The Bachleor: Meditations on American Sexuality
White Female America was riveted as All-American-Male Jake the Bachelor chose his bride-to-be, and White Female America released a collective squeal of disgust as Jake the Bachelor chose the shrewier of two shrews. Was anyone really going to be pleased by either outcome?
In the wake of trashier cable reality shows featuring the increasingly shallow premise of "looking for love," The Bachelor now emerges as a hyper-conservative punchline in most respects. Touting everlasting heterosexual (and entirely Caucasian) love as its goal, The Bachelor peddles unnaturally straight white teeth and shallow cliches as the American ideal of love. Roses, tropical locales, flowing evening gowns, tailored suits and stilted emotions abound, and we are meant to yearn for something similar. Women swoon over large hunks of mineral ore and men on single knees, and The Bachelor presents no alternative, instead adding in helicopter rides and long-lensed cameras and a heaping sense of façade.
I find myself wondering the percentage of people who are swept up by the theatrics of network pandering compared to the percentage who are purely in it for the schadenfreude. Watching The Rejected's face contort into ugly expressions heretofore unseen on her until-now perfectly composed visage held a slight bit of satisfaction, a sort of "welcome to the real world, honey" kind of scoff at her pain, partially in self-defense because we know in our hearts (though the word "heart" is thrown around so much on The Bachelor that it's elevated to the most Platonic of ideals rather than the thing that works the hardest in our bodies to keep us alive and smiling impossibly clear-enameled smiles) that she came a helluva lot closer to that American Ideal of Romance, of being swept away by a Harlequin figure to exotic locales to be proposed to on bended knee and kissed oh-so-softly as the sun sets behind us and fade out the end. But we in the real world, watching TV with the man or woman who probably farts in bed, who proposed at Benihana when the chef flipped the ring out of the fried rice, who not-so-sadly lacks six-pack abs and a completely fabricated smile, we know it's just a dream. An impossibly white, WASPy, heterosexual, so-called "American" dream, presented to us as fact, though it's indubitably undoubtedly fiction, the most reaching definition of "reality" there ever was.
Treatise The Second:
Canadian Stereotypes on the International Stage
Where most countries might try to enlighten or educate the world about their culture when offered an international audience to appeal to, Canada stands alone. And their resistance, their utter denunciation of the Chinese precedent of grandeur and majesty shows that Canada's got a lot more balls than we give them credit for, and they somehow stood up to this in the most Canadian way imaginable: pure, innocent ignorance.
Canada is the friend that will smile and laugh as you completely eviscerate his manhood through taunts and pants-ings. Canada takes the ribbings in stride, without a hint of torment or sign of the sort of bottled-up-anger warnings that signal an impending emotional explosion. Which begs the question: Do they just not realize? Oh no. They realize. And they don't give a shit.
Canada's closing ceremonies made no effort to subvert stereotypes of moose and mounties and maple leaves, instead opting to have each of those dancing to what can only be described as Canadian Pop Music, accompanied by giant inflatable beavers and Michael Buble And His Incredible Quebecois Chorus Line. It takes a serious amount of nuts (Canadians love puns) to stand up in front of all of your "friends" and say, "You know all that shit you make fun of me for? Well here it is, bigger and more incredibly 'Canadian' than your piddly little international brains could ever dream of, because if there's one thing a Canadian knows how to do, it's laugh at himself."
Canada gave the world a treat by being as absolutely Canadian as it could possibly be, with no shame. The prospect of being a dancing maple leaf girl could have brought even the most desperate Broadway wannabe to ignominious tears, but I can only guess that there was a line of Newfoundlanders and Saskatchewanians ready to don a giant symbol of their country and flap around like a cocooning caterpillar, and good for them. They showed this cocky American that they could care less what I think about them and their one-road country, and for that, I salute them.
