ReSee Event Recap: Dystopian Dating feat. Force Majeure!

Dating in Berlin: Where Rom-Com Meets Horror Story 😱

This Friday, the Dystopian Dating community once again convened in our cozy little home at the FIlmrauschpalast. New faces mixed with familiar ones as everyone settled in for a night of thought-provoking conversation, specially themed cocktails, and painfully awkward humor.

The centerpiece of the evening? A one-night-only fully sold-out screening of Ruben Östlund's ice-cold relationship comedy Force Majeure!

When we're planning Dystopian Dating events, we look for film films that examine the difficulties of modern dating, romance, and relationships from a diverse set of perspectives. Sometimes our choices are funny and lighthearted, other times gut-wrenching and emotional, but always designed to spark meaningful conversations among our guests. With its tone that slaloms back and forth between absurdity and humanity, Force Majeure certainly fit that bill, and our sell-out crowd seemed to agree!

To set the stage for the evening, arriving guests were invited to take a survey about their own expectations of romantic partners. The surveys focused on physical and personality traits which, while not exclusively tied to specific genders, tend to be associated with traditional notions of masculinity and femininity. When guests finished their surveys, they were given a "score" that corresponded to how many "gender-normative" preferences they selected. The higher the number, the more their answer aligned with those traditional norms, even if the guests wouldn't at all describe their tastes as traditional.

Guests were invited to fill out one of these three surveys, depending on whether they, by their own definition:

• tend to prefer partners who are more masculine
• tend to prefer partners who are more feminine
• believe "binary is boring" and who prefer to break with traditional expectations

If you're reading this and want to weigh in on the discussion, please feel free to take whichever survey you'd like! The in-person discussion may be finished, but we'd still love to hear from you.

Now I'll admit, I created these surveys myself, and I'm far from an expert on the topics of gender and relationships. I'm single AF and cursed with "extreme straightness". So once guests were finished with the surveys, I wanted to give everyone the opportunity to provide feedback about the questions. Were they fair? Were the confusing? Were guests surprised by their scores? We asked our audience to share their reactions, and what transpired was a heartfelt and open discussion about how things like being raised in a certain country or region, our sexual preferences, and even our professions can impact the expectations we have of our partners.

As always, it was a bittersweet moment when we had to put a pin in the discussion so that we'd have time to watch the film, but we encouraged guests to stick around afterwards and to keep the conversation and the good vibes flowing. And with that, we found our seats, dimmed the lights, and prepared for a good-ole-fashioned movie night with our growing community of movie lovers. For our guests, we hope that the survey and the discussion prior to the film added an additional element to your movie-watching experience. Judging by the raucous laughs and the feeling of connectedness in the cinema, I think we just might have. 🙂

For those who aren't familiar with Force Majeure, the award-winning Swedish film centers around a family who embarks on a luxurious ski trip while the husband and wife simultaneously struggle through an icy patch in their marriage. When a brief moment of panic disrupts the trip, what was supposed to be an opportunity to spend some long-overdue quality time together becomes a harrowing case of cabin fever that traps the bickering couple (and all of their friends) in a seemingly never-ending argument. Stop us if you've been here before.

At the center of the kerfuffle is the theme of gender-based expectations of romantic partners: do men have the responsibility to be protectors of the family? Must women be the ones to always nurture and sacrifice their energy and bodies for the sake of their children? Who's supposed to be the "emotional" one, and who's supposed to be the "strong" one? As innocent bystanders get dragged into the conflict, they confront their own thoughts and beliefs on the topic. Unfortunately for everyone (including the audience squirming in their movie seats by now), it proves impossible for the characters to engage in a civil dialogue about the matter. They even struggle to process their own thoughts and feelings when they're completely alone, surrounded by the serenity of the Alps.

From my perch in the middle of the audience, guests seemed to smirk and giggle when they noticed a question from the survey or a point from the discussion overlapped with the events in the film. I might be a little biased, but it certainly seemed to me that our community got something out of the evening that made the experience more than just a typical movie night, and also justified the trek to Moabit (it's really not that far, people!) 🩵

To all of our guests who came out on Friday, thank you so much for being part of our community. We at ReSee believe that the future of movie watching is communal experiences like the ones we try to create with Dystopian Dating, and we certainly couldn't prove our hypothesis without the support of each and every one of you. As we roll out more and more concepts at the intersections of culture and cinema, we hope that we'll continue to give you the best possible reasons to join us at the movies, turn your phones off for a few hours, and to connect with our community while embracing your passion for cinema.

