Site Archives

Contemporaries Essays, The Bachelor

Will You Accept This Job? Labor, Love, and Bachelor Nation

Limo entrances are a steadfast ritual in every first episode of The Bachelor. Each time a contestant pops her meticulously coiffed head out of the limo, the faithful chyron tells…

Contemporaries Essays, The Bachelor

Feasts and Famine: Consumption on “The Bachelor” 

In the Bachelor mansion, the kitchen stays empty. There are no gourmet chefs; no kind mothers work in the kitchen. No phones to order UberEats, no Instacart; no internet, even…

Contemporaries Essays, The Bachelor

Behind the Camera: The Crucial Role of Parents on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette

The Bachelor and Bachelorette accelerate not just dating, but other romantic milestones such as falling in love, achieving physical intimacy, and — though rarely discussed — meeting a potential partner’s…

Contemporaries Essays, The Bachelor

The Bachelor as Novel of Manners

Why do smart, critical viewers who are actively harmed by the systems of domination that The Bachelor upholds continue to watch the show? The most common answer served to any…

Contemporaries Essays, The Bachelor

Lesbians at Sea: Queerness and The Bachelor Franchise

When asked in a 2014 The New York Times Magazine interview if there should be a gay Bachelor, Chris Harrison, the franchise’s former host, responded: “The question is: Is it…

Contemporaries Essays, The Bachelor

Here for the Wrong Representation: The Misuse of Diversity in the Bachelor Franchise

Season Nineteen of The Bachelorette (2022) proved to be one of the most “dramatic seasons ever.” Deviating from the show’s typical format of having one bachelorette, this season featured two…

Contemporaries Essays, The Bachelor

Disability Narratives in Bachelor Nation

There is an exception to every rule. When it comes to the portrayal of disability in The Bachelor franchise and its spin-offs, only exceptions, as in, people with disabilities who…

Contemporaries Essays, The Bachelor

The Bachelor at 21: Our Final Rose

March of 2023 marked the twenty-first “birthday” of ABC’s hit show The Bachelor. Since its inception, the show has presented itself as helping young, wealthy, and conventionally attractive Americans find…

Contemporaries Essays, John Keene

A Thank You Note

Dear John, I’ve been reading “Ten Things I Do Every Day” every day. “Now I don’t know anything anymore.” What does sacred, ordinary protocol have to do with knowing anything…

Contemporaries Essays, John Keene

Mere Horizon: The Form of Desire in John Keene’s Poetics

I. “Dark to Themselves,” the eponymous poem of the sixth section of John Keene’s Punks, begins with a command, which also serves as an ars poetica:”Invent, experiment: chaos . ….