better of Ms Patrick in the arguments, but couldn’t bring himself to be kind and understanding. Her particular complaints about him were wrong, but charming: ‘He’s disrespecting the flag and our country’. NO — he wasn’t doing that, and even if he did who cares, its his flag and his country. The problem is that he was disrespecting YOU. What made things even worse was that Mr. and Mrs. Patrick came off as rather sad and defeated, but fundamentally decent people, so Leierwood jr.’s behavior just seemed cruel (as his mother pointed out).
I have come to enjoy Wifeswap no end, after being dragged in initially by my…wife. I almost (not quite) invariably find the subjects sympathetic. I’m not a social scientist, but if I were I’d watch it with even more enjoyment. Anecdotal as it is, the episodes I have seen seem to diplay two patterns:
1) the more kid-friendly family infects the less kid-friendly family with its tendencies.
2) the more slobbish family infects the uptight neatnik family with its tendencies.
The first observation makes me optimistic about human life; the second makes me feel that I am a complete failure (since I have failed to infect my wife with my slobbishness after 13 years of marriage, but the evidence is that a complete stranger would do so ina matter of days). These two traits, by the way, (kid-friendly and slobbish; kid unfriendly and neatnik) seem to go together on the show and, I’d guess, in real life too (if you place a premium on neatness you want to either keep the kids out of the way or oppress them, as the pre-show Patricks did).
Would it be legitimate for Sociology PhD students to go along with the TV crews and do ethnographical studies? They could become part of the show:
bq. Interviewer: well we just saw Judy reasoning with her toddler about why she ought to wear her jacket outside. Let me turn to our resident sociologist, Ms. Smith whose working on her PhD at Berkeley — Ms. Smith, what would Bourdieu have said about this?
{ 16 comments }
george 03.03.05 at 9:05 pm
Yes, I’ve caught Wifeswap once or twice, and have been similarly impressed. The show seems much more willing than most TV fare to take actual stands on things — or at least to let some types of people come off as better people than other types. Remarkable, even if unintended.
Clint 03.03.05 at 9:42 pm
“Would it be legitimate for Sociology PhD students to go along with the TV crews and do ethnographical studies?”
I’m fairly sure that this happened on the show American High a few years ago. As I recall, Chicago Sociology grad students were involved with the show in some way.
Chris Bertram 03.03.05 at 11:46 pm
Is the US show a copy of the British format or vice versa??
The one I enjoyed most in the UK was between a German couple (middle class enough to speak fluent English, kids included) and a working class couple from Bristol. The Brits were, in many ways, total slobs, but they were more clued up on equality between the sexes that the middle-class Germans (the wife did _everything_ .).
george 03.04.05 at 12:13 am
I think it’s the former.
john b 03.04.05 at 12:33 am
George is correct. It’s like the Weakest Link, except without a freaky Mrs Thatcher-lite for the Americans to be turned on by.
Richard Cownie 03.04.05 at 12:53 am
Don’t be surprised that “reality TV” shows have a flavor of sociology or psychology. The producers of these shows are very aware that what they’re doing are essentially psychological experiments – exposing people to carefully designed stresses and allowing their reactions to be monitored. And very often, just as in psychological experiments, the subjects are misdirected to conceal the true nature of the experiment.
Just because these shows function as popular entertainment, don’t assume that the people making them are simple or unsophisticated. They know what they’re doing; I expect they employ quite a few sociology and psychology PhD’s.
markus 03.04.05 at 8:15 am
>Just because these shows function as popular entertainment, don’t assume that the people making them are simple or unsophisticated. They know what they’re doing; I expect they employ quite a few sociology and psychology PhD’s.
No need to speculate as far as the German equivalents are concerned, where such “expert” consultancy is a selling point. I guess we like to both get the feeling that these people know what they’re doing and that it isn’t just simple voyeurism which draws us into watching it, but that we are trying to learn something.
The quality of the commentary from said experts is however often abysmal, which makes me fear people might come to regard the social sciences as a worthless exercise in creating clever words for ordinary phenomena and dressing up old proverbs and truisms.
… then again, that’s not that far from the truth in some cases, just a little one-sided.
MisterPundit 03.04.05 at 1:18 pm
1) the more kid-friendly family infects the less kid-friendly family with its tendencies.
Wrong. The less strict family infects the more strict family. Give a kid a choice between more discipline and less discipline and which one will they choose?
This was particularly annoying to me because he systematically got the better of Ms Patrick in the arguments,
I saw this. The kid was as dumb as a rock, but he just yelled so much louder than that poor woman. Ms. Patrick was clearly stunned speechless that a kid would be so arrogant and obnoxious.
