Blog post #9

     For this open forum post, I would like to talk about the only two reality television shows that I watch: The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Both of these shows air on ABC. The Bachelor has been airing since 2002, and the Bachelorette since 2003. On both network and cable TV in the US today there is such a large number of reality shows fighting for popularity amongst viewers. Both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette are two shows that have been able to stand the test of time in a competitive TV market and industry (and have remained successful!), and their cast members often remain prominent figures in pop culture.

     For anyone reading this post who needs a brief summary of how The Bachelor and The Bachelorette work, here is a brief run-down on the shows.  The Bachelor films in the fall and then airs each year from January-March. The Bachelorette films in the spring and then airs each year from May-July. The Bachelor revolves around a single guy (the "Bachelor") who is looking for his future wife, and the producers of the show find him approximately 25 single women to meet and date. Each week the Bachelor will go on both group dates and one-on-one dates with the women and then narrow down the dating pool, until it finally becomes the final two, and hopefully things will end with a proposal! The same exact set-up works on The Bachelorette except it is one woman dating lots of guys.

     It is interesting to try and look at these two shows in terms of the cultural diamond. Both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have an interesting team of creators behind them. The producers of these shows (Mike Fleiss and Elan Gale are the two main producers) are both active on social media and in promoting the show, but are never really shown on camera. They impose very strict rules for their contestants during filming. They have been known to have great relationships with some of the cast members, and disastrous relationships with others (even going so far as to call certain cast members things such as "worst Bachelor we have ever had").  It is also interesting to see how the creators market each Bachelor and Bachelorette (for example, with recent Bachelor Sean who was a Christian, most of the marketing around his season focussed on the fact that he observed the traditional Christian belief in waiting until marriage to have sex).  As far as receivers of the shows, that would be mostly the women of America. There aren't a lot of male fans of The Bachelor of The Bachelorette (except for some poor husbands or boyfriends that are roped into watching with their significant others). But this is a show that attracts women of all ages; from high schoolers and college students, to young career women, all the way up to moms, middle aged women and even grandmothers. The appeal of a woman or man finding their soulmate at long-last is a theme that seems to be popular with all generations of female viewers. And lastly, these shows are very successful in the social world. Both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette rely heavily on social media to help promote their shows and to help with enagage viewers. Live tweeting is a huge part of each show (I can speak from personal experience as my Twitter feed always changes to all #Bachelor and #Bachelorette when a new episode of these shows is on, and I often join in on the Twitter conversation).  As I stated earlier, the cast members of these shows often reach celebrity status after being apart of Bachelor Nation (as the producers call it). Being on either The Bachelor or The Bachelorette is also a great way for a cast member to get endorsement deals or to take their personal business to the next level and get national attention (such as Emily Maynard's jewelry line, Catherine Lowe (formerly Guidici's stationery line), Josh Murray's fitness business, etc). Some contestants even use their experiences from the show to make a profit, such as Courtney Robertson writing a New York Times best-selling memoire about her life to-date, and her time competing on The Bachelor.

     There is more then enough information written above (I think!) to have a class discussion about these two shows, but I think there is still more to be discussed. One thing that makes these two shows interesting is that unlike other reality shows of a "competitive" nature, The Bachelor and Bachelorette aren't filmed live. They're each filmed a few months in advance, and this allows for the possibility of spoilers. Both shows are famously spoiled each year by popular blogger Reality Steve. (You can visit his blog here: http://realitysteve.com/.) I won't go into too much detail about Reality Steve as you all can visit his blog if you would like to see more for yourself, but I will say that he gets the spoilers right every season down to the most intricate details (and so far has only been wrong about the final prediction during just one Bachelorette season). I am a huge fan of Reality Steve. I personally see the entertainment value in The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, but I also see how much of it is staged and "not-real." I think Reality Steve's commentary is absolutely hilarious, and I also find it fascinating how he is able to find out all the spoilers for each season so early in advance and almost always is 100% correct. So I am a big fan of his. But just about all of my friends and family members who watch these shows are die-hard haters of his blog and spoilers, and are very passionate against "not ruining the magic" of each season. I find this interesting, and my personal perspective is there isn't really much magic to begin with is so much of what you're seeing is manufactured by a few producers and a bunch of Hollywood ideals.

     One last thing of note-  that there is a popular web series inspired by the The Bachelor and Bachelorette that spoofs both shows called "Burning Love." My personal favorite is the Burning Love Bachelorette edition... I have seen most of the episodes twice. They are completely over-the-top and ridiculous, but it also highlights how the real-life shows can be like that a lot of the times, too. I think the fact that there has been such successful spoof series also just points back to the fact on how much of an influence in pop culture the two original shows have made. Here is a clip for the Burning Love Bachelorette season:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUFbLD6-vgc



     I would love to hear if anyone from our class watches either The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, or their spin-off shows, which are Bachelor Pad and Bachelor in Paradise (which I don't actually watch). These shows have definitely made a lasting mark on American TV and other parts of pop culture by incorporating social media and even inspiring a successful spoof series.


