Who Gets a Fairytale Ending?: Race and Reality TV in The Bachelor Franchise
Open AccessThe Bachelor is an American reality television show that has been on air for more than twenty years, first premiering in March 2002 and joined by its companion show, The Bachelorette, in January 2003. While it remains one of the most popular and influential reality dating shows, it has widely drawn criticism for lack of racial diversity in casting, treatment of racial issues on screen, and contestants’ racist behavior on and off camera. In this paper, I explore how race is understood, addressed, and ignored in The Bachelor franchise. I take a broad look at the way race has manifested in The Bachelor franchise to understand how it has changed over time and then focus on past five years of the franchise, beginning with the first season of The Bachelorette featuring a Black lead in 2017, to analyze how the franchise has addressed race in recent years while publicly committing to being more diverse and inclusive. Drawing on specific examples from episodes spanning multiple seasons, I argue that the franchise grapples with race on screen in four ways: ignoring or obscuring race and racial issues, using race as a narrative mechanism to generate drama, showing contestants talk about race in a personal context, and directly addressing race through a formal interview. Despite a movement toward acknowledging race in recent years, The Bachelor franchise seldom recognizes racial issues overall and is generally forced to do so only when audience reaction is strong, particularly on social media. Ultimately, this inconsistency in approach undermines the franchise’s attempted racial progress and perpetuates the systemic racism embedded within the show. As one of the longest running and most popular reality television shows on air, The Bachelor reflects the changing societal and political values of the past two decades that are not unique to the franchise but extend to the reality television and entertainment space as a whole.
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