This paper will focus on one aspect of my ongoing research project on love game shows or dating shows, of which Blind Date is probably the best known across the world. In this paper however, I shall be focussing on another dating show called ‘Streetmate’. This show originated in the UK, and was broadcasted on Channel 4 with presenter Davina McCall, a former MTV veejay. In 1999, a Belgian television production company, D&D, bought the British formula from Target, a distribution company. Consequently, D&D made a Belgian version of it, called Streetmate as well. This Belgian show was broadcasted during the fall of 1999 on VT4, one of the two commercial television stations in the Flemish part of Belgium. Joyce De Troch hosted the show; she is the former singer of a girlsband called Opium and widely recognised as one of Flanders’ female sex symbols (and correspondingly there are Joyce De Troch lovers and - haters).

But what exactly are these love game or dating shows? Although formats differ substantially, they all evolve around the theme of love. For instance, in Blind Date one woman has to choose out of three men she can’t see with which one she would like to spend a holiday on an exotic island, with possible romantic engagement. In short, Blind Date embodies the popular idea that true love is not based upon bodily appearance, but is a meeting of kindred spirits. Streetmate thrives upon a different feel. The formula is quite simple: Joyce De Troch dwells the streets of one of Flanders’ cities, asking mostly young people more or less randomly whether he or she is single. If so, and if the participant accepts the invitation, she goes out with the participant to find someone with whom the participant would like to spend a romantic dinner, paid by the production company. All the participant has to do is point out whom s/he finds attractive, and then Joyce De Troch does "the dirty job" (as she calls it herself). If someone accepts the invitation, both go out a few days later for a romantic dinner-by-candlelight, which is of course fully taped, recorded, and commented upon by both participants on beforehand and afterwards. Here the idea is not that "love is blind", but that appearance does matter (and, as I will show, it matters substantially). Thus the show uses and explores the idea that the world is full of possible romantic encounters, but social restrictions and the "guts" to go up to someone and ask her or him out for a date are limiting factors. Hence enter Joyce, the "goddess of love" (again her own words) to make love happen.

In this paper I would like to focus on the production process of Streetmate. I conceive of it as a well structured and managed setting which is intended to make its participants produce gender discourses and perform gendered identities through the game of love, thus forming part of a "regulatory practice". Of course this language is deeply indebted to the theories of Michel Foucault, and other post-structuralist theorists as Judith Butler. Before analysing in detail the different parts of the show and how they are produced it is therefore necessary to firstly undertake a (short) theoretical excursion. In the final part of this paper I will use the empirical evidence gathered from my research project to explore some of the tensions inherent in Michel Foucault’s thinking.

But why Foucault? And perhaps even more important: which Foucault? Most commentators agree there are at least three or four Foucaults. But of course divisions such as these are rather arbitrary, and they neglect the continuity at work in one’s thinking. Still, I think it is useful to keep in mind that Foucault’s emphasises have changed over time. For example, his earlier work stresses the importance of discourse and structures, to move towards an approach that stresses power strategies and resistance to structures. My research is mainly based upon the later Foucault, that is, from Discipline and Punish (1975) onwards. I will use the following section to explain why Foucault is relevant in the study of love game shows.

The thinking of Foucault is generally associated with the concept of discourse (cf. Hall, 1997; McHoul & Grace, 1993). One aspect of these love game shows is that they exist by virtue of its participants engaging in possible romantic encounters. And these encounters are shaped by, and are saturated with meaning (though they are not limited to it). Hence we see Els commenting upon her streetmate Joenait in terms of "he’s cute and handsome but we don’t have anything in common", articulating the idea that love can happen only when there’s at least a common ground to "operate upon". In other words, these programmes need their participants to interact and commentate upon each other, be it in positive or negative terms, and this combination of interacting and commenting is a discursive practice. Furthermore, the programmes in themselves can also be considered as articulating a discourse (or several disourses) on love, sexuality, and by implication gender identities (cf. Butler, 1990 for the intimate link between desire, bodies, gender identity and sexual practice; cf. Illouz, 1997 for a more sociological approach towards romance, social class and gender identity).

