F06 :: Feminist Film Studies

The new bachelor includes a "prince" (who knows where from or how important he is), and a group of females that want to fall in love with this "prince." In my opinion, how corny is it to have a group of women suck-up and pretend to be so in love with someone they know has money? It is all about the gold-diggers and desperate women. However, the whole show is focused on how this prince preceives these seamingly perfect women, who all happen to be in love, or falling for this prince. This show always seems to fall in line with the entire Laura Mulvey male gaze. The females in the show are required to be passive, because showing signs of no interest would undoubtfully get them eliminated. The camera eye constistantly follows these women as an object. Especially through what they are wearing, and highlighting on certain parts of their body. They are subjectified to events that are unfamiliar (and uninteresting), and they pretend to love the cirumstances even though when in private commentary, they can admit to the ackwardness. The females all have an obligation to be passive and optomistic about situations they would normally not be a part of. The gaze is for males to say, "these women will do whatever I feel like doing, and whatever I say to do." It is an extremely sexist show, but most importantly it objectifies women as being passive and gazed upon as inactive and submissive. The male is always in control, and is the spectator of these females doing as he wishes. In the end, the most important thing is the money, and objectify your feminitity by indulging in activities that are sexist and unnecessary like private hotel rooms.
I read over the reality TV article about the bachelor on our website, and I agree that there is a lot of strict hetereosexual tendencies. There is no room for homosexuality because the entire show is about our male voyuer gazing upon these women, while they are have no choice in their future romance with the prince. Reading that this is one of the most popular shows (or at least in 2003), makes it obvious that the audience is probabaly hetereosexual, and we are all a bunch of male voyuers gazing upon the female body in parts and wanting to be the prince in order to decide which sexual female is most deserving. We don't necessarily care that the prince is lame, or yuppy, we only care that the winning female embodies all that is pure, sexy, and heterosexual. The camera says the most about this type of spectatorship because we see scenes with the male and femals in hot tubs, and pools and beautiful dresses; focusing on mainly legs breasts and seemingly perfect bodies. The camera moves slow with the women because like Mulvey says; the female stops the narrative. However, the entire show is shot with "god-like" angels as if we are somewhere we shouldn't be, and seeing something that is secret. This show was definately produced because of its competition eliments, but also because of its ability to reaffirm male hegemony and "popular" hetereosexual beliefs and lifestyles.