Hunter Hargraves joins host Mel Woods to discuss the greatest of all time season of queer reality TV, and Mel meets one of the rockstar cast, Arewá Basit.
Overview
In this episode, we analyze Season 8 of Are You The One?, which features an all-queer cast and is described as a transformative representation in reality TV. The episode opens with an introduction to the show's unique ability to foster queer identity, led by guest Hunter Hargraves, a noted queer intellectual. The discussion delves into how the season promotes polyamory and challenges traditional heteronormative structures through concepts like "compulsory authenticity." Special guest Arewá shares their personal journey and insights as an unofficial producer on the show, emphasizing the importance of genuine queer representation, highlighted by significant moments. The episode reflects on the show's legacy in advancing queer narratives and representation within reality TV.
Notes
Introduction to Get Queer podcast (00:00 - 05:00)
Analysis of Are You The One? Season 8 (05:01 - 10:39)
Authenticity and Strategy in Reality TV (10:40 - 19:45)
Representation and Responsibility (19:46 - 28:45)
Guests
Hunter Hargraves (any pronouns) is an intellectual bon-vivant and boldly queer social media presence. He teaches cinema and television arts at California State University Fullerton and he is the author of Uncomfortable Television published by Duke University Press in 2023.
Arewá Basit (she/they) is a singer/songwriter/producer/actor and former participant on the iconic queer season of Are You The One?. Arewá headlined Transmission, NYC’s first all trans music festival, and she is a co-founder of Legacy a NYC based production company focusing on uplifting Black queer voices and fostering community.
00:00
Voiceover
The following program is rated 14-plus. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:04
Voiceover
I’m bisexual and I [bleeping] love it.
00:12
Voiceover
Live your truth, okay? I sure am living mine.
00:16
Voiceover
This vibe.
00:17
Voiceover
You can’t fight it this time.
00:19
Hunter Hargraves
I am very proud of being bisexual. I think of it as a superpower, basically.
00:25
Voiceover
Are you ready, America?
00:27
Voiceover
’Cause I doubt it.
00:28
Voiceover
Let’s go.
00:35
Mel Woods
Reality fans like me had been hearing about it, reading about it, and the anticipation was real. The expectation was high, and let’s be clear, it did not disappoint. Where to start on season eight of Are You the One? There are so many clips, so many characters, so many experts, so many fans. Here’s Hunter Hargraves, social media super queer intellectual bon vivant and the writer of Uncomfortable Television.
01:04
Hunter Hargraves
One of the things I like to remind my students is that reality television is just like an inherently messy … I mean, TV is messy all around in part because it’s a circular medium. Like, things run from week to week, and there’s like, a lot of melodrama baked into that. But reality TV is especially, like, supposed to be, like, chaotic and messy, and queer people … I think it’s time that we recognize that will result in representations of, like, queer messes. And sometimes that’s entertaining and sometimes that’s problematic, but also, like, that is for better or for worse, like, the reality of the situation. That messiness kind of pushes back against some of the narratives of, like, respectability politics that you saw throughout the last 20 years.
01:48
Hunter Hargraves
That said, it has to be marriage equality because queers are responsible citizens, when it’s kind of all like, actually, like, let’s, let’s f**k with the system a little bit on shows like Are You the One? and their queer chaotically messy bisexual season, right? Like, sexually fluid season, which was just such a joy to watch because it was a way in which, like, some, a lot of those narratives of queer respectability politics were just being demolished in, like, really sensationalistic fashion.
02:16
Mel Woods
You know, the pleasant lesbians on House Hunters in 2002 were, you know, walked so that we could have a fivesome in the boom-boom room. And all the other, like, perfect things that happened on the queer season of Are You the One?, and I’m still very obsessed with that season because it was, like, I look at a character like Kai from that show, and it’s like, that is the toxic trans dude. I know when I go out to the bar, I know 10 of them. I see them. They’re … they’re there and it’s like these are actual people from the community. These feel like real but, like, hyper-real reality TV characters that actually reflect my friends and the people that I know all of them for all of their flaws and messes of that cast. And it was perfect.
02:59
Mel Woods
Season eight Are You the One? Perfect. Hi, I’m Mel Woods and this is Get Queer. This season we’re looking at queer reality TV and its effect on queer identity: in the community, in the world and in the mirror. This episode, the queer reality TV GOAT. And yes, I’m talking about the greatest of all time.
