Okay, if I’m going to do this, I guess I’m going to have to
give a disclaimer first:
Yes, I do watch the Bachelor.
I have also watched the Bachelorette. Just once. Last
season. And I did indeed cry when Sean Lowe was sent home. Hence, I felt
compelled to watch the Bachelor this round (for those of you already lost, don’t
worry, all will reveal itself in time).
So…pathetic? Yes, absolutely. But I think most of us girls
know how it goes. We all understand how ridiculous the underlying plot line of
the show really is. 25 girls are all competing
for the same man. He forms romantic relationships with multiple women, hoping
to “test the waters” and see if he might just want to marry one of them.
Needless to say, most of the end-of-season engagements never
work out anyway.
But regardless, every Monday night we get to watch one sexy
man make out (or more!) with a number of different women, sometimes within
minutes of one another. Appalling? Sure, but…so intriguing! After all, how
could he like that witch of a woman? Can’t he see just how terrible she is for
him?! She is probably a paid actress here for the wrong reason.
Wait a minute…paid actress?
Yes, friends. It is a reality tv show. That means that it
has to be manipulated for the purpose of entertainment. After all, what did you
really expect? That Sean just might find his perfect woman before the deadline
of dating? That he might not even want to go to four hometown dates? That maybe
he knows who he wants to marry and will just end the season early by sending everyone
home?
Well, no. He’s in a contract. And it’s a television show.
Viewers are important. We have to be intrigued. There has to be drama. So of
course there will always be “that girl” that really ticks us all off. And of
course she will stick around for a while. And we spend every week worrying whether
or not our “hero” of a bachelor will see through the façade. Or will he have
his heart broken? Maybe he is stupidly ignoring the less flashy girl who we all
think is perfect for him.
Sounds like the plot of any typical romantic chick-flick.
But there is a difference. In the case of reality tv shows, while the world itself
is being manipulated into an odd sort of pseudo-reality, the people themselves
are real. And that means, that every choice they make, the producers make, we make
in choosing to watch, is dealing very personally with the lives of actual human
beings.
Oh how it makes me feel for them! Of course I cried when the
perfect Sean Lowe was sent home during the Bachelorette. I could see the hurt
all over his expression. He loved her! They had a relationship! How could she
break up with him?
I don’t know. Maybe because she was also dating two other
guys at the same time.
And watching the bachelor this week, for no real specific
reason, I felt a sudden sense of revulsion that was oddly familiar. Too
familiar….
So here’s what actually happened last night after this week’s
episode. I was chatting with my sister on facebook. And she told me that she
finally decided to watch an episode of the bachelor (I had been keeping her
updated). And to my surprise she said something like,
“It made me really mad. Like…when I was first watching the Hunger
Games.”
What?! Well, okay. Maybe that’s not so crazy. I’ve thought
that before….
Everyone who knows me knows that I have a ridiculous
obsession with the Hunger Games Trilogy…not just for the romance, of course,
but because I see politics and symbolism in everything I read. To me, the trilogy
was one of the most brilliant critiques on modern society and our impulse to materialistic
dehumanization…
Kind of like the bachelor?
Surely not. But wait a minute. Let’s just go back to why the
Hunger Games horrifies so many people. It is about a world where the people living
in the rich and overly modernized Capitol watch children from the poor outer districts
battle to the death…all in the name of entertainment. You know, like the
Gladiators of the past. With children.
Scenes from the book and the movie that are most horrendous
are when we see the people of the Capitol cheering on their “favorites” for the
games, crying over the tragic deaths, and worshiping the heroic winners. In
effect, they appear to feel all sorts of sympathy for these human beings….
Human beings they are willingly destroying for the sake of
entertainment.
Yes, that’s right. The sick irony of claiming to feel
sympathy for the person’s situation when you were the ones to put them there in
the first place. The children should never have been put in the ring in the
first place. Thus, while Katniss’ experiences are very real to HER, and thereby
her emotions are understood as real to the spectators, the fact of the matter
is…the whole experience shouldn’t be
real. The Capitol’s fabricated version of reality should never have existed
in the first place, and thereby they effectively manipulate the lives of all involved—participants
and spectators. We are left with a world that should not exist, but does.
So ironically, though the capitol viewers feel sympathy for
those who suffer, that sympathy is never enough to stop the games.
Why? Because putting real people in a fabricated world is
one subtle way to dehumanize them. But if we feel for them, how are we
dehumanizing them? Oh, we feel for them like we are watching a movie. But
movies are not real life. Thus we can be thoroughly entertained and gain the
sense of catharsis and victory by manipulating the lives of others.
The more we see people as objects for our entertainment, the
less they becomes real to us…even if their sorrows do bring us to tears. The
irony is that we really have no reason to cry, not if we stopped the games…but
then the entertainment would die as well. And we don’t really want to do that.
So what does this have to do with the Bachelor?
Unfortunately, everything. Think about it. False reality.
Real people. Manipulation. Entertainment. And just think about the situation in
the Hunger Games with Katniss and Peeta—called the “star crossed” lovers. In
the books, their survival depends on their ability to pretend to be in love.
Why? Because the Capitol can’t so easily kill off such an adored couple. After all,
to quote one of the characters simply…
“It’s a television show.”
Yes, the Bachelor is a television shows. And suddenly, paid
actresses and actors makes more sense. Entertainment, my friends. And yes, dehumanization
is a necessary part of it.
But hold on!! The Hunger
Games is about violence. The bachelor is just romance.
Well, I could say it is fairly emotionally abusive, if not
physically. But at this point, it might do better to point to one more side of
just how hauntingly brilliant Suzanne Collins really is.
I think of video gaming. Violent television shows. I think
particularly of (no offense to anyone) the movie Warm Bodies that recently came
out. The fact of the matter is, we like watching bloody, gory, violent scenes
as long as the heroes come out victorious in the end. And sure, maybe that
zombie ate that girl’s boyfriend, but whatevs…I mean, it’s not real.
Good thing, too. Cause in real life, she would have gone
through therapy and probably still come out crazy. Instead, she just falls for
the boyfriend-eater. And where am I going with this?
The sad truth is, on one hand our society loves reality tv shows
where real people with real emotions have their lives (voluntarily) manipulated
for our viewing pleasure. On the other hand, dehumanizing violence and desensitization that ignores the real implications
of inhumane behavior is also being viewed as acceptable as long as it’s “just
a movie” or tv show…you know, not a reality show.
But the eerie fact of the matter is…we are increasingly
finding entertainment that applauds selfish, objectifying and dehumanizing behavior
as exciting and worthwhile. Much more worthwhile than real reality, anyway.
Like real interactions with regular human beings….who does that?
And in that way, we take one step closer to making our own fabricated
world of corrupted reality into the "real" of our everyday lives. I’m
not saying we are going towards some Hunger Games society. Of course not. What
I am saying is that, after last night, I’m more convinced than ever that Suzanne
Collins knew what she as writing about. We are increasingly a very shallow
culture.
That said, I will probably keep watching this season of the
Bachelor until it ends…and that might be the saddest observation of all.
Comments
Post a Comment