Pop (Up) Goes the Blind Date: Supertextual Constraints on “Reality” Television

In this textual analysis of the reality dating show Blind Date, the authors challenge the recent cultural studies scholarship that champions textual openness of reality television. In particular, the authors demonstrate how the pop-up supertext in Blind Date undermines the counterhegemonic potential of this show with regard to gender, class, and ethnic representations. The authors find that the interplay between the comic supertext and the dating coverage tends to punish deviance from dominant conceptions of aesthetics, class, social, and intellectual abilities. The analysis highlights the limits of textual polysemy in the new generation of interactive or enhanced television formats.