Abstract
My study analyzed the discussions of fan community members as they negotiated racial representations of a show with a uniquely colorblind premise: the Netflix reality show, Love is Blind. Given the proliferation of media texts that purport post-racial themes and plot lines, the examination of these kinds of texts are necessary. Fan discourses are a meaningful reflection of public perceptions and beliefs carried during current historical moments. For communication scholarship, it is important to understand how race is being discussed and negotiated in contemporary ways to monitor the discursive evolution of racism and propose ways to address it. Fan studies scholars call for more explicit research into the discussions of race among fandoms, and my study answers this call and extends scholarly understanding of the tactics adopted by fandoms when discussing race.
The data was collected from a popular social media site used by Love is Blind fans, Reddit. I accessed fan discourse from Reddit because comments on these platforms are publicly accessible, readily available through narrow search affordances (i.e., r/LoveIsBlindOnNetflix), and capture thousands of fans interactions within a group containing over 800,000 members. Reddit has organized numerous threads around season 4 of Love is Blind, providing over 37,100 anonymous comments to analyze.
Overall, my study supports the notion that fans watching a show with a colorblind premise are likely to engage in colorblind discussions about race. While explicit conversations of race were limited in the sheer volume of topics discussed throughout the entirety of fan discourses, the conversations involving race were significant. Additionally, after analyzing all fan discussions, fans use of implicit colorblind racism doubled the number of conversations that involved race. Online social media forums, such as Reddit, represent meaningful centers of transformation and ideological formation. With the Love is Blind forum boasting an enormous number of members, it is critical to evaluate the ways prominent ideological constructions, specifically race, are being negotiated because the impact of their influence can be far-reaching. Fan behavior on the Reddit forum revealed patterns of cushioned language to strategically address race. When this language was used, it signaled a desire to engage in a negotiation of interpretation, not a combative challenge of beliefs, that preserved the comfort of the dominant group of Reddit users within this community.
Love is Blind and shows with similar narratives create an illusion of a post-racial society. Even with an increase in diversity of casting, stereotypical representations are still found and continue to be perceived as such by the fans watching them. What is more important is that while the overtly racist or stereotypical comments are becoming less common among fans, racist sentiments are not disappearing—they are simply shifting out of obvious focus and being delivered in more implicit ways. This is an impactful implication to racial discourse studies because the further race moves out of the center of consideration, the less easy it is to “prove” its involvement or influence over certain social situations portrayed in certain media representations. As fans have shown, without “proof,” the significance of race is becoming a fractured argument to pose in online spaces, which leads to less critical and transformational discussions overall.