After getting kicked off of VH1 spin off, “I Love New York”, brothers “Chance” and “Real” were unfortunately given their own spin off, “A Real Chance at Love.” On the show seventeen women compete for a chance at love with either “Chance” or “Real” whose actual names are Ahmad and Kamal Givens. The latest episode of “A Real Chance at Love” consisted of a very angry Kiki calling Lusty's dead mother a bitch, Real and Chance in a limo, secretly watching the lady contestants chase stubborn animals around a farm they were asked to clean and Kiki licking chocolate off of Real's nipple in an attempt to really charm him. In short, everything that a “Real Chance at Love” symbolizes is an enforcement of patriarchy and racial stereotypes.
The story behind each womens name on the show is the logical place to start when analyzing the show. The trend in naming the female contestants began on “Flavor of Love” when Flavor Flav named each women based on something he observed about her (such as, Deelishes and Thing 1 and 2) making them in essence his property while on the show. On “A Real Chance at Love” the womens names include “MILF” the name of a woman with a 9 year old child and “Sexy Legs.”
During the episode, at one point MILF goes to talk to Real and on her way out says, “So long future baby daddy.” This loaded term used in this context is highly racialized. By referring to Real as a future baby daddy and not husband or companion MILF represents Real as someone who would at best get her pregnant but not marry her. This inherent lack of expectation is not one found on dating shows with mostly white contestants like the Bachelor where the women and men claim to be looking for marriage and companionship. In this “A Real Chance at Love” reinforces the stereotypes of the black man as a hypersexual, irresponsible, thug only capable of impregnating a women and abandoning her.
While roughly a third of the show consists of actual “test” for the women, the other three fourths focus on the women exposing their bodies to Real,Chance (and everyone else in the house), fighting one another, talking about each other behind their backs. In this space women will betray and fight each other for Real and Chance who are always the judges. A “Real Chance at Love” represents women as reliant on men and takes away all of their personal agency as they are all in a position where they are almost always willing to do anything to stay on the show. In Shooting People Sam Brenton writes,
“By manufacturing game worlds into which they slot their non actor casts, creating pressurized and untested environments, where people are manipulated in cruel and extreme ways and begin to display the confusion and loss of perspective of the incarcerated, these productions use their power without adequate or sufficient transparent checks and safeguards”( 9). I found this comparison of the environments that these shows create to prison very interesting. Although we only think of shows like survivor as obviously manipulating people in cruel ways, “A Real Chance at Love” does it to the same extent. By putting these women in intentionally difficult living conditions and preventing them from interacting with the outside world in any real way, the producers do create a prison where they have the power to do whatever they want unchecked.
The way the women look on the show is continually skewed. During personal interviews with the women slow carnival music often plays making whatever they're saying automatically sound idiotic. When the women are filmed on dates with Real or Chance this music usually plays when the women attempts to share something personal. This effect makes it so that no matter the situation the women are always in a position in which they are not as intelligent or as clever as Real and Chance and always at their mercy. In the episode that I watched after Kiki calls Lusty's deceased mother a bitch, Real asks her to apologize and later on camera she says, “I don't want to apologize to these girls, but if its going to make Real proud of me then I'll do it.” This is a key example of how for some reason she is incapable of apologizing because she as a person knows that she should but because Real has told her to do so. Watching these shows I honestly can't believe that these women are as dumb, or as mean as they seem. In this prison that “A Real Chance at Love” creates, the producers control every aspect of what viewers see, including what the contestants do or do not show; and the women do everything they can to acquire their own spin off. Unfortunately these ladies have no control of what everyone else sees once they take their position behind the camera. Like prisoners they sign away their agency upon their entrance into the world of reality television.
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