I also take from Foucault the idea of modernity as a regulated, managed and disciplined era (dominant in Foucault (1975), latent in Foucault (1976)). Perhaps one could resume the Foucauldian enterprise as an investigation of how the Western subject has come to be constituted as a "subject", and how such constitutions have taken place in history through apparatuses of power/knowledge. Rigorously attacking humanist notions of "mankind", Foucault sees his project as an analysis of "[how] humanism […] presents a certain form of our ethics as a universal model for any kind of freedom. I think there are more secrets, more possible freedoms, and more inventions in our future than we can imagine in humanism […]" (Foucault, 1988a: 15). This distrustful attitude towards "freedom" has enabled me to understand the difficult question of why participants do "the things they do" in Streetmate, with no apparent sign of distrust, discomfort or even suspicion. As I hope to show, this is because both production team and participants enter into a relationship of power in which both "actors" show signs of resistance, dominance and complicity.

Thirdly, the Foucauldian idea of "strategies without strategists" (Foucault, 1976: 94-96, though not literally, the term is used in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983: 187) has enabled me to perceive the production process of Streetmate in terms other than purely economical. With this notion Foucault refers to modern power’s tendencies to have a certain logic in apparently different and disparate measures, a logic which cannot be reduced to the intention of one single actor. In a field which has been for too long divided by the almost ridiculous conflict between Political Economy and Cultural Studies (cf. Ferguson & Golding, 1997 for a recent articulation), I think it is reasonable to state that in the early 19^th century, labour had to be commodified as well as disciplined, and that both processes constituted each other. Similarly, the production of Streetmate is as much an economic process as it is a relationship of management. This paper can therefore be seen as a response to the call for Cultural Studies scholars to take production seriously (McRobbie, 1996; Nixon, 1997; Du Gay, 1997).

Before we commence the analysis a few words on the structure of the show and how the shootings are organised. Basically each show consists of two sessions recorded in two different Belgian cities. Both parts are separated by a commercial break. Each part then consists of several scenes. First there is the intro which contains a short statement detailing where the week’s show has been recorded. Often this intro contains allusions to some kind of romanticism (for example "today we are in Brugge, the Venice of the north, a city for romantic people"). This intro is supplemented with some street interviews (every week there is a question, which is asked to people, for example "what was your most embarrassing sexual experience?"). After the intro comes the hunt (in Dutch "de jacht") during which we see Joyce De Troch pursuing the streets for a single man or woman. Once encountered, the newly acquired participant "A" and Joyce stroll down the street looking for someone who A is attracted to. When this person is found, Joyce walks up to "B" to ask if s/he would like to go on a date with "a pretty guy" or a "neat girl". If person B accepts the invitation the couple go out "streetmating", as promised by Joyce. The third part of the programme is the biotopes in which both participants are interviewed together with some friends or family. The location of the interview is either at home, a bar, or any other place related to the participant. The participants and their peers or family are asked questions such as "how long did your longest relationship last?", "is participant A your type?", "how do you feel about one-night-stands?", "are you often jealous in a relationship?", "are you feeling nervous about tonight?" etc. Then we have the actual date called "za date" ("Den Date"). This consists of dinner in a restaurant which is audio-visually recorded (and often subtitled because of poor audio quality), mixed with interviews and comments about what was happening at that time (e.g. a quote "there were some unpleasant silences" — illustrated with images of both participants watching the ceiling). These interviews are taped shortly after the dinner itself, and questions are posed like "did participant A do something you didn’t like?", "how do you feel about B", "was there ever a spur of romantic feeling?", "have you swaped numbers?", and "what will you do after the date?". The last subpart of the show is called two weeks after ("Twee weken later"). During this part participants are asked whether something has happened between them, when it happened, why not, if they will keep in touch, etc…

The actual shootings of the show are organised in 3 days. On day 1 the production crew records the intro and the hunt. Day 2 consists of both biotopes (one for the female, one for the male), and the recording of "za date", post-dinner interviews included. On day 3 the production crew records both two weeks after — sessions.

One way of understanding what is happening during the production process entails examining the different "actors" involved in the making of the programme and what interests they have in doing so. This corresponds to Foucault’s call for an analysis of power at the most local level in his first part of the History of Sexuality:

The advantage of this method of investigation is that one avoids the trap of idealism, by focussing on concrete and local power relations instead of vague and empirically non-perceivable concepts like "capitalism", "the nation state", or "the power bloc". This is not to say that such concepts are irrelevant to academic inquiry, on the contrary. But capitalism exists, and can only exist, in the concrete capitalist practices of concrete, actual existing workers and owners of capital in specific places and at a specific time. If there is such thing as "capitalism" it is because it gets implemented almost everywhere in the world, and this implementation is always situated, thus leaving room for re-significations, modifications and local power relations. In other words, my analysis will be based on a detailed examination of who does what in the production process and which power relations are involved.