03:22
Mel Woods
The show? A pretty standard dating show. Real World plus Big Brother meets Love Island. A Hawaiian beach house, an even number of cishet single men and women. The gimmick: everybody on season eight was queer or trans or queer and trans, mostly bi or pansexual and totally fluid. In terms of dating and hookups, anything was possible. The cast, hyper-masc f***boy 1, hyper-masc f***boy 2. The nerd in a skirt. The problematic party girl, and my personal favourite, the messy transmasc I know all too well. This is Kai.
03:59
Voiceover
I’m just, like, acting out and do whatever the f*** I want and I like all the attention. I’m just, like, I’m acting out.
04:04
Mel Woods
Also Kai …
04:06
Voiceover
I told Noor and Jasmine that I was pursuing both of them. Noor is not listening, but I have full permission to go and do whatever I want. She is not my girlfriend and she can’t claim me.
04:19
Mel Woods
Also Kai …
04:20
Voiceover
If you felt some type of way specifically about me hooking up with someone else, you should have told me because you know who I am because sex is sex. I don’t care about physicality that much.
04:31
Mel Woods
And Kai and the smitten-at-first-sight Jenna.
04:33
Voiceover
What’s your thing?
04:36
Voiceover
I think my thing it’s probably like self introspection and psychoanalyzing myself and others.
04:45
Voiceover
It’s, like, really weird that like one of the first conversations I have with somebody to be like, yeah, I’m analytical and I’m like bing-bing-bing. My buzzer is going off. I’m like, okay!
04:45
Voiceover
You’re definitely a contender.
04:57
Mel Woods
I came into the season a few episodes in after seeing buzz about it online and hearing from friends. I was in Alberta on a work trip, and I distinctly remember binge-watching the first few episodes on the bus ride between Edmonton and Calgary, absolutely enraptured by it and knowing that I was going to stick around for the whole perfect mess. Here’s how Hunter got to season eight.
05:16
Hunter Hargraves
I had watched, I think, a couple of random episodes from earlier seasons before I saw the eighth season. Just as a, you know, connoisseur of reality television, I watch a wide variety of shows and typically watch a couple episodes of a bunch of different shows and then the ones that stick, stick. But the eighth season, you know, was, you know, we don’t get a lot of queer dating programs historically, and when they have, they’ve been kind of like wildly problematic, right? Like, thinking about Tila Tequila or something, you know, something like that, and this, or, you know, some of the bait and switch. It’s like, guess which one is gay, guess which one is straight? And this was a show that at least gave queer subjects more autonomy and agency in terms of thinking about the dating format.
06:07
Hunter Hargraves
And also the fact that of all the reality dating programs, this really encourages a poly dating format, which, you know, now there’s shows like Couple to Throuple and we’re starting to see more kind of, like, an integration of those kinds of like non-monogamous relationships and, you know, into the dating format. But, you know, the dating format is a non-monogamous, like, in practice with a goal of kind of turning into a kind of, like, perfect match. And the fact that it never quite successfully does so I think is testament to the fact that a lot of, you know, the poly comes off looking pretty good in a lot of these series, even if it looks messy. So, yeah, that’s kind of how I was like, oh, yes, queers, it’s messy. Bisexuals, like, I’m here for it.
06:56
Mel Woods
So how do you think that this show kind of took these heterosexual structures and queered them and really subverted them both, kind of intentionally and unintentionally because, you know, I think the producers obviously went in expecting to do one thing and the contestants had a very different approach sometimes and kind of didn’t necessarily rebel, but did things their own way within the structure of that.
07:21
Hunter Hargraves
I mean, like, from an audience point of view, it looked like a rebellion to me to a certain extent, in part because they were so stubborn in who they were, and in who they thought they were attracted to, right? Like, and how that seemed to not align with what the algorithm was sort of demanding, right? But I do think that in part because you change the logic from having, you know, in previous seasons, you have 11 male-identifying people, 11 female-identifying people. And when you’re in that Hawaiian resort, you have, you know who your friends are, and you know who your potential matches are. And this was like, you can’t actually separate between, like, who your friends are and who your matches are, which is actually a really great description of how a lot of queer relationships work.
