The drama of the split of The Bachelor’s Sam and Blake – who got engaged on the final episode last Thursday – has continued in full force. Rumours have swirled over what happened, and on Monday the two appeared on the The Project to tell their story, revealing a relationship that hardly lasted the end of filming.
As an outsider it has been fascinating. Like many others, I cannot help but ask the question, what did we expect? Did we really think this ‘love competition’ would result in a fairytale romance? The whole thing seems ridiculous.
Look deeper however and The Bachelor – and all the shows like it – actually say a lot about us. In representing both the conservative and progressive approaches we have to sex, love and relationships, these shows highlight deep contradictions running through our society.
WatchingThe Bachelor you can see a very conservative approach to relationships. In a bizarre kind of way the show preaches traditional relationship ideals: we all have one ‘true love’, who after meeting in a fairytale romance we will marry, buy a house with and then have kids. This relationship is dictated by the man, our bachelor, who is the one who has all the choice. The show promotes a traditional linear model of relationships – a model we are all expected to fit into.
There are deep contradictions with this however. The contestants go in with the ideal of finding their ‘one true love’, but do so through a competition which lets the bachelor explore this love in a very open manner. The bachelor has the ability to date more than one woman at a time, accepting both promiscuity (at least for men) and the possibility that we can love more than one person. The show is confused – trying to find ‘true love’ through means that are not designed to do so.
In doing so The Bachelor has become a microcosm of our confused sexual society. The sexual revolution has led to us being more open and honest about sex – accepting the ideas of promiscuity, different relationship forms and more equality between genders and people of different sexualities. But at the same time, we have aimed to fit this openness into inherently conservative institutions – in particular marriage. We have tried to fit a more open approach to sex into institutions that don’t accept that openness.
We have become as confused as the contestants on the show. Marriage for example is still seen as the key institution in our society, even though marriage rates (per head of population) are at a low. We are more open and honest about sex and promiscuity, but still have an ideal that once we meet our ‘true love’, this promiscuity must go out the door. We can be promiscuous, but eventually we have to ‘settle down’. The examples are boundless – a confusion of a society trying to fit more progressive sexual ideals into traditional sexual boundaries and institutions.
For some this confusion means we should look back to the past. As Ben Polbje argues about the Sam and Blake split:
“There may be those who feel sad about the end of Blake and Sam’s relationship, who feel it strikes a shattering blow against the ideal of romantic love. On the contrary, this news is a major victory for that ideal, as the fake version of romance we were being cynically sold has been shown to be a sham.”
I think the opposite is true. Maybe, what the split highlights, is that our ideals of having to ‘settle down’ with just one person is wrong? Maybe it is the ideal that we all need one ‘fairytale romance’ with one ‘true love’ that is causing problems? These ideals are inherently conservative – placing us all into particular relationship frameworks we are not allowed to break from. They are ones that lead to much of the confusion and pain we see so often in our society around relationships.
Behind the drama, this year The Bachelor has managed to say something very profound. It has highlighted our contradictions with sex, relationships and love. Many will be quick to judge the show and talk about how these environments cannot create ‘true love’. I think however they just highlight how ridiculous these ideals of ‘true love’ are in the first place.
This article was originally published on SBS News. Click here to view the original. © All rights reserved.