Intimacy on the Internet

Media Representations of Online Connections

Lauren Rosewarne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317581413
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Social Aspects in Computer Science
• Index: Computer Science

The focus of this book is on the media representations of the use of the Internet in seeking intimate connections—be it a committed relationship, a hook-up, or a community in which to dabble in fringe sexual practices. Popular culture (film, narrative television, the news media, and advertising) present two very distinct pictures of the use of the Internet as related to intimacy. From news reports about victims of online dating, to the presentation of the desperate and dateless, the perverts and the deviants, a distinct frame for the intimacy/Internet connection is negativity. In some examples however, a changing picture is emerging. The ubiquitousness of Internet use today has meant a slow increase in comparatively more positive representations of successful online romances in the news, resulting in more positive-spin advertising and a more even-handed presence of such liaisons in narrative television and film. Both the positive and the negative media representations are categorised and analysed in this book to explore what they reveal about the intersection of gender, sexuality, technology and the changing mores regarding intimacy.

1 The Market Economy of Love

In a world of online shopping, electronic funds transfers and digital commerce, thinking of the Internet as a kind of marketplace—as its own economy—is nothing new. More than a generic place, and means, to conduct trade, this chapter focuses on the Internet’s specific role in retailing love and sex: as a place aiding in the acquisition of relationships, the arrangement of hook-ups and a means to satisfy niche sexual interests. The use of the Internet in this fashion is, of course, easily identifiable on screen. Portrayals of online dating perfectly fit this bill, as do more recent depictions centered on location-based hook-up apps. Other, more explicitly sex-based products such as Internet pornography (netporn), erotic webcam sites and the online booking of sex workers are also part of this.

While the depiction of the Internet as a venue for intimacy commerce is a central theme in this chapter, the focus more specifically is on how the values of consumerism such as choice, customization and disposability have impacted on intimacy and its online acquisition. This chapter begins with the contentious idea of love as purchasable, and moves on to examine the role that the screen has in normalizing the Internet in intimacy quests and thus legitimizing the market. The economic drivers underpinning love in the Internet age are then analyzed.

The Purchase of Love

In a scene from the drama Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor (2013), the entrepreneur Harley (Robbie Jones)—within his critique of the online dating industry—remarked, “I prefer the old-fashioned way of meeting women.” Later in the film, Judith (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), a dating company psychologist—and a woman about to have an affair with Harley—says to him, “I prefer the old-fashioned way of finding love.” Both comments allude to the characters’ belief—and an attitude widely detected both on screen and off—that use of the Internet to find love is fundamentally different to other methods; that it is somehow less authentic, less romantic. The fact that Harley and Judith first met in “real life” as opposed to online—most notably with the online dating industry existing in the background—subtly implies that true passion is spontaneous, is serendipitous and happens without the “sullying” influence of technology. This subtle condemnation, in fact, gets confirmed in every screen example where an online dating experiment not only ends badly, but notably gets contrasted with a better real-life introduction and love match. The television drama The Husband She Met Online (2013) illustrates this particularly well. Rachel (Meredith Monroe) met Craig (Jason Gray-Stanford) online; Craig turned out to be a violent, controlling murderer. In the final scene of the film—after Craig is killed—Rachel is walking in a park when she bumps into a central casting nice guy.¹ This accidental meet cute² is presented as the way a couple should meet and exists in sharp contrast to Rachel’s ill-fated Internet-instigated relationship. Although in The Husband She Met Online the contrast between off- and online meetings is extreme, other examples convey the same message, albeit with more subtlety. In the comedy Jack and Jill (2011), lonely and homely Jill (Adam Sandler) signed up for online dating. Her foray was marred by rejection and disappointment. By the end of the film however, Jill does find love, albeit love she found offline. The romantic-comedy Because I Said So (2007) centers on Daphne’s (Diane Keaton) attempts to find love online for her daughter Milly (Mandy Moore). Like Jill, Milly ends up finding love, but again, it happens with someone met offline. In the television holiday movie A Very Merry Mix-Up (2013), despite Alice’s (Alicia Witt) engagement to Will (Scott Gibson)—whom she met on Mates.com with a 75% compatibility rating—her true love, her destiny, was with Matt (Mark Wiebe) who she met serendipitously at an airport. In the “Sweet Little Lies” episode of the drama series Black Box (2014), Lina (Ali Wong) posted an online dating profile. Lina’s use of the website was scarcely mentioned again in the series; shortly after she posted her profile, she found love in the “normal way”³. A variation on this theme was apparent in the pilot episode of the sitcom A to Z (2014–15), where it turned out that Andrew’s (Ben Feldman) love interest, Zelda (Cristin Milioti)—whose profile was on his online dating company’s website—hadn’t actually put it there herself, in turn quietly repeating the screen truism that real love comes without the assistance of the Internet; that Andrew and Zelda were a true match because neither were really dating online. Similarly, for Diana (Natasha Henstridge) and Ken (Gabriel Hogan) in the television holiday film A Christmas Song (2012), even though they were matched online—on two separate occasions—and while they ended up together, the couple already knew each other offline as teaching colleagues and thus, the Internet simply validated the serendipity of their offline match.

A different spin on this idea is fate and the Internet being framed as diametrically—if not dangerously—opposed. In A Very Merry Mix-Up for example, Alice ultimately saw it as her destiny to meet Matt, regardless of the on-paper perfection of her online match with Will. In an unnamed series 2 episode of the British comedy series Starlings (2012–13), destiny was similarly alluded to when Grandpa (Alan Williams) tried online dating. After his failed date—his match was in a vegetative state—he was riding the bus home, feeling dejected, and a fellow passenger counselled him, “if you’re meant to find someone, you will.” Grandpa found comfort in this remark, an idea that, again, taps into the idea of serendipity and real love arriving, like magic, rather than being worked for, paid for or found online.

In his book Love Online, the sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann bitingly remarked, “Welcome to the consumerist illusion which would have us believe that we can choose a man (or a woman) in the same way that we choose a yoghurt in the hypermarket.”⁴ The same shopping analogy was used in the documentary Hooked (2003), centered on the use of the Internet by gay men seeking sex: “It’s like in the supermarket … you go into the supermarket and look for a product that appeals to you.” The journalist David Masciotra also used this analogy: “Online dating offers transactional romance, allowing users to browse for a partner as they would browse for a book, refrigerator, or lawnmower.”⁵ Not only do these remarks reference the capitalist edict of choice (discussed later in this chapter), but they present online dating as a thoroughly unromantic way to meet; that the transaction is cold, perfunctory and exists in strong opposition to Hollywood’s idealized meet cutes. In several screen examples the apparent lack of romance in a Web meet actually gets verbalized. In the British drama Birthday Girl (2001), John (Ben Chaplin) used the FromRussiaWithLove.com site to find a bride, “Nadia” (Nicole Kidman). Nadia, in fact, turned out to be a con artist intent on scamming him. During an argument, John’s new bride summarized perfectly his miserable situation which Nadia mocked was capped by his use of the Internet to find intimacy:

So tell me, John, did you say, when I grow up, what I want is to still be in this town, in this job that I hate, in a house with ants and a big bag of pornography? And then I’m going to send off to Russia for a wife and she’ll fall in love with me. What did you expect, John? What did you really expect to happen?

Harley and Judith’s comments in Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, and Nadia’s comments in Birthday Girl, reflect the simple but commonly held screen belief that online dating is unromantic; that it’s nobody’s ideal way to meet, but rather, is something succumbed to after other methods are exhausted. The title character’s foray into online dating in the drama series Ally McBeal (1997–2002) provides a perfect illustration of this: Ally (Calista Flockhart) went online in the “Do You Wanna Dance?” episode only after exhausting many other options in pursuit of love (worth noting, Ally’s online dating efforts also failed dismally).

The supposed lack of romance in an online meet is, apparently, entrenched sufficiently in the zeitgeist for online dating companies to aggressively attempt to challenge it; an idea discussed by film theorist Michele Schreiber:

Television advertisements for the two most successful American dating sites eharmony.com and match.com actively deflate the negative connotations of online dating’s unromantic nature by appropriating aesthetics reminiscent of postfeminist romance films. Eharmony’s advertisements are particularly skilful at playing up the serendipitous possibilities available once the site matches you.⁶

The sociologist John Bridges made similar points in his discussion of eHarmony’s advertising:

[T]hose sappy, romantically oriented, overly simplistic, “I found the love of my life” and “I’m so happy” messages—which successfully plucked the heart strings of those “I want to believe” viewers in a way that left their critical faculties unengaged and their credulity unchallenged, were a major part of eHarmony’s success.⁷

A 2015 Match.com commercial provides a good example of an explicit challenge to the unromantic idea: “If you’re sitting at dinner with Mr. Right, does it matter where you met him?” This notion of the Internet as less romantic than other options is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2.

Noted earlier was the idea of online dating being imbued with stigma. In fact, such stigma has been steadily abating over the years and the use of the Internet in intimacy-seeking has undergone a progressive process of normalization, one admittedly slow to be replicated on screen.

Normalizing the Net

A key factor that has enabled the Internet to so substantially revolutionize the quest for intimacy is its mainstreaming: both the mainstreaming of use in general, but more specifically the mainstreaming of certain products associated with it. The most obvious example is high-level participation in online dating.

Dating in the Mainstream

Kaufmann identified how, over time, online dating has undergone a dramatic rebranding:

Online dating, whose image was once little better than that of marriage age...