Imagine sitting in front of thousands of people with your significant other, telling and hearing the annoying and intimate details of your relationship. To top that off, you both have gone out with other people, cheating, and will now hear the "hot" and intimate details of each date. Finally you will publicly decide to stay with the person you came with or swap that person for someone you have known through only one date. This idea may sound bizarre, but that is the premise for the television show Change of Heart. This show makes a mockery of relationships. It makes them appear to be interchangeable. This show reinforces the idea that today's relationships are not highly valued, that a six-month or a year relationship with someone can be brushed off without regret, or in thirty minutes as seen on the show! This show has a bad effect on today's young people and will have a lasting blow because of many shows like it. What does this show's popularity tell us about how we as a society see relationships? Through an examination of the cultural condition, the reinforcement it provides and the overall effect it has on the way people see relationships, it will be evident that society has undercut the value of it because of media influence. In other words, today's relationships are very artificial and are not taken seriously.
When analyzing the show Change of Heart one needs to first recognize the cultural condition it responds to. The condition being that people today see relationships as mostly sexual and somewhat mental. Relationships today have become more and more selfish in the idea of "what can this person do for ME" and not about "what can WE do for each other to work out and make better what we have." There are countless examples of this throughout the numerous television stations to support this idea. One such show is Friends, where any form of a meaningful relationship is dumped or mocked. One of the characters wants to stay married to his friend he married while drunk because he "doesn't want another failure." What a great example to give--get drunk and casually get married AND the dependent reason for getting and staying married. One could also turn to any afternoon soap opera or talk show and see prime examples of casual sex, partner swapping, cheating and many divorces. These different shows rip apart the sacredness of marriage and relationships in general. Add all of this together and you see how the show Change of Heart adds to the already large problem of dysfunctional relationships we encounter today.