One possible way to look at this is to make a distinction between the production crew and the participants. Both groups can be said to have different objectives for partaking in the show. The production crew basically works for D&D, the television company, which produces Streetmate. D&D wants to sell its product to VT4, and in order to do this they need a "good show". Thus the aim of the production team is to make what they call "good television" (interview with producer, 2000) or even shorter "television" (interview with sound engineer, 2000). But what exactly does that mean? While watching the show and talking to the different members of the production crew it became clear to me that "good television" entails the following aspects:

a. Good-looking participants are a necessary ingredient for a successful episode of Streetmate. Or as the producer puts it: "Joyce would check before talking to someone if he or she would be sellable, to put it in economic terms". Note that the use of the word "sellable" is used here in a double sense, meaning as well sellable towards possible "streetmaters" as sellable to the audience. Or, as the sound engineer puts it: "Like it or not, people want to see beautiful people on their television screen".

b. Participants should preferably be spontaneous and unrestricted, possibly even flirtatious. This explains the producer’s preference to do a "Beachmate" next season, set in Ibiza or the Belgian coast: "places where you have this natural flirtatious feeling". Even more interesting is the fact that the producer described the big difference between the British and the Flemish Streetmate as follows: "when they do dates over there [in the UK], they get really drunk. I mean, they really get loaded", which illustrates the need for "spontaneous" participants. And of course the summum of spontaneity is when both streetmaters end up in a relationship, the ultimate goal of the show. However, the opposite can also be desirable:

c. Clear-cut answers and the performance of clear-cut identities are also important for the production crew. Two examples to illustrate this point: in episode 8, Stijn and Ginnie went out on a date together, and kissed later during the night in the absence of the camera. They spoke to each other during the rest of the week and in "two weeks after" Joyce interrogates them about what happened. Both quite unwillingly admit what happened. From these responses Joyce assumes "so you’re together now?", to which Stijn hesitantly replies "not really, it’s too early, we’ll see". Joyce keeps pressing for a clear-cut answer until Stijn replies "What do you want? You want us to kiss on television, I won’t do that, you know!". Another example: in episode 13 Johan dated Karen. Nothing spectacular happened between the two of them but nevertheless Johan feels there is "something in the air". Then Joyce takes a hastily prepared sign with "reserved" written on it and hangs it around Johan’s neck, almost materialising the show’s need for performance of clear-cut identities.

The other actors involved in the production of the programme are the participants. The reasons why they are participating in the show are not always apparent. Reasons suggested to me by both the production crew and the participants include the possibility of romantic engagement, the attraction of being on television and living their Warholian "15 minutes of fame", the fact that it’s simply "good fun" to be the centre of attention, and also pure curiosity about how a television programme is actually made. It is interesting to note that none of the participants mentioned the importance of Joyce De Troch, while several members of the production crew esteemed her to be a very important factor: "We needed someone who was able to sell the formula, someone about whom people say ‘oh, that’s Joyce’. I mean, for the boys it was a lot more interesting to see Joyce coming at you than Marlène de Wouters, at least for these kind of shows" (interview with producer, 2000); "Those people are walking around with Joyce and they loose every control. And Joyce isn’t exactly shy, she just asks stuff and people give answers, because they won’t say no to a famous person" (sound engineer). And lingering in the background we find of course Foucault (who else could it be?), and his beautiful description of how sexuality became through the confessional mode "the locus of truth" of our inner selves, the secret we have to tell times and times again (Foucault, 1976).

Apart from the reasons why they are participating, participants and production crew alike enter into a peculiar relationship involving both strategic alliances and conflicts. For example, from the participants’ point of view for, Streetmate can offer them the possibility of a nice night out, and perhaps even a relationship, while the production crew would be equally happy with the same result. But sometimes the requirements of making "good television" can conflict with the participants’ tendency to protect their private life, as we will explore later on in this paper.

One remark. Of course the production crew isn’t an amorphous organisation, and different people have different tasks in the production process. Neither are the participants all alike, and the way they respond to the tensions induced by strategic alliances and conflicts differs dramatically from person to person. However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to give a detailed account of every individual function (in the classic organisational sense), and how they fit into the overall management process, though the following sections will occasionally refer to this.

Just to recapitulate: participants and production crew have different objectives for participating in the show, which leads to situations of strategic alliances and conflicts. When talking to different members of the production crew it became clear to me that this situation is even more complex because of the fact that the show is meant to be broadcasted on television. This rather obvious point is however important to fully grasp the complexity of the making of Streetmate. Indeed, the production crew not only wants its participants to appear beautiful and witty, and produce clear-cut answers and perform clear-cut identities; it is equally important that it is also taped in that way. In other words, it is not enough that a female participant is pretty, eloquent and tongue-in-cheek (or the opposite of it), she also must appear as such on the television screen. As Scannell (1995, 1996) argues, broadcasters do not make television for the sake of it; they want people to actually watch their shows (which is not an easy endeavour). In order to obtain this result, television (and radio) had to find the appropriate form for "getting the message across", or rather, getting the people to watch. In short, I am arguing that in order for participants to be "good television", they also need to behave "professionally", which is very difficult for television novices. And this is where the notion of the production process as a "structured and managed setting" becomes clearer. The production crew, in order to make "good television" must guide, manage and direct "their" participants throughout the production process. We thus find the participant in a doubly conditioned situation: s/he has to "make love" according to the shows romantic requirements, while simultaneously doing this in a "broadcastable" or camera-friendly fashion.

At this point, I would like to stress that a "structured and managed setting" should not be confused with the contours of the "discipline society" so convincingly portrayed by Foucault at the time of "Discipline and Punish" (1975). A prison house and a television production company differ in scope as well as in objective. This notion does refer to the fact that the production crew does the things it does intentionally (the goal being "good television"), and in order to do so they use several managerial strategies. One can differentiate between different types of strategies:

a. Strategies of selection. From the viewpoint of the production crew, making Streetmate is a risky business. Compared to Blind Date for example, which is a studio-based programme, the making of Streetmate can be rather unpredictable. The formula of the show is thus that it is never sure if one would find suitable candidates: we could call this a problem of scarcity. In order to be sure to find the right human material for the show, the production team used several techniques, the first of which is related to time and place of the participant recruitment. One would always go to cities on a Saturday, for increasing the chance of finding participants (interview with producer, 2000). Furthermore, it was important to have lots of young people who were still single. Thus several episodes were recorded in places like schools, universities, a football stadium, a discotheque. In the beginning the production process made use of two spotters who would be strolling the streets looking for possible participants, but this system was later abandoned because of limited success (and thus too expensive). The use of Joyce De Troch is another strategy of selection. Her status as Flanders’ sex symbol made people more willing to co-operate (interview with producer; interview with sound engineer, 2000; interview with editor, 2000). Ironically, this strategy lead to a negative consequence: Joyce wasn’t very popular in the age group 26-27, and she attracted mainly people of the 18-23 age group. But these youngsters felt quite uncomfortable going out on dinner dates, with the result being that the dinners, instead of being the most interesting part of the show, generally weren’t very exiting to watch. The audience attention ratings dropped accordingly (interview with producer, 2000). The last strategy of selection in the field of scarcity is the use of the VT4 web-site to announce where the production team would be recording that week.

But apart from finding enough people the production crew also had to find the right people, and this meant that participants had to be suitable for the programme. And the conditio sine qua non was fourfold: participants had to be good-looking, over the age of 18, available for romance, and straight. And contrary to what one might expect the team was rather strict on these requirements. Thus a girl who had a relationship (but had told the team that she didn’t) was refused, although the hunt had already been taped (interview with producer, 2000). Another example is a girl who appeared to be 18 but ended up being 16: she was refused as well (interview with sound engineer, 2000).

b. Strategies of form. This category refers to the previous mentioned problems inherent in using participants who are untrained in television performance. Participants don’t know the "laws of television" and stand with their backs to the camera, talk when they are not supposed to (so that neither camera nor microphone can record it), etc… In order to solve this problem, the production team had to develop its own strategies. Again Joyce’s importance cannot be underestimated. Apart from attracting people she also is very aware of the camera, and manages both to position participants in a camera-friendly way, while at the same time absorbing all of their attention, as the following quotes show:

A second strategy of form has to do with the mere presence of a camera and all the productional aspects this entails. As the producer puts it, the whole point of the show can be reduced to shameless voyeurism. "When you are sitting in a restaurant and you see two people in an animated conversation, you would love to hear what they are saying. The show enables you to shamelessly watch two people in a very artificial setting. And the participants are under a lot of pressure because a. they want to impress the other one in front of him or her, and b. the rest of the world is watching". Here we encounter a strange paradox, related to the question of authenticity: the show appeals because of the fact that it is "real" (meaning no actors nor studio), while simultaneously the presence of the camera crew is altering that same reality which it supposedly registers. Hence the members of the production crew try to make themselves as invisible as possible in order to diminish the effects of their presence: director, editor and the sound and vision engineers are registering the "romantic dinner" from behind a screen and listen with headphones to what is being said; two camera’s register the dinner; only restaurants with different altitude-levels were chosen in order to have a panoramic view of the date; microphones are either put in the flowers or connected to the participants’ chests. But of course all these strategies to "normalise" the situation often fail, and this is noticeable even in the programme as it appears on television: most of the conversations are about a. the food, and b. the fact that these are not "ideal circumstances" for meeting each other. Phrases like "when this is over, we’ll do…", or "When did they tape you? Before or after me?" are frequent, which explains to us why the production crew deemed "za date" to be the least interesting part of the show.

Note however that "unmediated reality" is not the most important aspect for the production team (cf. the above quote of the producer). In fact, Streetmate often uses its artificiality as a competitive advantage. For instance, camera-movements are quick and hastily in pure MTV-style; each show would end with a series of bloopers; the use of a second handy-cam to tape the crew itself as they walk down the streets; the integration of participants commenting upon the production process, and so forth.

c. Strategies of content. But it is not sufficient that the right candidates are selected and that they behave properly. As mentioned, "good television" also demands the performance of clear-cut identities and the production of discourse, and this requires a certain level of spontaneity as well. In other words, participants must speak and perform according to the programme’s standards. In order to obtain this, the production crew has developed a number of strategies. The first strategy could be dubbed "divide and conquer". Remember that the show exists by virtue of its participants producing discourses about themselves and the other participants, as well as about love in general. This is not always an easy matter, given the fact that love is generally associated with the private spheres of intimacy. Furthermore, people are generally very polite (or disciplined, as Foucault would put it), which makes it rather difficult to make Els say what she "really" thinks of Joenait. That is why the production crew, after the romantic dinner, interviews both participants separately and interrogates them on what happened during the dinner and what they think of the other person. The same applies to the two weeks later sub-part of the show: often Joyce says, half-jokingly, "she told us that there was a kiss", in order to provoke reaction. This can also be seen as a strategy to make participants produce discourse. Perhaps ironically, the same "divide-and-conquer"-strategy can be used by putting people together instead of physically separating them. So we see in the biotopes, where the participants are interviewed with friends and/or family, an animated discussion between Stijn and his sister on the question if Stijn regards the physical beauty of a girl important (and of course Stijn doesn’t agree).

A second strategy of content is related to the demand for clear-cut answers and clear-cut identities. Of course the participants perform the identities and produce the discourses themselves, but they do this in reaction to the setting provided by the show. And this setting often takes the form of an interview, either by Joyce, or by another member of the production crew. And this is where the second strategy of content comes in: the answers you get depend upon a large part of the questions you ask. Love, to me, is a complex social practice and emotion, which can’t be reduced to questions like "do you like one night stands?", "are you faithful in a relationship?" and "what does your ideal man look like?". Streetmate, or better the participants in Streetmate, are not capable of representing this complexity because of the type of questions they are asked (cf. Spee & Carpentier (1999) for an example on talk shows). Interestingly enough, when confronting the sound engineer with this objection, he stated "But that’s not television", thus closing the circle of "good television" — clear-cut discourses and identities — television.

