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Abstract
In season 11 of the ABC reality television program The Bachelor, bachelor Brad Womack refused to choose a mate, thus breaking the romantic contract that is the essence of this reality show. In doing so, Womack exposed the emptiness of the mythic romantic script, prompting both invested outrage and ironic detachment among viewers. An analysis of the contradictions upon which the show's fantasy founders (thus encouraging an ironic response), alongside exploration of fan discussion board discourse, confirms the capacity of audiences to maintain simultaneous earnest investment and ironic reflexivity toward the program. This oscillation of stance signals a textual strategy that I label the irony bribe. The irony bribe corresponds to the paradoxical epistemology of reality television; viewers can regard the program as “real” and “not-real” and therefore worth viewing and worthless at the same time. A counterpoint to Fredric Jameson's concept of the fantasy bribe, the irony bribe wins viewers to participation in an ideological discourse by tempting them not only with the fantasy, in this case, of mythic romance, but also with the pleasures of the reaction against taking the fantasy seriously. Viewers' creative and critical responses to The Bachelor do not necessarily mitigate its ideological conservatism with regard to gender and romance; rather, they may naturalize its worldview, ironically, in the process of denaturalizing it.
Notes
1. Indeed, the key insight of structuralism may be that human communicative agency is always-already ironic; the speaking subject cannot be willfully agentive if subjectivity is a social construct (see Colebrook, 2004, pp. 72–110, 120). Thus, for such theorists as Judith Butler, the performativity of the impossible self is the irony-saturated domain of the political (Colebrook, 2004, p. 126). The critique of irony, therefore, must invoke an “outside” to the ironic performance. For example, feminist critique of discourses that locates women in relations of subordination and self-denial offers this type of non-ironic evaluative stance.
2. In order to avoid representing these women as sexual objects, I am not providing physical descriptions of them here. Readers can find images of all of the season 11 contestants at http://realitytv.about.com/od/thebachelo1/ig/The-Bachelor-Contestants/
3. Although The Bachelor and The Bachelorette are not ideologically interchangeable, they are part of a single intertextual family, sharing the same webpage at abc.com and regarded in most popular media as episodes in the same unfolding story. The introduction of Trista, Ryan, and Max in the “After the Final Rose” show for The Bachelor indicates the imbrication of the two programs, offering the restorative familialism of The Bachelorette as remedy to the breakdown of romance on The Bachelor.
4. The “official” fan discussion boards for the shows are at http://abc.go.com/primetime/bachelor, but only boards for the current season are displayed. For this reason, unfortunately, the season 11 discussion boards upon which this analysis is based are inaccessible.
5. Furthermore, although both Womack and Fleiss deny any advance planning, it is possible that in the show's eleventh hour (or eleventh season, as it were), producers encouraged Brad to do something surprising that would sustain viewer interest. “Tracy,” a viewer commenting on the blog nothingbutbonfires.com (Burns, Citation2007), wrote, “ABC is where the real anger should go. Brad misled both women because he was under contract to mislead (i.e. keep everyone guessing enough to make for good television).” This interpretation is given weight by the choice to feature the fortuitously single DeAnna, rejected by Brad, as the star of the next season's The Bachelorette. Viewers angry with Brad or the producers may have been motivated to watch The Bachelorette to see a woman with whom they identified triumph over rejection and passivity. On a less empowering note, viewers' identification with DeAnna and her “real” but intensified-for-TV emotions may have produced ongoing investment in her opportunities and choices. On The Bachelorette, DeAnna chose snowboarder Jesse Csincsak to be her mate. DeAnna's second choice, doctor Jason Mesnick, became the next star of The Bachelor, while naval officer Andy Baldwin, season 10's bachelor and certified minister (whose romance with his selection from season 10, Tessa, was broken off), is slated to officiate DeAnna and Jesse's wedding in May 2009 (Lover, Citation2008). However, in the 2008–2009 season, Deanna will make a surprise appearance to appeal to Jason, now the bachelor, to consider her once again. The confusion is agonizing. Clearly, the crises and dramas of these characters are inexpensive fodder for ongoing investment in the series and its outcomes in the short and long term.
6. Competitive “reality” television may be special (in the same way as televised sporting events) in this regard, because committed viewers watch at the original airtime in order to share their reactions with others (often online) immediately. Those delayed risk having the viewing experience spoiled (by knowing ahead of time who wins). One could speculate, therefore, that viewers watching the original airing of the program would “not want to miss anything” and would continue to watch through the advertisements. To my knowledge, and unlike a number of other reality shows, there are no obvious product placements in The Bachelor with the exception of necessities such as cars and hotels; it is unclear whether makers of either paid ABC to use their products. See Paulsen (Citation2003).
7. Rorty (1989) argues that ethical judgment and political solidarity are possible in the ironic frame; if one refuses transcendent norms and foundational narratives, he claims, one may establish solidarity with others on the basis of shared suffering (p. 192). In my view, acknowledging the performativity of identity and lack of firm foundation for judgment in a contingent set of political relations does not necessarily produce or require an ironic stance.