The Bachelor: The Millennial's Book Club

The Bachelor: The Millennial's Book Club
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
http://abc.go.com/shows/the-bachelor/news/updates/the-bachelor-2017-season-21-contestants-revealed

Thursday nights have become a ritual for me this semester: Go to practice, take a shower, grab take-out with friends, watch The Bachelor. It takes a surprising amount of effort to wait that late in the week, when all my friends and I are finally free, to stream the Monday-night show. But if you can’t watch it with a group of friends, is it even worth watching? Now, many adults, my mother included, find this Bachelor craze to be quite an enigma. “What is so great about the show anyway?” She’ll ask. And quite honestly, I don’t know the answer. The plot lines are trivial, the contestants have grammar that I constantly want to correct, and the Bachelor himself is often not that appealing. But yet my friends and I love the show. Why is that?

The Bachelor and other shows of its kind are the new forms of book clubs. Instead of gathering in a local coffee shop to discuss Pride and Prejudice, Millennials gather around the television and analyze one man’s search for love. A parent might laugh at this statement: come on, isn’t it absurd? But how far off is this ritual actually from dissecting the love-hate relationship of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth? Sure, the Bachelor dates 30 women at one time. But Mr. Darcy pursues Elizabeth even though he has been betrothed to his cousin since birth. And back in the 19th century, such behavior was considered just as scandalous. “These books -- North and South, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights -- are the original romantic-comedies, minus the comedy,” my friend joked just the other day. And she is right. The medium through which we absorb these tales has changed, but the basic structure of the enjoyment has remained the same. Our obsession with shows like The Bachelor does make sense then. Thanks to them, we have been able to align our favorite storylines with reality, in some respect creating “real life” fairy tales.

Regardless of the label, book club or Bachelor Nation, we as humans cling to unifying forces. We seek belonging and, as such, congregate with regards to shared interests and beliefs. These days, The Bachelor, not religion, is the “opium of the people.” The Women Tell All episodes of every season highlight the extent to which fans get into the show. Host Chris Harrison and the current Bachelor or Bachelorette show up unexpectedly to viewing parties and Bachelor fans of all ages, toddlers to grandparents, physically erupt with excitement. Nick Viall sent a group of UCLA sorority girls into a frenzy this past season, while Ben Higgins decided to fully go Greek during his visits, making sorority signs alongside the sisters.

http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/e22552ac75/the-unlovable-bachelor-women-tell-all

The popularity of such shows can be seen as sad. “It’s rotting your brain,” Parents often say. “How about reading a book?” But to be honest, I see the rise of such an accessible, communal form of entertainment to be an extremely positive development. The Bachelor is not a medium that requires special intellect to understand: it can be consumed by anyone. That in and of itself is beautiful.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot