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Married in America
On June 17, 2002, A&E will be premiering the first installment of Married in America, an ambitious series by director and documentary maker Michael Apted. Anyone who is interested in what makes up a marriage should definitely watch, record and study this show, but not for the reasons you might think. You won't find any explicit answers given by the producers of this documentary, but what you will find, if you're observant enough, is concrete examples of why marriages either thrive or die.
The premise of this series is much like that of Apted's most famous documentary, the excellent 7-up series, which began in 1964 when he interviewed several British seven-year-olds and then returned to interview them every seven years thereafter to see where their lives had taken them. The most recent installment of this series was called 42-up, so you can imagine what an immense project this has been. Apted has somewhat shortened the proposed length of this series, promising to return every year for the next five years to interview the nine newlywed couples that are featured in this first episode. While it may be difficult to keep track of this show for the next five years, I'm sure that the entire series will be packaged and rebroadcast in its entirety some time in the future. Until then, the first episode will be an important one for setting the tone of the series, and for helping us to establish our predictions about the people whose lives we've been invited into.
The couples have been deliberately chosen to represent a cross section of society, and also, I suspect, as a kind of control group, to determine later whether certain factors like being an interfaith couple, for example, are more likely to strain a marriage later on. It's as though this were a kind of scientific experiment on marriage instead of an interesting cultural discussion point, a way to dissect marriage and single out the ingredients for success. The only problem I see with it is that the carefully selected factors - like being the same sex, or being two different races - have nothing to do with whether these marriages will last or not. If these marriages do happen to fail, it will be too easy to blame it on these irrelevant issues instead of finding out the real cause. Perhaps it would have been wiser, if one wanted to really determine what makes marriages last or fail, to feature completely homogenous couples from the same background and the same socio-economic bracket - but that wouldn't make for good television.
I suspect that this five-year series will be observational in nature and won't make too many judgements about success or failure - the reasons for any breakdowns that occur will be merely hinted at and the viewer will be left to come to his or her own conclusions. No one is too eager to pin down black and white answers when it comes to marriage, and so I'm not sure what good will come of this program beyond its value as a cultural time capsule. The only real value I see in it lies in the intention of the viewer - if you really want to understand marriage, if you are really interested in viewing it objectively and understanding every aspect of it, then careful observation of all the subtleties involved in a program like this can provide you with valuable insight.
I think this can be done. I would encourage people who are interested in the subject of marriage, whether their own or as a general area of interest, to watch this program with the aim of identifying strengths and weaknesses in the couples they see presented. Watch it objectively, notice patterns and trends, notice, for example, which couples began their marriage based on "love at first sight" and which ones were best friends since childhood, watch for those who married because of children, or those who met in a bar, and notice which ones shared a similar career. If you can recognize these clues, and if over the course of the series your suspicions and mine are proven right, then you'll know you've hit upon some objective truths about marriage, and will know what it takes to make yours a good one.
I would welcome discussion on this issue, and would encourage those who have watched the first installment of this program to email me their comments and opinions on it. A good place to start, perhaps even before the program airs, is at the Married in America website where you can learn more about the series and view the couples profile.
The Married in America series offers us a rare opportunity to gain some real insight into what makes a marriage last. The program begins 9 pm, Monday, June 17 on A&E.
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