The kid’s dad liked his ironed shirt though, but he needs to grow some balls.
harry 03.04.05 at 2:10 pm
bq. Give a kid a choice between more discipline and less discipline and which one will they choose?
If you’ve watched more than the Patricks episode you’ll find that strictness and kid-unfriendliness don’t always go together (though slobbishness does, a bit): the Patricks were both strict and kid-unfriendly in the sense that the father spent no time with them. Its the ‘not spending time with them’ that I count as unfriendly. And its the parents, not the kids, who make the choice.
bq. The kid was as dumb as a rock, but he just yelled so much louder than that poor woman. Ms. Patrick was clearly stunned speechless that a kid would be so arrogant and obnoxious.
He wasn’t especially smart. But she, por thing, had no responses to his arguments, because, as the scene of Leierwood mum with the Patrick social circle showed, she simply lives in a closed world of unthinking slogans (not stupid, just not thoughtful). And no, I don’t think she was stunned by his arrogance, just really (and justifiably) upset by being the butt of it.
I did find myself wishing that we could watch foreign Wifeswaps — they’d be even more interesting in a way.
The answer to Chris’s question is certainly that it originates in the UK — in fact Channel 4 has its logo quietly hidden somewhere on the US closing titles. Same as Millionaire, Sanford and Son, All In the Family….
Keven Lofty 03.04.05 at 4:04 pm
It seems to me from watching the show and reading her manual on the website that Mrs. Patrick was on the verge of breaking down before she was on the show. She was trying to hold together a family where she was under enormous pressure and felt unable to communicate those pressures to her husband, who worked long hours himself. She was afraid he would leave her in the same way her first marriage ended.
I do wonder though how she got through military boot camp when a seventeen year old questioning the existence of God makes her start crying.
harry 03.04.05 at 4:17 pm
Kevin,
I have just, at your prompting, read the manual, and am shocked by it — mainly shocked I guess that they allowed her on the show, as all the other shows I have seen the marriages have seemed stable (if odd, but whose marraige isn’t odd). I wonder if the Leierwood boy had read it before meeting her. I hope not.
My guess about your question is that she is extremely repressed (as her husband is). Repression is remarkably effective sometimes. But then how would she agree to be on the show?
Steve LaBonne 03.04.05 at 6:36 pm
It’s boring at work just now. Our small forensic lab has only one evidence clerk, and since she left early today I have to take a turn filling in at the front desk. So athough I don’t even watch TV, I’m so bored that I happened to peruse this post and the page to which it linked. All I can say is, holy crap. If this experiment with these people were proposed by a psychology professor, surely to God the human subjects committee would turn it down cold- at least I hope so. There seems to be some repressed sadism at work among those who concocted it.
American Citizen 03.04.05 at 8:44 pm
I’ve seen a few Trading Spouses episodes (only a few, my wife hates the wife-trading genre), and my impression is that the producers get one family which is extreme in one way, and another family which is extreme in the opposite way. That way, your average non-extreme family can watch the show and be glad they’re more sensible than both families.
Lisa SG 03.04.05 at 10:25 pm
Yes–the families are always extreme. I myself have tried to figure out who I would be swapped with–in what way am I extreme? My husband thinks I’m messy but compared to some on the program we live like neatniks. Would they match us with religious zealots? People who don’t read? Hey, I even attend a Unitarian church and I watch TV (obviously!) But one thing that the program shows is that people don’t really know themselves all that well, so I’m sure I’m extreme in some way.
I’ve been watching most weeks for the past several months. I find it quite spellbinding. It’s usually not sadistic–many swappees find that they have learned something, and seem thankful for the experience. I agree that the clean, obsessively neat, and excessively strict parents (and the workaholics) seem to learn more from the experience, though. But not because they’re the only ones that need to learn. It’s great to be kid-friendly and messy in small amounts, but 26 pets? A shower stall filled with toilet paper bought at price clubs, to save money? They’re something to be said for neatness! (Did anyone see the episode where the money-saving messy wife tried to convince the extremely wealthy obssessive neatnik husband to buy everything with coupons? She didn’t seem to understand that for him there was actually no point whatsoever to buy things with coupons).
George 03.04.05 at 11:46 pm
Re ‘foreign wifewsaps’:
I’ve read that the worst possible match would be an American woman and a Latin American man, and the best possible match would be the opposite. Gross generalization obviously, but it’s got the makings of high (ie low) comedy.
LizardBreath 03.07.05 at 8:46 pm
‘I Love Lucy’, perchance?
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