A few remarks regarding this strategy. First of all, it is important to recognise that the participants produce the discourses themselves, and perform the identities themselves, be it in a managed setting. The example of Andy illustrates this. Andy brought flowers for his streetmate Marijke on the first night. When asking the sound engineer whether this was Andy’s idea or the production team’s, he responded: "It was his idea, but he was doubting whether to do it. And of course we won’t refuse such an opportunity. So we helped him to bring the flowers on the right time" (interview with sound engineer). In sociological terms, Andy comes closer to "agency" than to "structure" (cf. Giddens, 1984). Participants are not forced to comment upon each other’s desirability or compatibility. Or put in "late-Foucauldian" terms: it is not because the relationship between production crew and participants is one of power that the former dominates the latter. "One must also observe that there cannot be relations of power unless the subjects are free" (Foucault, 1988b: 11). We will get back to this important remark in the following section. Secondly, one should not confuse the making of Streetmate with the prison house. The terms "reasons for co-operating", "interests", "alliances" and "actors" might suggest the image of the production team as a rational, bureaucratic and almost inhumane organisation, resembling Huxley’s Brave New World (1965). All of the members of the production crew, as well as all the participants I spoke to, were very enthusiastic about the programme. They stressed the "loose atmosphere" and the informal contacts between Joyce, the production team and the participants. Some examples: after the last episode D&D organised an after party for everybody who co-operated, including the participants; one participant, after breaking up with her streetmate, sent a sms-message to the production assistant saying "sniff sniff, we broke up", weeks after the show had ended (interview with production assistant, 2000); one of the participants told me that the editor explicitly asked her if she had said something during the shootings which she didn’t want in the televised version (interview with Marijke, participant, 2000). That power sometimes (always?) can take the form of friendship has recently been argued by Robinson (2000), which seems to prove McRobbie’s point that "power is most effective where it is productive, generative and apparently generous, tolerant and expansive rather than repressive" (1996: 185). Similarly, the production process cannot be regarded as a rational and/or Fordist process. As the sound engineer puts it:

The shootings actually were very much a "thing of improvisation", not knowing whether one would find participants, how they would behave, and so forth.

So let me resume my argument thus far. Production crew and participants have different reasons for "doing" the show, which results in a peculiar relationship of alliances and conflicts. This results on the part of the production crew in a series of managerial techniques and strategies to obtain their goal, which can best be described as "to make good television". These strategies are located at a technological-practical level (strategies of form which are intended to guide the participants through the production process so as to make them behave in a camera-friendly fashion), but also at the level of meaning, in short a discursive level (participants are selected on the basis of age, availability, sexual orientation and physical appearance; participants are provoked and stimulated to produce certain discourses and perform certain gender identities — in short what I have called strategies of selection and content). But thus far we have only focussed on the production crew. How do participants enter and thus constitute the relationship?

As mentioned above, generally the participants feel very positive about the programme and their participating in it. This should not come as a surprise, given the fact that we are not dealing with an organisation intending to survey, discipline or even regulate behaviour or subjectivity. If there is any regulating happening, it is only for a short time, in a limited space. One is therefore tempted to conclude that these participants enter, and leave, the relationship without any act of resistance, thus embodying the "docile bodies" described by Foucault (1975). For instance, it never happened during the fall 1999 season that any of the participants said "stop asking these silly questions": all of them answered calmly, politely, sometimes even with enthusiasm. Similarly one could reproach the participants for reproducing heterosexuality, stereotypes ("not lovers but a good friend"), gender roles and so forth, but this misses the point in my opinion. First of all, it is important to keep in mind that the show is not only recorded, but also edited. And in the edition phase a lot of the frictions and resistance happening at the local level "vanish", though some do survive (cf. below). Furthermore, to anticipate on the conclusion, I think it is important to distinguish between different types of power and resistance. So one male participant can at the same time refuse to be interviewed in his home and fall in love with his streetmate (thereby reproducing heterosexuality) and he can refuse to kiss her on television (resistance to the production team). In other words, basing your research upon broad-sweeping historical analyses of power and discourse shouldn’t make you blind for the changes that actually do happen (cf. McRobbie, 1996, for a similar argument on Butler).

But what then are these "acts of resistance" by the participants? Similar to the strategies of the production crew, we can distinguish between several strategies of resistance:

a. Reinstating the private/public divide. This refers to the reflex of some of the participants to defend what they conceive of as "their private life". Two examples. The already cited conflict between Stijn and Joyce on the question if he and Gini were a couple now illustrates the fact that he is consciously aware of the fact that it is going to be broadcasted. The producer gives another example:

Three remarks on this quote. First, it illustrates that several participants wouldn’t let the camera crew into their private sphere (though they were perfectly aware that the possible relationship was doomed to be public property — the ultimate goal of the show is indeed to make love happen in public). Second, it also shows the importance the production crew attaches to the performance of identities (as mentioned before). Thirdly, what is most striking in this quotation is "the local cynicism of power" as described by Foucault: "the rationality of power is characterised by tactics that are often quite explicit at the restricted level where they are inscribed. […] [T]he logic is perfectly clear, the aims decipherable" (Foucault, 1976: 95).

