An (un)romantic journey: Authentic performance in a Chinese dating show

Abstract

This article examines the production and negotiation of ‘authenticity’ in reality television through a case study of a popular Chinese dating show If You Are the One. The study reconstructed the various stages of the show and collected perspectives from participating bachelors and production people. The ethnographic approach has enabled a relatively thick description of what happened on-screen and off-screen. Primarily, it details how four ordinary male participants entered the show and made sense of their experiences. It describes and discusses how they maintained a strong sense of authenticity while delivering anticipated performance on television. It uncovers the dynamics and interaction between the participants, producers and audiences and highlights the invisible scripts underlining the show. The recurring debates about authenticity, scripting and ordinariness in reality television are addressed with a renewed understanding of how the seemingly paradoxical ‘authentic performance’ and ‘extraordinary ordinariness’ work in the process.

Topic Initiation by Korean and Chinese Speakers on Reality Dating Shows

“…For this study, we chose to examine reality dating shows because: (1) There is an increasing number of intermarriages between South Korean and Chinese nationals; (2) We can find reality dating shows in Korean and Chinese that are authentic and comparable. Some research has been conducted on dating shows in terms of the historical development of the shows (Wang, 2017), the authenticity of the shows (Shei, 2013;Chu, 2020), the politics that involves the shows (Guo, 2017), the social issues that are reflected in the shows (Li, 2015;Luo and Sun, 2015;Duan, 2016;Chen, 2017;Peng, 2018), the cultural values that are associated with the shows (Song, 2020), as well as participants' pragmatic behavior such as females' refusal strategies (Wang, 2015;Ren and Woodfield, 2016) and hosts' teasing tactics (Bi and Marsden, 2020). Nevertheless, none of them has investigated participants' topic initiation on their first date which would pave the way for their short-term goal of getting a second date and for the long-term goal of getting married.…”

“…They are non-celebrities who normally need to ask questions to obtain each other's background information, instead of celebrities whose basic information has been in the public eye and does not need to be obtained. Non-celebrities tend to stay true to their feelings and display moments of authenticity (e.g., Chu, 2020) more than celebrities who may well perform to maintain their image.…”

Value Co-Creation on TV Talent Shows: Cases from Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong

“…We have contributed to the discussion of the service ecosystem by bringing "producers" into it. "Producer" is a word often used to describe a service provider [82,83]. We discuss the actor's role in order to study service ecosystems and understand how service ecosystems are created and operate, and examine co-creation among ecosystem members by using network values and dynamic capabilities.…”