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While many millennials are choosing to delay marriage, The Bachelor SA insists on creating a fake world of heteronormative bliss, writes Rhodé Marshall.
The Bachelor
M-Net (DStv channel 101)
Thursday, 7pm
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First of all, I would like to kindly request that we stop it with the franchise TV shows. I do not recall there being requests for The Bachelor to come to South Africa, and nor should there have been because, in my books, it falls into the same group as Cheaters – destructive, incestuous and unnecessary nonsense.
For those of you who don’t know (oh, how I wish I was you), The Bachelor is a dating and relationship reality series that has been running since 2002 on US television. Prince Charming puts his heart on the line to woo – and be wooed by – a flock of beautiful lasses. And our first local bachelor is hunky Lee Thompson.
During the course of the season, the bachelor goes through 24 candidates, eliminating them to make a marriage proposal to his final selection. Contestants travel to romantic and exotic locations for their adventures and, of course, there are conflicts and drama that peak the closer the elimination of participants occur.
Lee has a six-pack and a boyish charm that make him the dream that many soapie hunks are made of. A former Sharks rugby player, he’s an entrepreneur with several successful business ventures on his CV. Oh, and let’s not forget – he’s a sought-after international model.
A lot has symbolically been done in support of women in recent months, particularly in the film and television industry. Yet, we are still given a popular TV show that makes no effort to stand up for women in this #TimesUp and #MeToo era. Instead, The Bachelor amplifies the pressure on the participants to keep up with a fast-tracked race towards a heteronormative paradise.
Contestants have to stick to a set path that actually discourages then from doing what is completely normal – dating. But here we are, watching a show in which 23-year-old Kelly Tiegan is convinced that in under two months she can make a life-long commitment with a man who has been constructed to appear as the knight in shining armour. What exactly is going to happen when she – like we did every time in our twenties – realises she’s looking for a boyfriend, not a husband? Not yet, at least.
The Bachelor wants to force two strangers into a romantic relationship through formalities and dates that are completely opposite from the normal dating process – creating a pseudo love. And of course we as the audience get hooked on witnessing this strange mating ceremony.
We know the drill … there are rose ceremonies, during which Lee will present a contestant with a thorny, scented plant. During not one, but two of these rituals, contestants fainted under the pressure as the roses depleted. Lee swooped them up and whisked them off to the glorious couch.
Week after week we watch women fall off the staircase left and right. They all swoon about how they and Lee feel deeply connected. His go-to question seems to be “Have you read The Alchemist?” and both times the answer was, “How did you know, I read it three times?”
While the women voluntarily appear on the show, I am troubled by how they seem determined to be subservient to the guy at all costs. I feel troubled by how unnatural it is because by no means are any of those women submissive during Lee’s absence. But at the end of the day, who am I to judge?
I do believe that The Bachelor does harm by focusing on the worst of the women, the ones who are deceptive and manipulative, who backstab and are always on standby for a catfight, providing destructive content.
In the end, for all its insistence on monogamy, The Bachelor doesn’t work well as a marriage show.