b. A second strategy of resistance is the refusal to closure of discourse and identities. Contrary to the former strategy, this one is rather rare. Again we can give the Stijn en Ginni example. The sound engineer comments: "Being on television is nice, but to kiss on television, that’s another league. Especially if you’re not sure about the relationship". Another aspect that can be regarded as a refusal to closure is the fact that most participants were very reluctant to do spectacular statements on the first night out, immediately after the dinner. The most common sentences to be heard were "it’s too early", "who knows what will happen afterwards [after the camera crew has left]", and so forth. A reluctance that is easy to understand, given the fact that nobody wants to appear ridiculous or even pathetic on television. But as mentioned above, this strategy of resistance is rather rare.

c. Disrupting illusion of unmediated reality, on the contrary, is very popular. Participants don’t do considerable efforts to make it appear as real as possible, and many times they are commenting upon the camera, the show and technical aspects.

Note however that the production team tried to solve this in two ways. First of all, there is the editing process, during which it is possible to cut out such parts. Secondly, the production team used it sometimes as an advantage, incorporating it in the show. In Streetmate 3, for instance, Laïla and David went out on a date together, and David used the fact that the dinner was taped: he wrote on a piece of paper "She drinks too much" and showed it to the camera while talking to her. This was used in the show as it appeared on television.

d. Withdrawal from the programme, the last yet most radical strategy of resistance. During the fall season of 1999 it happened several times, which lead to severe organisational problems. Once this even had to be integrated into the programme. Joyce told the male participant (and the viewer at home) that the female participant "suddenly had to move" (which was not true), but that she had found another candidate in the streets of Genk (but who was in reality a friend of hers). The date was a big success since the guy kissed the girl on their first night out, on television. It is interesting to note that after this event, the production team made participants sign a contract. In case of withdrawal from the programme they would have had to pay 50.000 BF (approximately £ 850), the cost of making the hunt. When generous power fails, repressive power takes over.

But perhaps the main point of this paper is the following: that power relations are not always as clear-cut as intellectuals would like them to be; that the difference between empowerment and domination is often hard to pin down; that to speak of "power" in general might be a crude generalisation incapable of grasping the complexities of modern life. In order to elucidate this point I will tell two stories extracted from the production process of Streetmate.

Story 1. Tom and Liesbet are two participants who appeared in Streetmate 10. By chance, this episode was recorded at the campus of my university. The televised version tells a touching story of Tom meeting Liesbet through Streetmate, going out for a dinner with her (which didn’t go particularly well), but when the cameras left, the spark of love hit both of them. Two weeks later they are officially (because broadcasted) together. However, what happened in reality is that 3 days after the recording of the hunt, Tom and Liesbet ran into each other at a party, started to chat, and kissed later that night. So, Tom and Liesbet had a problem: they had to go on a date and had to act as if it were the first time they’ saw each other. They decided not to tell the production team, and to fake the whole dinner. And it worked: nobody of the production team noticed anything, and neither did anyone at home (at least I didn’t). As Tom says:

But how to interpret this story? Of course Tom and Liesbet were fooling the production team, but is it therefor an " act of resistance"? What type of resistance are we talking about here? And of course the story didn’t go as the production crew thought it had, but in the end Streetmate brought both of them together, didn’t it? And the mere fact that it was broadcasted as such, made the story quite "real" towards the television audience, thus proving again that "love happens". In short, resistance, complicity and domination are interrelated, and one single act of one single person can "be" simultaneously all three of them.

Story 2. Joenait and Els went out together in Streetmate 5. The televised version is one of failure. Els, being a university student didn’t have much to say to Joenait, who was running at the time of the shootings for Mr. Belgium (he ended up 3^rd). The background of what happened in reality is told by the sound engineer:

So here again we have a story that is difficult to interpret. It actually has happened a few times that participants used the production team in order to obtain a certain goal (e.g. one female participant in Streetmate 6 used the programme to get in contact with someone she was in love with — and it worked). But what "empowerment" is this, happening only at the local level, only one or two persons profiting from it? What did Joenait do? Did he fight, use, or abuse the power relations? And who benefited from this "empowerment" — the production team making "good television" and hence boosting their careers, the production company making a profit, compulsive heterosexuality by showing once more that the possibility of love is something between man and woman, or the man himself?

