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The Racial Inequality In The Bachelor Degree

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When a farmer from Iowa named Chris Soules proposed, there were about ten million people were watching. This moment was the climax of the most recent finale of The Bachelor. Since the show’s genesis in 2002, it has steadily garnered a stronger and more devoted following, collectively called “Bachelor Nation.” The Bachelor is a reality TV dating show that follows an eligible bachelor’s quest to find true love and ultimately a wife. The show begins with a group of about twenty-five women, which is eventually whittled down until he proposes to the last one. Although this show falls under the genre of reality-based television, the reality is depicts is extremely problematic. Although I have been a devoted watcher of the past several seasons, I …show more content…
According to Grazian, the critical perspective looks at the ways in which popular culture reflects and reinforces “the enormous economic and cultural power of the mass media industry” (2010: 46). There is a top-down effect in which those who have the power to construct and distribute the show can disseminate their dominant ideologies and views. Mike Fleiss, the producer and director, and Elan Gale, supervising producer, are both white males; most ABC executives such as entertainment president Paul Lee are white as well. These people in positions of power have the wealth and resources to produce culture such as The Bachelor, and thus make ideas that are beneficial to them the dominant ones. It is not surprising then that the narrative of The Bachelor demonstrates and espouses the values of a white, upper class culture. The critical perspective recognizes how popular culture has a role in perpetuating stereotypes and molding human minds by controlling what images consumers see (Grazian 2010: 46). I will use this framework to demonstrate how under its romantic entrapments, the Bachelor insidiously promotes and reinforces the racial hierarchy by reflecting and promoting the dominant white ideology. A critical perspective is especially important in analyzing reality television, because these shows can give the appearance of reflecting reality and …show more content…
The danger of The Bachelor is that it uses the rhetoric of realism and maintains an appearance of normative nonperformance, which “naturalizes the constructions of race and romance it promotes to its audience” (Dubrofsky 2006:41). But upon analysis, the values the creators have imbued into the show are apparent. The first is that whiteness is essential in finding a romantic partner. The Bachelor is a world in which only attractive, young, rich Caucasian people really have the chance to find love. Thus, the show presents a narrow image of who can find love, and further, a very narrow image of white identity. The show also articulates then that minorities only serve to supplant white’s narratives; that they only matter as background characters who are irrelevant and can be eliminated. If somehow the minorities do succeed, their ethnicity must be hidden so they can fit in with this white mold. Although ABC may argue that they are only catering to their predominantly white audience, it only makes sense that people whose ideologies are being promoted flock to the show. If there were more minority women being depicted as worthy of the bachelor and finding love, it is likely that a more heterogeneous audience would be attracted. St. Petersburg Times TV critic Eric Deggans describes a feedback loop in which the continued

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