Jenn Tran Gets A Nightmare
There's no business like show business
No one is surprised that The Bachelor and its spin-offs as media entertainment can be cutthroat or deceptive.
None of us, sitting with our mouths open and salty popcorn fingers, are confused as to what this is.
This is a business of attention. We are offered hot people in cool places sucking each other’s faces off. We are offered edited cuts of insipid dates where favorite colors and carefully placed traumas are laid down on the table where no one is touching the food.
We are aware that everything is placement and framing. The engagement rings are one big ad. The locations are one big ad. The make-up products are one big ad. We are being sold from start to finish, from promotional shot one announcing the season to the promotional plug at the reunion where the next big show is touted.
The marriage market and the millions upon millions spent in the wedding economy are part of all our lives. What we are sold as to what is necessary or right for engagement or marriage - whether we watch tv or not- are affected by productions like the Bachelor. We know that underneath the debates about “quiet luxury flowers”, how much money an engagement ring SHOULD cost, or if it’s better to use cloth or paper napkin the real thing at the end of the day is the mutually respectful and loving relationship between two committed people.
And yet. We wouldn’t keep watching the mass produced shows about those relationships if there wasn’t a seductive trade. ABC offers the contestants and the lead a chance at a media career, attention, and a hot date that could be something more. The contestants give up a measure of privacy and time to become edited characters in the Bachelor universe who get treated to luxury trips.
This game show has two ways to win. As the Game of Roses Podcast points out, you win a ring or a crown. You either end up engaged to a gorgeous person you had a once-in-a-lifetime dating experience (ring) with OR you end up the lead of the next show (crown). Both of the options open doors to you becoming an independent brand liaison where you partner with big companies for big bucks.
Reality TV is a form of mass socialization, in that millions of people who watch or know people who watch are primed and shown a carefully edited story. That story either challenges or confirms existing ideas about who is a worthy bride, who is beautiful, and whose emotional life matters. When we put a multi million dollar production into place and choose where to point cameras, we are telling people this matters and is worth your attention. Even if it is entertainment, casting choices reinforce or expand ideas about who is worth our free time and admiration.
In the Bachelor universe, it is hot people! Mostly white people! Very thin people! Super young people! People who do not need aids or have health complications! The Bachelor promises for our entertainment the shiniest and “deserving”. And to some extent, this is understandable from a marketing perspective. Our eyes are caught by beauty. Our attention lingers on people who make our jaws drop. The rarity and accumulation of shine in one place makes one pause. The issue in the past is that the franchise barely considered looking for beauty outside one expression of it (whiteness) and in so doing reinforced this idea that the best girls are the lighter ones.
So of course it was a big deal when Jenn Tran (the first Asian American Bachelorette) burst onto the scene following a handful of other “firsts” for the show. Asian American women in American media have been intentionally constrained to roles and archetypes that play into the domination fantasies of men who are considered “White” in America. This is convenient because as a trope and a stereotype, it justified White American men’s treatment of Asian immigrants and native women they met during American military campaigns. It dehumanized these women enough to excuse the lack of respect and morality shown to them or their bodies.
But Jenn Tran was not given a love story, but a casting nightmare. Several men on Jenn’s season hoped for the chance to date the sweet, Midwestern beauty Daisy or the sultry Maria Georgas. They were shocked to step out of the limo and see Jenn. The rumor swirling is that Jenn’s men were a recycled cast of people who were not as enthused to specifically date and compete for her hand in marriage. This set Jenn up to babysit many people simply trying to up their Instagram following. As Reality TV ratings spike over tension and drama, this wrinkle could have just been shrugged off as a potential train wreck to rack in more viewers. Upon closer inspection, Devin can be seen angling to get close enough to the end to become the next Bachelor. He was never here for the ring! Just the crown! His ghosting of her, abrupt change in manner, and subsequent dumping of Jenn on a 15-minute phone call was the nail in the coffin.
Jenn Tran was yet another side character Asian female to be used and discarded in an industry famous for using and discarding women. Unlike her White counterparts, Jenn is statistically likely to walk away with fewer partnerships and business opportunities. She was the stepping stone for her men to be launched into the social circle of the White contestants, such as Devin on camera infamously partying days after his failed engagement.
Now betrayal and heartbreak are part and parcel of the Bachelor show and Reality TV in general, but the handling of it was not. Jenn’s finale was a traumatic sprint to promote the next show, with no actual questions of substance. In the past, when a young beauty was betrayed, the show would camp out on that heartbreak. They would rehash and provide ample opportunity to frame the finale as a setup for the heartbroken girl to relaunch into the world. This finale however was very much giving THANK YOU VICTIMS YOU CAN GO NOW from the incisive comedy The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt.
Jenn Tran was aware that she was signing up to be on television. She gambled on an invitation to have an experience that has panned out well for other women. What has been pointed out by many fans is that the women of color on this show are used to prop up the franchise against claims of racism momentarily and then routinely left on their own to field badly screened cast members. This latest season has been another reminder of how easy it is to place a woman of color atop an inherently lazy or racist organization and then shrug when it doesn’t work out. There was no reason to cast men who struggled to see themselves “with an Asian woman”.
Seeing Jenn in tears and angry on stage while she was hurried through her interviews and patted on the head for being “empowered” was a very clear handwashing of the season, as the script and the show did not integrate the drama or puzzling ghosting that well into the evening’s edit. This made it look like Jenn’s experience was an unfortunate bump in the road as opposed to a very real and confusing experience producers did not support or prep her for honestly. The abuse allegations and competing stories between why frontrunner Marcus dropped out or was dumped show a troubling lack of care for their lead as well.
Do the horrified audiences online believe that ABC producers purposely tanked their first Asian American lead? No. That’s not how subtle bias or prejudice or social narratives work. Was there a lack of thought and also a sidelining of this young Asian woman’s experience to some degree? Yes. Was anyone on the team gaming out what could be particularly harmful for Jenn to navigate? Doesn’t look so.
As someone who grew up without this kind of media but picked up on the ways the American entertainment media primed and prepared generations to approach dating and each other, this lack of care matters. Can it be compared to an entire families being wiped out in Gaza? Does it compare to what happened when Officer Danny Torres abused his police powers to detain Tyreek Hill? No of course not. But that’s not the question we ask when we look at what message a piece of media broadcast and watched by millions of people.
I fear that when we look at media opportunities like the Bachelor, the cameras and am the attention look the same. It’s same set, the same Neil Lane Diamonds, and the same audience. But that audience doesn’t see every woman the same way. And neither does the industry that conditioned those audiences.
