Amy Kaufman

The end chapter where Kaufman describes her Monday night ritual of watching with her discussion group over rose & Trader Joe's snacks resonated with me because honestly, part of the appeal to me is spending time with grad friends now that I'm no longer in school. I'm a relatively new fan, only regularly watching during Nick Viall's turn as the lead.

Bachelor Nation is a breezy history and behind the scenes of one of the longest running reality television shows still active. Kaufman researches to the best of her ability and lists all sources that she can at the end. The Bachelor franchise can be handwaved as vapid fluff, but there's a surprisingly intense structure holding it together for good tv- casting characters and then isolating them from media consumption with a steady diet of booze, then editing hours of footage into a narrative... this machinery facinates me.

I do think the book could've spent a little more time on the show's whiteness (though I understand if Kaufman isn't the right author for that critical lens)- my freshman dorm floormates bonded over watching Bach, but I could never get into it. BN mentions that time period (2009 to 2011 for ette and 2012 for or) didn't have black contestants. BN discusses why so many modern women still watch a speed marriage show (ooh fairytales), but i do think the lack of wider poc audience deserves more than three pages.

read if: you watch this trash pile and want to know how the sausage is made, or if you're a sniffy "but that's trash tv" person
avoid if: you wanna maintain the illusion and think unREAL is mean… (meer)

A slim volume that will provide undergraduate students with a useful introduction to the concept of medievalism, and how ideas about the Middle Ages have been politicised, fetishised, and mythologised over many centuries.

However, the brevity and relative simplicity that makes it useful in the college classroom also means that The Devil’s Historians should only ever be used as an introductory starting point, not as the last word—many topics are presented in a simplified manner, and perhaps sometimes overly simplified. There are also times when Kaufman and Sturtevant gild the lily a bit too much in their attempt to demolish the popular preconception of Middle Ages as a brutish inversion of an enlightened modernity. I’m sympathetic to that, though, knowing how hard I’ve had to work at times to convince students that medieval women could have any agency at all. Just getting people to understand that, say, Hildegard of Bingen was a highly influential intellectual force can be enough of a lift without trying to get into the nuances of how she was also a quite conservative thinker in many ways. (See, for instance, some of the statements made by other reviewers on GoodReads who critique Kaufman and Sturtevant based on their own misconceptions about the Middle Ages.)

There are also some uncritical repetitions of some things that are dubiously historical (e.g. I know a number of Islamic historians who get frustrated by the characterisation of al-Qarawiyyin as a 9th-century university (17); there’s a vague reference to what I presume has to be Boswell’s argument about adelphopoiia (24) as if it’s historical fact rather than a very contentious theory), some factual mistakes an editor should have caught (the former leader of the SNP is Alex Salmond, not Andy Salmon), and some really weird conflations (the framing at one point (122) makes it seem as if asexuality and celibacy are the same thing, which is incorrect.)

If you’re new to this topic, you will likely find some stuff in The Devil’s Historians that’s eye-opening and of interest. However, I’d make use of the notes/list of further reading provided to go further rather than stopping here.… (meer)

3.5 stars!

I have never watched an episode of the Bachelor. I don't say that to be holier than thou, I just have never really watched much TV that I didn't watch with my mom or my sister and my mom hates reality TV. I watched one episode of Unreal, the Lifetime show based on the bachelor, but because I didn't have the reference point of the Bachelor, I wasn't interested. However, I've always been intrigued in a sociological manner in reality TV. I've listened to podcasts since I was 10 and that included listening to recap podcasts for reality TV shows I had never watched. I loved listening to people discuss why they liked watching these shows and what stood out to them in any given episode. That's kind of how I was approaching reading this book as well. At first I was really bored. I didn't really care about the history of the Bachelor or its creator. However, as it went on, I was more interested. I don't know if any of the ideas presented in this book about reality TV is really groundbreaking but it was interesting for me to read as someone who hasn't heard much about the Bachelor before. The ratings on this review are not super high so maybe people that do watch the Bachelor were disappointed but as someone who is on the outside and just interested in reality TV, I thought this book was a fine portrayal of that.… (meer)

The American television show The Bachelor seems to be a perennial favorite as it and it’s various franchises are still going strong after some nineteen years. I admit to being an occasional viewer with some of the bachelors and bachelorettes capturing my interest more than others. I am fascinated to learn why these young people put themselves in a position to vie for the attention of one man or woman. It seems like a very strange way to build a relationship of equality and respect when all the power is in the hands of one.

I picked up Bachelor Nation by Amy Kaufman at the library hoping I would learn how these young women/men think about love and marriage. I note that on a Bachelor season, the women all seem to be looking for a fairy tale romance that ends in marriage, even though very few of these relationships actually work once real life comes knocking. I also wonder why the Bachelorette has a much better track record when it comes to marriage and relationships lasting. The Bachelor has only had one season end in a seemingly successful marriage, although you could count two more seasons if you ignore that the Bachelors had to dump their first choices and go for the runner-up. The Bachelorettes have managed three marriages and a number of on-going engagements. So are women better at picking their mates or is this just the luck of the draw?

The book didn’t really have a lot to say, the author was literally frozen out of the Bachelor Nation with the producers asking contestants to please not talk to her. Some ignored the request and did talk but overall she really wasn’t able to break through. I also thought that she inserted herself into the narrative more than she should. Mainly what I learned was what I already suspected, the producers are responsible for a lot of the drama and controversy that we see on the show. In their quest for ratings, they have learned how to spin what we are seeing, deciding in advance who is going to be that season’s bad girl/guy, and requesting that the star give roses to the ones that give good camera. So obviously this reality show is far from real and it’s no wonder the relationships don’t last very long after the final rose.

While The Bachelor didn’t invent candles, roses or hot tubs, it has certainly learned how to utilize these props to perfection. I suspect I will continue my guilty pleasure of checking out this pop culture phenomenon in anticipation of rolling my eyes at hearing some of my favorite lines such as “I’m here for the right reason” or “I can definitely see my wife/husband in this room”.… (meer)