Looking For Dick in the Dark: A final analysis of Dating in the Dark Season 1

I've said before that relationships are a mutual delusion. And now even as I consider being deluded, I can't help but investigate that fact. Slovaj Zizek says that the ego and super ego are constantly occupied with pre-registered fantasies (that are arguably masculine in nature, but that’s a topic for another day). Zizek goes on to say that each time you engage in an act of sex or romance, you aren't really thinking about the partner you are with but rather how that person quantitates to your own fantasy. You're never really seeing each other; you're only seeing what you want. Which, on that token, I think we can all agree is a narcissistic image of ourselves. So in the same way that a man is never really fully considering the partner he is with while in the act of sex, but instead imagining to the best of his ability his supreme sexual fantasy, women equally delude themselves into believing their partner to be the archetype fantasy they've created in their mind, oftentimes more sensitive and attentive than their partner actually is. The defining difference between these two perceptions, male and female, is that the man focuses on the fantasy at hand while in the act, and the woman focuses on the fantasy that will be, or the story that she'll tell (herself or others) later in a past tense. She fills in the holes of her sensory experience with tenderness and emotion that likely didn't exist at all and make them the focus of the future reverie. In many ways it’s hard to decide which side is worse. While the man has defaced his partner as a purely sexual masturbatory prop, the woman has built an entirely fabricated partner out of the parts she's been given.

Now shut off the lights.

The sensory experience is changed somewhat. Ideally, two people will go into a dark room and be forced to get to know each other for who they truly are. Obviously that’s ridiculous. There is still an entire societally-driven hierarchy of delusions pushing each and every action our two blind players make. I mean for christsake, these are the kind of people that would go on a dating show. But let’s just ignore all that for a moment. Let’s consider also, for just a moment, that Freud was right and that it really is all about the DICK. The ladies are just aching to creep up on one, and the men are just thrilled to put theirs to use. But more specifically, lets employ Jacque Lacan's re-interpretation of Freudian psychology and assert that it’s really more about the word DICK, or the preconceived notion of the DICK. See, Lacan believed that the real divider was language. The unconscious is language and the structure therein. That makes it very difficult for us to conceive any sort of tacit knowledge. Difficult, but not impossible. So here we are, two people in the dark, with every intention of romance. No way to intuitively familiarize yourself with the essence of the person you're with via language, since we know that’s just a handicap anyway. Besides, in the first three days of knowing a person, you're not really telling them anything about yourself. You've just been talking about your ego, ground floor of the Bates Motel, everything you're willing to let someone see. No way to apprise the other person with your characteristic quirks, the little things that make you you, like facial expressions or gesticulation. Those little things that, BTW, offer a contrast for the person’s sincerity and can make a smooth talker a transparent liar or a shy geek an endearing sweetheart. The only real sense you have to work with now is your sense of smell and touch, a purely primordial approach to dating. I suspect if these senses get worked appropriately then the conversation will flow "naturally" and everything will click. Now what we have is real. We've stripped away all the bullshit. Because, truly, in the end, it’s all about the smell and the taste. I mean think about it. How many people do you know that put up with a whole lot of shit from their partner for seemingly no reason? Why? You can't fight pheromones.

Now turn the lights back on.

Reality comes crumbling down as our contestants re-insert their pre-conceived ideals into the experience. My theory is that this is why we so often come to the end of the program with the same result. The man struggles momentarily with his decision to go meet his pick on the balcony, but he does it in the end. The woman seems to know right away she ain't going out there. Why is this? Because the male delusion, while superficial in many ways, is much more flexible than the female delusion. Everything is riding on this for her. For a man, the only thing riding on this is his DICK.