Obviously, the people behind FOX television aren't stupid.
Obviously, they have a crowded roundtable of Harvard-educated, big-brained misogynists working full-time at excellent pay, coming up with hour after hour of hilarious and tender-hearted entertainment for the masses.
These people are probably not unaware of the cultural forces they combat. They must stroke their goatees, wondering, "How can we give this a spin for the feminists? How can we exploit the crass commodification of sex without coming right out and saying it?"
So some genius came up with Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? The concept's perfect: half beauty contest, half game show. The women--contestants--strip themselves of all personality, save what might appeal to a rich man. ("Well, you'll have to share my love of travel." "Well, you'll have to put up with my tendency to give spontaneous foot massages.") The result, for the viewer, is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope at a blurry image of America's Perfect Mate. She's white, thin, and longhaired; she's peppy; she's got a big ol' smile; and she doesn't want to give up her day job, but she still wants to take care of her man. What a surprise.
Still, I couldn't stop watching. Most people couldn't. "Like watching a train wreck," one correspondent posted to Slate's discussion group, the Fray. "You want to, but you just can't look away." Like most of FOX's "real" TV shows, Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? hinges on the viewer's incredulity. Who would actually want to find a wife this way? Who would put themselves up on the offering block?
Well, 50 all-American women would. Standing on the stage en masse, they looked like a marching squad, touting hopeful wholesomeness. Their answers to the "intimate" questions posed by FOX executives (who tailored the quizzes around the multi-millionaires' desires) hewed to wifely duty seasoned with sparkly independence. They were lovely commodities, offering long legs and witty repartee, an ingrained sense of duty, and an appropriate sense of humility. They twirled and they strutted; they sat like olives with toothpicks up their asses; they all smirked with identical self-consciousness when funny stories were told about them. Any man would want these women.
But these women didn't want just any man. They wanted a rich man. And they would humiliate themselves to get one. They had all answered the question, "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" with "I do," and they didn't care to know anything more about the man. The real question being asked, of course, is "Who wants a hefty divorce settlement?" In The New York Times, the show's creator denied that the women's motivation was money. "If they don't get along," he said, "it won't work no matter how much money is involved." Of course, they didn't call the show "Who Wants to Marry the Average Joe?"
And money is a delicious salve for love pangs. It could be argued that the women on FOX's show displayed the same kind of subversive feminism that manifested in Marilyn Monroe's classic How to Marry a Millionaire--the inverse big sister of the FOX show's nomenclature--but sadly, everyone who participated missed out on the ironic self-awareness that gave that movie its power. In How to Marry a Millionaire, Monroe's character gloats over the easy alchemy that turns her sexuality into gold. But Monroe shrewdly knew her targets, something the women on FOX weren't allowed. There was no open trade here, only an open stage that eerily recalled slave trading. The final contestants' attributes were added up; they were offered one brief moment to "speak from their hearts" (I kept praying for one of them to blurt, "What the hell am I doing?" and run away); and the shadowy man behind the gray wall made his choice.
When Rick Rockwell, Mr. Real Estate Multi-Millionaire and a rumored former stand-up comic, approached the Wife-with-the-Most-Value (who turned out to be poised, willowy, tanned blonde #5) and got down on his knee to propose to her, we were treated to the only real moment in the program: the look of abject terror that tore across the winner's face.
And no wonder--Rick Rockwell could've been anyone, and it turned out he was. Recent reports indicate that not only is Rick Rockwell not Rockwell's real name, but that he admitted to using the television show to further his career as a comic, that he had ties to FOX television that were not revealed, and that an ex-girlfriend had filed a restraining order against him.
Why did 50 desirable women evidently care about nothing else but their groom's chunky income? Why did everyone, including the show's producers, assume that if someone has money they must necessarily be of good character? The questions beg such complicated answers that we can only shrug. So desirable women want to humiliate themselves for security; so what? So a man's money is the most important thing about him; who cares?
It's as if feminism's muscular effort to tear everyone away from the swamp of stereotype has been met with a blank stare. It's no surprise, really, that feminism has utterly failed to change our basic understanding of the way love operates, but it's a little shocking to see this failure evidenced so palpably in young women. Nearly 23 million viewers, most of whom were young females, watched Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? The next day, the show's website was flooded with requests from women who wanted to be the next contestant.
It's no surprise that feminism has failed, because feminism is, at its heart, anti-capitalistic. It touts anti-materialist ideals of equality that flatten the hierarchy necessary to America's self-worth. It reveals the marriage contract's failure to meet its stipulations and tucks love back into a swell of legalese, with a motherly pat that makes politicians uncomfortable. Feminism asks you to share your toys.
And as any of the women on Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? could have told you, the one who dies with the most toys wins. Another statement that, here in our post-ironic, bull-market world, reads just like a good commercial.
