Like an invasive species, reality shows have taken over television and few have had the staying power of The Bachelor (and its inevitable spin offs). With ubiquity comes examination, and so it was that I, a person who has not seen one minute of one episode of one season of The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, or even the short-lived Bachelor Pad, came to thoroughly enjoy Amy Kaufman’s book Bachelor Nation.
Kaufman comes to her work honestly. As a journalist at the Los Angeles Times and “recapper” of Bach episodes, Kaufman had access to the show, its contestants, and behind-the-scenes action, but when she ran afoul of the show runner, she was (to mix a metaphor) voted off the island. But in a make-lemonade-out-of-lemons move, Kaufman flipped the script and has written a book that is less about a reality show and more about the perversion of romantic love and our society’s obsession with fame and celebrity in the early 21st century. It is an often unflattering portrait, but it is well-written, researched, and told.
Of course, The Bachelor did not invent the genre and Kaufman traces its lineage back to The Dating Game through Love Connection and into nascent reality efforts like Who Wants to Marry A Multi-Millionaire? and Joe Millionaire. At each step in the process, producers recognized that amping up certain aspects - skin, sex, and salaciousness - assured ratings. What The Bachelor did was synthesize its forebears’ efforts, wrap them in a compelling narrative that added fairy tale aspects (the “handsome prince”) and a fishbowl competition that encouraged outlandish behavior.
The show’s premise, when you read it in print, is absurd, and the short celebrity essays Kaufman slips between chapters invariably include some variation on how the show is a guilty pleasure (it is in the sub-title of the book too!), yet, millions watch it obsessively. And that is no surprise - reality TV allows us to live vicariously through others while also sitting at a remove, quietly (or not-so-quietly if Kaufman’s description of her Bachelor viewing parties is to be believed) judging the people on the shows and the decisions they make.
It may make for interesting TV, but when Kaufman dissects the constituent parts, it is not pretty. For example, it is not a great look that the “in-the-moment” (ITMs in reality show vernacular) interviews done with contestants share common DNA with police interrogation techniques or that producers apply both subtle and overt pressure on contestants by using information shared with them to exploit vulnerabilities, fears, or desires to please, all in the name of creating compelling storylines that may or may not have any basis in reality.
The whole thing could be written off as wildly exploitative if Kaufman did not meticulously walk readers through the process applicants go through to appear on the show - the psychological screenings, the STD panels (what’s the point of having a Fantasy Suite if you can’t be sure bachelors and bachelorettes won’t leave with anything other than a regret or story to tell?), the questionnaires, the background investigation and on and on. For whatever after-the-fact hand wringing former contestants express to Kaufman, they go into the show with eyes wide open.
Putting individuals in a hermetically sealed environment for weeks on end (the “Bachelor Bubble”) with little to stimulate them other than alcohol, a princess fantasy, and the lure of temporary fame are heady to be sure, and what I liked so much about Kaufman’s framing was how it all fits together - the marketing techniques, the out-of-body experience shared by former contestants who describe an unreal world where things that would make no sense in the real world make complete sense in the Bachelor bubble, and how that small army of show producers shape a season through a combination of sleight-of-hand and outright deception - to contestants and the audience alike - in order to goose the drama.
Kaufman also shines when raising sociological questions about gender roles, sexual agency, and cultural views of marriage. On the one hand, we see how a bachelorette was dragged and bullied for having sex with a contestant early in her season while a bachelor who proudly proclaimed he would not have sex before marriage was cheered. Fair? Of course not, but so much of what I got out of Bachelor Nation had to to do with the unrealistic expectations (not to mention obvious double standards) placed on women. On the one hand, they are expected to be chaste enough not to be seen as promiscuous, but “fun” enough to slink around in bikinis while ignoring the fact that a bunch of other women are vying for the same man.
As Kaufman puts it more pruriently, the ideal Bachelor contestant is a lawyer who gives a good blow job. Make of that what you will, but even in Bachelorette seasons, any marriage proposal is still done by the man. And of course, it goes without saying that a bachelor shtupping multiple contestants is seen as totally fine while a bachelorette doing the same is expected to understand why the man she chooses might reject her when it is revealed she had more than one partner during the season.
And where there is a hit TV show, a cottage industry of ancillary opportunities also arises. Kaufman brings us behind the scenes at sponsored events featuring former contestants, speaks with bloggers and podcasters who have carved out a career monitoring and musing on the latest twists and turns of the show, and, oddly, the surprising number of memoirs (seriously!) written by people whose main life experience was appearing on a reality TV show. While the hit of celebrity may provide diminishing returns the lower down the food chain you get, shilling products on your Instagram account or getting paid to show up at a nightclub to take pictures with fans surely beats an honest day’s work.
As a coda, Kaufman muses on a paradox - as financial independence and opportunity have made marriage more of an optional choice for women, shows like The Bachelor bombard them with a more traditional view of coupling, reinforcing the outdated belief that marriage equates with success and, conversely, not being married and not having children, mark you as a failure. Moreover, the heteronormative (and predominately white) vibe and restricted view of what qualifies as attractive (thin, pretty, and wholesome) traffics in some of the worst stereotypes that plague women today.
With all of that being said, Kaufman rightly goes easy on herself and others for indulging the fantasy. As she notes, with the veil being lifted on some of the mystery thanks to shows like unREAL, a latter-day Larry Sanders that fictionalized elements of The Bachelor thanks to one of its executive producers having worked on the show, viewers better understand how The Bachelor is edited, shaped, and twisted into a version of reality that has just enough truth in it to make it believable.
Of course, it could also be that, as Don Draper noted, love was created by advertisers to sell nylons, so your mileage may vary.
Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy
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