Before I leave you to get started with preparation for our next event (stay tuned for an announcement this week!), I wanted to put my nerd hat on for a bit and share some of the insights from the survey, along with my personal assessment of what the results told me about our community.

Thoughts and Insights: Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender Norms in the Dystopian Dating Community

Looking through the results of our guest surveys is secretly one of my favorite parts of running ReSee events. It's extremely helpful for making our future events even better, but what I really love about it is that I'm constantly surprised, inspired, and entertained by the diverse views and opinions held by our community members. Here are just a few of the insights that I gleaned from Friday's survey (n=26).

Masculinity, Femininity, and nonbinary dating preferences

What obviously stuck out to me here was that 85% of our audience chose one of the more "binary" surveys. That's fairly in line with larger global surveys. However, during the group discussion, quite a few guests gave great feedback about their interpretations of the terms "masculine" and "feminine", so they didn't necessarily agree that the questions on the survey would represent their actual dating interests. Still, they were great sports about it and filled out the survey to receive a score.

Demographic Data

Even though we haven't quite cracked the code on how to get straight guys to attend dating events (a complaint we've also heard from other dating event organizers and attendees), Friday's event probably featured our most gender balanced audience yet! I can't say if that's just sheer coincidence, or if it has something to do with our event structure, or perhaps even our choice of film, but I was still happy to see some strapping young bachelors in the audience.

I was also pleased that we had a nice age distribution at the event, although realizing that I was in the oldest quartile of attendees was a tough pill to swallow 👴🏽

Notable Dating Preferences

As I was looking through the data, I kept an eye out for answers that were either very surprising, very unanimous, or very divisive. Here were the most striking results:

It's hard out here for short kings: of those who indicated they prefer more masculine partners (all 10 of whom identified as cisgender females), 9/10 said they prefer to date a partner that’s taller (>8cm) taller than them 📏

Be tall, but don't be silent: Of those same 10 respondents who prefer more masculine partners, 0 indicated that they preferred the "strong, silent type" who doesn't often show outward emotions. So don't be afraid to break out those feelings, boys 🥲

Diverse body types: of those who indicated they prefer more feminine partners (12 of whom identified as cisgender males, the 2 others as cisgender females), respondents were split nearly 50-50 on physical attributes like height, the presence of hair on legs or armpits, body shape (petite or small vs curvy or strong), and hair length (long vs short hair)! This was perhaps the most surprising result to me, and also an encouraging indication of body positivity in our community.

Leave the high heels at home: 13/14 respondents who prefer more feminine partners disagreed that they preferred a “dressed up” look (clothes, hair, makeup, etc) over a “dressed down” one. Casual streetwear reigns supreme...or we all just know that these Berlin cobblestones would claim the ankles of anyone brave enough to wear heels in these here streets 👟

A quick note on the "Binary is Boring" survey

During the group discussion, I wanted to say a few words about my thinking with the "Binary is Boring" survey. As I explained to the group, I always strive to make ReSee events as inclusive and representative as possible. Most of the time, gender and orientation are totally irrelevant to our activity, as we focus on other more behavioral or personality-based preferences.

However, given the theme of the evening and the fact that Force Majeure does center around very heteronormative relationships, it was a bit tricky for me, especially as a straight man, to align the nonbinary survey with the feminine and masculine ones. Instead, my goal with the nonbinary survey was to find out if traditional gender-based expectations are still present in certain preferences.

Due to the small sample size (n=4) of respondents, I wouldn't really infer much from our data set, but I did find it interesting that all 4 of the respondents who chose the "binary is boring" survey identified as cisgender women.

Additionally, guests were asked to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10 based on how masculine AND feminine they felt they were. One interesting insight was that the 4 cisgender female respondents who took the nonbinary survey had an average femininity rating of 7.75, which was actually higher than the femininity rating of the 10 cisgender females who said they prefer more masculine partners. The average score for those respondents was a 7. Again, we're dealing with a small sample size, but it was clear that the respondents made a significant distinction between their own senses of masculinity and femininity, and what they look for in partners.

Until the next Dystopian Dating!

One thing that we're still figuring out at ReSee Movies is how to keep these conversations going between events, creating an online, global counterpart to our local, physical home in Berlin. We don't have the answer to that question yet, but we're working on building a platform that will enable our community to remain more connected between screenings. So stay tuned for more info on that front, and we hope to see you all at the next Dystopian Dating event, to be announced very soon!