Man: Voyeuristic in Nature Essay

Curiosity makes everyone a voyeur and as the television program The Bachelor proves true, most viewers get more attracted with things that feed their eyes are rather that those that may feed their intellect. Mimi Avins’ essay entitled The Bachelor, Silly, Sexist, and to Many, Irresistible” presents several reasons that explain what, in the program The Bachelor, has caught and hooked the eyes of avid viewers worldwide. The essay expresses Avins’ reaction to the high-rated reality television program of ABC, The Bachelor.

In Avins’ narration, she retold how Alex Michel, the handsome-looking supposed bachelor, had visited the families of two of his women namely Trista and Shannon. She explains how the program was possibly edited to manipulate the flow of the show, making it look as if Michel had a wonderful experience with Trista and her family in St. Louis Missouri while he had an awful time with Shannon and her family in Dallas, Texas. However, no matter how edited or how sham the program may seem, it still has an overwhelming number of viewers.

By merely using the intellect, it can be inferred that the said program distorts the romantic reality of courtship and falling in love because, instead of having guys flock towards a girl of their dreams, it is the girls who compete for the attention of the guy who they have just met. The program doesn’t reflect the friendship-courtship-marriage process of falling in love in real life, yet they call it “reality program”. Avin rationalizes and present reasons in her essay why the program still gains a high rating and one of those reason is the voyeuristic nature of man. But how really does the program extracts out the peeping Tom out of its viewers?

It is definitely agreeable when Avins expresses the strangeness of people peeking into the personal lives of men and women yet it is usual for people to get curious about what really happens between two people of opposite sex. This certain curiosity became a tool for the program to catch people’s attention because it gives viewers the license to invade other people’s privacy by letting viewers peek into the personal courtship of the persons in the program. The viewers get pleasure from being an audience to two individuals’ private conversations, and in that parts, the viewers play the voyeurs. They get entertained and amused by being privy to other person’s personal affairs. In short, curiosity makes the viewers a voyeur.

Merriam Webster Dictionary defines the word “voyeur” as a “prying observer who is usually seeking the sordid or the scandalous”. Luckily, what the program provides are the things that voyeurs want – the appalling images of two persons of opposite sex kissing, or the pretty dresses that the girls wore in order to attract their goal-bachelor. Whatever the viewers may see in the program that pleases them, for sure it is something that feeds their hunger for nasty and private matters that they don’t usually see while walking on the streets.

Moreover, according to Avins, “The Bachelor lets us see the sort of genetically blessed population.” By that, she means that the viewers see a set of 25 gorgeous looking girls and an ideal, handsome-looking man. Because all of these persons that can be seen on the program are pleasant in the eyes, we are, sort of, pleased to see them, like perfect creations moving around in a perfect world.

In this light, another concept of voyeurism can be extracted. For instance, if we replace the gorgeous women with normal-looking girls and turn the bachelor into an old ugly man, the popularity of the program would be expected to weaken because not all people would like to watch them. This may mean that most people get pleased more if what they are seeing are those pleasing to the eyes.

Generally, because everyone of us have the innate inclination to be ‘voyeurs’ and because the program The Bachelor gives us the freedom to see what our eyes are so longing to see, we naturally grab the opportunity that the program offers. Besides, the private conversations and interactions aren’t shown in the television just to be ignored.

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