08:19
Hunter Hargraves
Queer people are, you know, are able to have sexual chemistry and romantic chemistry, and both of those things at the same time with friends that they also confide in and have, you know, those kinds of friendships with. So it becomes this kind of, I thought, I think the way in which it sort of twisted up the game design was actually a very accurate reflection of a lot of queer dating practices already in which, you know, many of us do share kind of romantic and sexual attractions with our friends that even if we know that they’re not our “perfect match,” quote, unquote.
08:53
Mel Woods
Yeah, you know, that line between, like, pal, f**k buddy, pal who’s a f**k buddy, person you want to go on dates with and person who’s your forever perfect match. Like, there’s a lot of space in between those things, but they also all bump up against each other at the same time on a show like this, that again, is kind of ostensibly going for that very, like, straight answer of Bachelordom of, yes, this is the person you’re supposed to be with. When even as an audience, I think watching it, you know, you look at, like, Kai and Jenna are my favourite example where they did deserve each other in some way.
09:29
Mel Woods
Okay, so to be fair, Jenna comes off okay in the reunion. The reunion is also season 8 required viewing, by the way. Kai does, too, really come off okay, maybe? You do get a sense that he saw himself for real, you know, the stuff he needed to work on. I mean, it’s gotta be hard to listen to stuff like this after the fact.
09:48
Voiceover
Can you explain to me why you feel 100 percent sure that we’re not a perfect match?
09:54
Voiceover
Mathematically, it just doesn’t seem like it could possibly be.
09:56
Voiceover
You’ve logically reasoned me out of your life, even though you have feelings for me.
10:00
Voiceover
Because if we’re not a match, we’re playing a game.
10:03
Voiceover
Exactly. You’re reasoning me out because of the game. You’ve reasoned me out of your life.
10:06
Mel Woods
Or this moment …
10:09
Voiceover
Jenna, here’s the deal. I want to say something. Tell me what you value. I’m crazy about you. I want you, the only person that I want.
10:20
Voiceover
I can’t do this anymore. I don’t believe a damn word he says. I see boy written literally all over his body. He’s telling everybody that they’re his number one.
10:30
Voiceover
I’m madly in love with you.
10:34
Mel Woods
I mean, it was all messy. Everybody had big queer feelings at one time or another. Noor and Jasmine had those huge fights. The tensions with Max, Justin and the respective women, they each circled the Kai, Jenna, Asha, Jasmine, boom-boom room incident. And that’s not even mentioning the fivesome. Hunter attributes part of the extra messiness to the added layer of queering the original show’s format.
10:58
Hunter Hargraves
In a heterosexual season of Are You the One?, you’ve got 10 or 11 guys, 10 or 11 girls. So, as they’re trying to figure out their matches, they have … they’ve got bros, they’ve got their girlfriends, right? They’ve got teams that they can still rely on and socialize on without having to flirt with. But the format of this is let’s take 16 people who are ostensibly all into one another because they all identify as bisexual or sexually fluid. And so that means that you don’t actually have support systems that you cannot not be flirting with. So it also brings … it’s, it’s like, it’s like beyond compulsory authenticity. It’s, like, compulsory, like, flirting and that, so even just that, the way in which queer identity was able to, like, kind of jam the format of the game and actually change, like, the strategy behind it, because now all of a sudden, you had to flirt with everyone. That is what kind of gives us, like, the simultaneous messiness of watching maybe toxic people repeat their, like, toxic relationship flaws, but also, like, really cool moments, like when Kai is, you know, asking Jenna to give him his T shot and showing an MTV audience, like, what that process is like and how that’s, like, a really important part of how he sees himself and his identity. And even the vulnerability, you know, that it takes to establish a relationship with someone.
12:20
Mel Woods
And you get that education, but then you also get that added layer to all the … in the no queers of them being like, “We’re so toxic. We’re so toxic,” as they’re building that deep relationship. And so it really is something for everybody.