     -Annaliese

Blog post #8

      I will be honest, I had a difficult time coming up with a topic to discuss in this class that we haven't already talked about! I feel like our key terms encompass so many issues or common themes in pop culture today, and we have already discussed many popular musicians, TV shows and movies. The only thing that I could think of at first was discussing reasons why large "reality based" (when I say that I mean more realistic then families like the Kardashians) families like the Duggars from 19 Kids and Counting, the Robertsons from Duck Dynasty, and the Thompson family from Here Comes Honey Boo Boo have gained so much popularity.... but then I realized that I have never seen an episode of 19 Kids and Counting, Duck Dynasty, or Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, so I probably wouldn't be very educated to blog on this topic. (Hence why the whole phenomenon of these shows confuses me!)

     Anyways,  instead I am writing about something totally different. If I had to pick a topic for our class to discuss, it would be the topic of how Christians and the Christian faith are currently portrayed in most pop culture, especially pop culture that appeals especially to teenagers. I am a Christian, so I feel like this is something that I can relate personally to. Out of the pop culture that I tend to pay attention to (I guess "consume" would be the right word?), I have noticed very few representations of Christian characters, and the ones that do exist seem to be very unrealistic.

     One representation of Christian characters on television is from the ABC Family show The Secret Life of the American Teenager. This show isn't on the air anymore, but it ran for five seasons from 2008-2012 (the years that I was in high school), and was quite popular with the teen viewing demographic for all of those years. I watched it during the first few seasons, and was intrigued especially with the characters of Grace and Jack, two of the main characters who at the beginning of the show were advertised as evangelical Christians. Yet despite this, both are shown throughout all seasons of the show as being obsessed with relationships and having sex (and not just with each other). The dialogue of the characters and their actions in the show portrayed it as though their obsession with sex was directly related their faith, and as a Christian viewer I found that a bit disturbing. (Granted, the whole show seemed to be very sex focussed but where these two characters were blatantly Christian I didn't see the need to do that). Another example that is sort of similar is from the television show Hart of Dixie (which I have written about before in a different blog post of mine). I love this show and view it in a much higher regard then I did with Secret Life, but I will still acknowledge that they don't portray Christians on the show in the most realistic light. Lemon Breeland, one of the main characters on the show, was raised as a traditional Southern Belle and is seen from season one as being in church every Sunday and being involved in her church community. Yet Lemon frequently engages in premarital sex on the show; and irrelated to her sex life, can be downright cruel to her friends, family and neighbors, and very manipulative to get what she wants when she wants it. Of course this adds drama to the show and makes for an interesting character portrayal... but none of these behaviors are Christian-like at all. (Disclaimer: of course in the religion Christianity the whole belief is that everyone does sin. But what I'm trying to say is that Lemon's actions in the show are often intentional and go beyond that. And I'm sure that there are numerous more TV and movie examples as well- these are just the two that I was most familiar with from pop culture that I have personally watched.)

A quote from Grace from the Secret Life of the American Teenager

     There is currently a thriving Christian music industry, but it is often far removed from mainstream music. Artists that are able to cross between the two genres are few and far between. I have noticed that in country music references to church and faith are more common, but I believe that is more often because the Christian faith is more a way of life in the parts of the country where many country artists get their influences from more then anything else.

   
     Anyways: how/why does this relate to our course content? Well, Christian young adults are a larger population then one might thing! Studies show that over 70% of teens claim to identify with the Christian faith (source for statistic). While stats also show that many teens to tend to leave the church during or after their college years, I think that definitely part of that might be because of the way that pop culture portrays Christianity: both the lack of Christians portrayed in pop culture and the few unrealistic portrayals that are there! With such high numbers of teens claiming to belong to the Christian faith then I think that Christians would be an underrepresented group in pop culture (kind of like how we discussed earlier in class with some races being over or underrepresented).


     If this topic did come up in class, then I would also be interested in hearing everyone's views on how other religions are represented in American pop culture. I know the most about Christianity since that is my own faith, but I also respect and am curious to learn about others' beliefs. Plus it would be interesting to compare Christianity's representation to other religions like Judaism, Islam... etc. Or even different denominations of Christianity! I think there's a lot to talk about with this topic.


     P.S. Another show that I have blogged about before is 7th Heaven. I think this is one show that did a FANTASTIC job of portraying Christianity realistically (among other things!).... but I don't want all of my blog posts for this class to just be me singing my praises of a show that went off the air seven years ago. :-) (And I don't think another TV show/movie has come close to doing what 7th Heaven did since then!)


     -Annaliese