I started this paper with the intention to use some of my empirical findings from the production process of Streetmate to think through some of the tensions inherent in Michel Foucault’s thinking on power and identity. I think the first observation that arises out of my analysis is the Foucauldian idea that the making of Streetmate entails a relationship of power between the production team and the participants, which is situated in broader relationships of power (e.g. the production team working for D&D, and D&D making the programme for VT4). Furthermore, this specific relationship is not one of mere domination of one actor upon the other, but it is characterised by "messy" or "noisy" strategies, in short these relations are entangled (cf. Sharp et al., 2000). For instance, the production team wants "their" participants to be good television and in order to achieve this they have developed a number of strategies. But these strategies in themselves are not a question of domination or even manipulation. Indeed, I would argue that in order to be successful, the production team has to be "humane", friendly and it has to recognise their participants as subjects, that is, as people with their own free will with the capacity to choose and act. Hence we see that they do tape the entire romantic dinner but ask the participants afterwards if they prefer some parts not to be broadcasted; we see that the production team wants their participants to perform clear-cut identities but won’t "cross the border-line". Indeed, as Robinson argues: "Power relationships, then, by definition, require an active subject upon which to act, and moreover, involve acts on actions […], and in that relationship resides the necessity of freedom" (2000: 87). Or, as Legendre (1983: 49-58) warns, to think of organisations solely in terms of stratagèmes (rational actions to obtain goals) is to miss their essence. What is needed is the cri du coeur, the emotional zeal (hate included), and this entails recognising the subject as an individual.

So up until now this has been very Foucauldian indeed. I do have a problem however with the undifferentiated use of the word "power". As I have argued, to speak of "power" in general, of "resistance" in general, of "complicity" in general, is to reduce the complexity of the relationships we are talking about. When Tom was fooling the production team he was reversing the normal course of affairs but still he was used as a very cheap labour force, still he was dating a girl, still he was answering the questions that reduce love to a "like" or "like not"-game. My problem with Foucault then, is not that he sees "power everywhere", because I agree with him upon that matter. Nor is it that he sees a certain logic in apparently different measures (his notion of a "strategy without strategists"). My problem lies in the fact that there are more logics at work than one single strategy without strategists. As Simons argues: "Foucault’s optimistic assertions about the possibility of resistance are unconvincing in comparison with his portrayals of domination, because he pays insufficient attention to the fragmentation and inconsistencies of contemporary modes of government and subjection" (1995: 83). Maybe when you trace a history of sexuality that you find a coherence in disparate fields of knowledge as psychoanalysis, demographics and sexuology. But when you do the analysis the other way round, that is, synchronically (the production of Streetmate here and know) you encounter a complexity of different relationships of powers: economic, managerial, confessional, technological, sexual, gendered. Maybe in 200 years time somebody will make an analysis of Streetmate as an instance of confessional technology, but s/he would reduce the complexity of that given object in order to make his/her "structuralist" point.

Furthermore - and related to this - I think that this paper points towards the dangers of an overly romantic equation of the popular to resistance (cf. Fiske, 1989). I think Cultural Studies has shown in its short but successful career that people are not the cultural dupes they once were (thought). But I think the time has come to move beyond sighing in relief, "ah! there is resistance", and to admit that resistance in itself is not a guarantee for the breakdown of all power relations; indeed, resistance might even be an instrument of domination - a point made long time ago by Willis (1977). To disentangle these complex relationships of power, their mutual reinforcements and disarticulations in their historical and spatial specificity, would be the task of a critical Cultural Studies. Because, as Foucault would have it, to show people how heavy and light, how structured and fragile modern life is, is to show there are indeed more worlds, more freedoms, more secrets to be made and explored.

Interview with Luc Vrancken, Producer Streetmate. Neder-overheembeek, January 31, 2000.

Interview with Kathleen Vandenbroek, Production-Assistant Streetmate. Neder-overheembeek, January 31, 2000.

Interview with Björn Debergh, Sound engineer, Streetmate. Brussels, April 19^th, 2000.

Interview with Anja Torrekens, Editor Streetmate. Neder-overheembeek, May 31, 2000.

Interview with Tom Verhofstadt, Participant Streetmate. Brussels, January 26, 2000.

Interview with Marijke Vereertbruggen, Participant Streetmate. Aalst, May 3, 2000.

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