12:33
Mel Woods
It’s a perfect show. I was a fan and I still am. And that Jenna and Kai scene, it’s so simple and lovely. More on it later. Of course, nothing is actually perfect, but are you the one who’s pretty darn close? You get educated and you’re certainly entertained with all that drama. The show rides Hunter’s line of uncomfortable in all the best ways. The big queer feelings, the self-awareness, it shows our worst behaviour and it encourages that bad behaviour, in fact? But on the other side of that is what Hunter just referred to as “compulsory authenticity.” This is an idea from writer Michael Lovelock’s book Reality TV and Queer Identity. Lovelock acknowledges the importance of winning in these shows. In these contests, money is often the reward. So a strategy is always useful. And yet participants are expected to be themselves, not strategists.
13:25
Mel Woods
They’re expected to be making these decisions while staying true to themselves, whatever that might mean. In gate to a series like Boy Meets Boy, it meant not giving a false performance. And on Are You the One? season 8, it was telling your truth. But either way, authenticity was compulsory.
13:41
Hunter Hargraves
A show like Queer Eye, which I think is probably a really rich show to talk about from the perspective of something like compulsory authenticity.
13:50
Hunter Hargraves
It’s like, here are her five queers that are like coercing these makeover subjects into being more authentic versions of their selves. Part of that is about how you connect the, like, lifestyle element of, and some of these, like, stereotypes of like queer people should have a polished home. They should know, you know, how to make guacamole. They should know how to dress sharp with, also like, you know, all of that is to show that you can be, like, your true self, which is, I guess, a more confident queer person.
14:24
Mel Woods
A more confident queer person. Coercion or not, that sounds pretty good. And knowing how to make an excellent guacamole never hurts. But looking at Are You the One? season 8, the question around authenticity becomes “Can we be real and have a strategy at the same time? Can those things both be true?” This is Get Queer and I’m Mel Woods.
14:57
Mel Woods
This is Get Queer and I’m Mel Woods. We’re talking about queer reality TV, where it came from, how it got here and what it’s doing for us. This episode, the queer reality TV greatest of all time, Are You the One? season 8.
15:11
Mel Woods
Okay, so for a lot of people who watch the show and who probably come up to you on the street now and see you online and all these things, they know you by one name. But that is not the name you like go by in your day-to-day life and in the world now, right? And I think that’s an experience that a lot of queer and trans people go through of this name journey. So, so, I wonder if you could explain that a little bit for the fans, for the people out there who know you by one thing and should be knowing you by something else.
15:42
Arewà Basit
Totally. Thank you for, thank you for clarifying this. So I, when I was on the show, I went by Basit as like my name, which is an abbreviated version of my given name, but the name that I have gifted and chosen for myself is Arewà. And it’s like, think a ray of sunshine: “a ray,” Arewà. Arewà. So, yeah, and then we can use stuff from the other part where I talk about the other things too. But I just wanted to like have the Arewà sunshine part.
16:19
Mel Woods
Very important.
16:21
Arewà Basit
It helps for people to know what it’s giving.
16:24
Mel Woods
This is Arewà. Grew up in Texas, studied musical theatre at the University of Oklahoma, moved to New York for their undergrad with hopes of getting into theatre. She did some Off-Broadway work and went on tour in Europe with the musical Hair. In Europe, they met lots of people and started to understand their expansive relationship to gender. When they got back to New York, they didn’t fit in with the “wink-wink, don’t show the queerness of the theatre scene.” And between doing solo drag tribute gigs to Etta James and Nina Simone, they considered going to grad school.
16:53
Arewà Basit
And then suddenly I get, like, a DM from someone working, I think within casting for MTV, saying, “Hey, would you be interested in being a part of a reality TV show?” And, like, my first thought was, absolutely not. Because my reality TV references up to that point were America’s Next Top Model, American Idol, like, competition shows that sometimes you would see representation like Adore Delano or, like, I know America’s Next Top Model, there was so much queer and, like, femme and dark-skinned representation that like I clinged to. But outside of that, I could kind of see that reality TV had an energy to it, or at least the stuff that I kind of was, like, it was in my periphery, had a tinge of, like, being not nice is used to incentivize, like being centred or a focal point.
18:07
Arewà Basit
And I’m not really interested in like a lot of not-nice energy or just, like, energy that feels like not nice to exclude anyone. I would. I was always in the mood to keep energies light and high. But, you know, we’re in New York City and the buzzword that got me in the DM was “Would you be interested in being in the first reality TV show in the history of American television that is queer and, like, centres queer experiences?” And I still kind of was, like, “I’m listening.” And then they were like, “Would you be interested in being in a competition reality TV show where you might get the chance to split a million dollars?” And I was like, “Okay, let’s get into it.” I said, “You got me. You got me, you got me, you got me, let’s get into these coins.”
19:02
Mel Woods
One of the most refreshing things about spending time with Arewà is you get the sense that they know exactly what they’re doing. There’s a clear strategy, but that doesn’t mean they’re insincere. Quite the opposite. Here’s Arewà on the show, taking the Kai issue into her own hands.
19:18
Voiceover
I need to talk to you, Kai. I’ve got some hard feelings.
19:23
Voiceover
Yeah, I got hard feelings too.
19:26
Voiceover
I hope that’s not how we’re starting this conversation, Kai.
19:27
Voiceover
Do I get to also speak?
19:30
Voiceover
No. We’re gonna start this from the top. Once again, Kai’s behaviour is affecting the house. The mess has gotten out of control. It’s messier than the bathrooms, and the kitchen is right now, and I’m gonna need a cleanup on aisle four.
19:42
Voiceover
This is a two-way street.
19:43
Voiceover
If you value our relationship, this is.
19:44
Voiceover
A two-way street.
19:45
Voiceover
Listen and talk silently.
19:46
Voiceover
Stop talking over me.
19:48
Voiceover
You must understand what you look like right now. And sound like.
19:51
Mel Woods
And here’s Arewà now:
19:53
Arewà Basit
I could feel the excitement from the producing team about how little they actually had to produce. And to be completely honest, y’all didn’t even really see all that really went down because the producers didn’t have to make up any kind of plotline. Like, the furthest that I would say that it was ever taken was, like, a producer was like, “We should do a queer prom if y’all want to do that.” But, like, that is, like, so vague and basic. And it was kind of an idea that was inspired by, like, something that I said. So, like, so even with that, I would say I was more of a producer than, or I had more of a hand in producing than, like, any specific writing or producerial things that went down.
20:33
Arewà Basit
I didn’t realize until I got to that show how much of a producer, like, I naturally am or I naturally am. Like, like, I mentioned my Cap moon, Cap rising. I’m a Taurus, thank god, so there’s a little bit of chill. But, like, I will work. I will work on my day off. And I think that, like, neurotypical obsession with working goes hand in hand with producing, because I can in the moment, and this happened so many times on Are You the One? I would be in conversation. We would be talking about something either as a group or, like, as, like, I’d be in conversation with other people in the house, and I would stop halfway through and be like, “Excuse me, y’all. No shade. But what does this have to do with relationships?
21:28
Arewà Basit
“What does this have to do with what we’re here to do? Like, I feel like we’re getting way, way off topic.” So, like, and once I realized that’s what a producer does, I was like, great, well, then let’s get this show on the road. And yeah, I was, I felt again a responsibility to just not overly produce, like let people be people, let everybody live their life. But like, let’s stay on track and let’s remember that as much of this is an opportunity for representation, that there are going to be a lot of people who don’t have another reference to what queer people are like. And so how we are presenting ourselves is really important.
22:07
Arewà Basit
And yes, we want to be authentic and not have to, like, feel, like, we’re censoring ourselves too much, but we also want to be mindful of how we’re coming across. And that’s a producer thing. That is what a producer does, is to think about what it looks like, not just what it is.
22:24
Mel Woods
As a viewer watching the show, you know, what we did see I think was a lot of interesting inter-community, intra-community conversations, like within the queer community, you know, there’s that play between the experiences having all this big group of queer people versus straight people. But even within queer and trans communities, you know, there’s such a broad spectrum of experiences and knowledge bases and whatnot. And I think the way that you are kind of cast on the show in the edit and whatnot is often doing a lot of teaching and a lot of explaining, especially of, like, transness and gender fluidity and whatnot to other folks. So how did it feel? Did it feel in the moment that, you were kind of being this, you know, explain gender queerness to people, explain, you know, transness and the intersection of race and transness that, you know, you kind of filled a role of doing?
23:10
Arewà Basit
How does it feel to be Mother?
23:13
Mel Woods
Yeah, basically.
