Italy Not Immune to Inane Dating Shows
TORONTO – There was a time when the people of Rome were subjected to love advice from a career poet named Ovid. His seduction manual “Art of Love” stirred up such a frenzy in its day, that the pious Emperor Augustus banished Ovid to the Black Sea. A harsh sentencing for the erudite poet, over some lurid love advice. How, I wonder, would Augustus have reacted to what today’s Italians are being subjected to on dating reality shows.
One such dating show is the recently released Italian edition of Love is Blind on Netflix. Consistently ranked as a top-streamed series, Love is Blind pits men and women together on interview style dates. The proviso being that they remain blind to each other, literally. The dating pair communicates through a wall in neighbouring pods/rooms. The goal: find your mental match and propose.
Since the American show debuted in 2020, eleven international versions have been produced including in the UK, Brazil, Japan and now Italy, as of December 1st. But audiences and critics have almost unanimously charged Italian men with being the most frustrating contestants within the entire franchise. Online commentators are remarking, for instance, that the male participants are distinctly “toxic” and “emotionally childish”.
Audiences – predominantly female – are citing how the show’s Italian men seem to always say the right thing or rationalize their feelings during a disagreement. How dare they.
Gen Z calls this “gaslighting”, a crime of the highest order. According to the female viewers who are expressing themselves on Reddit, Facebook and Instagram chat boards, Italian men have a unique knack for playing with a woman’s expectations.
Entertainment Critics also partook in the pile on. Publications like US Weekly commented on a particular contestant Giovanni Calvario: “Giovanni Calvario quickly raised eyebrows among the women. After giving meaningful gifts to both Gergana Lazarova and Giorgia Paselli, he couldn’t make up his mind about which woman was the right pick”. What a villain.
Continuing, “Giovanni, like many of his fellow male participants on the Italian season, wanted to keep his options open as long as possible.
The women, all gorgeous and accomplished in their own right, were, meanwhile, going all-in with the one man they actually wanted to seriously date. It only adds to the chaos when the person they want isn’t as deeply invested in a potential marriage together”.
Apparently, it’s not yet obvious to some audiences that reality shows are not reality. And that they’re cast for ratings and drama. But if one is to take the very un-serious aforementioned comments at face value, the reason Italian men on this show are “raising eyebrows” is because they are talking to multiple women at once, and taking their time before proposing marriage. The nerve.
It’s as if someone cast them on a show to talk to multiple women [they can’t see] before choosing their life’s mate.
Image of Giovanni Calvario and Giorgia Paselli proposal courtesy of Netflix
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