23:14
Arewà Basit
How does it feel to be Mother? So yeah, I mean, as a dark-skinned sim and as a dark-skinned person growing up in Texas, I’ve kind of always had to take on the role of, like, being a really great listener if I wanted to feel included or seen or in community. A lot of us are still kind of socialized to not really let people who look like me or have experiences like me have a voice. And I learned early on that, you know, most people are committed to misunderstanding. So the only way to fight and work against that commitment to misunderstanding is a commitment to understanding.
24:01
Arewà Basit
And so yeah, I think that there was a responsibility, a big responsibility that I felt going into the show about, around just like being myself and making sure that people felt seen, people felt heard regardless of how they identified.
24:19
Mel Woods
Mother, producer, straight talker, confident queer, Capricorn moon, Capricorn rising. A true queer reality TV star, and arguably the conscience of Are You the One? season eight. And if Arewà was the show’s conscience, the show’s big, messy queer heart was everywhere, but was probably most especially felt in the scene that Hunter and I talked about earlier. Kai and Jenna and the T shot.
24:43
Voiceover
Hey, sexy. I don’t mean to interrupt. Would you like to join me? I have to do my testosterone. Moral support’s pretty awesome. If you want to learn, you can come.
24:52
Voiceover
How long have you been doing it?
24:53
Voiceover
Mine hasn’t been very linear. Like, I was like on testosterone for about four or five months and then I got off of it for a couple months because I was a little bit scared. And also I’m just like, feeling it out. Like, my identity is not, like, linear, like, male to female. And so, like, that’s me unpacking, like, how masculine, like, do I want to become? Oh, this part …
25:18
Voiceover
Do you get nervous?
25:19
Voiceover
Yeah. Why do you think I called you over? I’ve done this so many times, but, like … I’m already, like [little uncomfortable squeal]
25:24
Voiceover
It’s going to be totally chill. Okay. Do you want me to hold your hand? You can’t have me hold your hand.
25:31
Voiceover
It’s cool. I just kind of got to like, psych myself up.
25:34
Voiceover
You got it. Yes! You’re done.
25:38
Voiceover
And I appreciate you.
25:40
Mel Woods
And that’s part of what makes the show perfect for me. Super queer. Chaotic and tender and cringe and heartfelt; strategic and authentic. Many things all at once, simultaneously promoting monogamy. You know, everybody does have a perfect match, while actively enabling and celebrating sex-positive queer polyamory and the reality of trans experience in truly innovative ways for TV. And it’s the white whale of a standard for reality TV, for a lot of queer folks. Its unique blend of queer chaos, sex-positivity and a rock star cast remains unmatched. It gives a touch point, something to talk about with people in the know and to introduce to people who aren’t. It also gives a reflection of the real messiness of queerness that is my own lived experience and that of people I know. And isn’t that what we all want from the things we choose to spend our time watching?
26:33
Voiceover
This is it. This is the final matchup. We have to get this right. Not only for love, not only for money, but for the queer community.
27:45
Arewà Basit
I got the bug after the show. Like the producers, when we wrapped, the producers were literally like, “You deserve a producer credit on the show.” And I was like, “Well, you’re not wrong.” And then I went on like the next year was 2020. And, you know, that was a tough year for a lot of us, but that was also, like, from Are You the One? I was … “Let’s make a production company. Like, let’s make the work that we want to see.” And so me and my friends started a production company called Legacy. And it is a production company that caters to and is for folks who are folks that look like us, black folks, queer folks who don’t often have the budget or the resources or the talent assembled to see their dreams come to fruition. Yeah, the producer bug just didn’t go away. And I feel like I learned from Are You the One? the importance of intentionality behind what you’re doing and how things are coming across and what you or what I would like to tell in terms of, like, stories and how I’d like to tell them.
28:05
Mel Woods
Can we be casual and intentional at the same time? Maybe. We’ve already seen that two things can be true. And maybe that’s the queer part. Or, you know, maybe that’s the real part too. I’m Mel Woods. Thanks to our guests Hunter Hargraves and Arewà Basit. Hunter’s book Uncomfortable Television is available online and Arewà is the co-founder of Legacy, a black queer production collective. Follow them on Instagram. This episode was produced by Daniel MacIvor and edited by Jamie Foulds. Get Queer was mixed at Sound Park Studios in Nova Scotia and produced by Pink Triangle Press in Toronto. In Vancouver, I’m Mel Woods. Thanks for getting queer.