Issue #337: Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory's Constant Companion is The Bachelorette
I love movies. I saw three this week, all from this year: The Watchers, Longlegs, and Land of Bad. They all had their high points, but you might have a hard time guessing the one I liked the least.
The Watchers, as a relative critical failure, is entirely unjustified. I am a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan, even films like Old (2021) and Knock at the Cabin (2023) — though that one could have been better. I haven’t seen The Happening (2008) or The Village (2004), so I skipped over his hack era. But his work with his daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan, on Servant (2019) has been fantastic. As a director, Ishana has picked up a lot from her father. The Watchers is sentimental, theological, and governed by the logic of the plot twist. The elder Shyamalan has, in many ways, created a narrative logic that is plastic enough to occasion surprise but rigid in its outer limits. Within that formal framework, there is room to play. Where Ishana outshines her father is with the symbolic logic that is somewhat divorced from the plot twist. The Watchers is about the gaze, mirror images, and doubles — fodder for psychoanalytic theory. But I read the movie from a more distant vantage point. Ishana is like a forger of high end paintings in the way she emulates her father, but a master in her own right by bringing something new to a familiar aesthetic.
I won’t bury the lede anymore, I didn’t like Longlegs very much. It’s just an okay movie. I enjoyed the beginning a great deal, hated the middle, and was very ambivalent about the ending. The explanation through exposition was a little much. Osgood Perkins is just not that guy. And this is far from one of Cage’s best performances. He was just in Dream Scenario last year for god’s sake.
Land of Bad, from what I have seen, has failed to sustain much criticism for being a jingoistic military advertisement shooting gallery movie. So let me take the opportunity to condemn it for its ideological orientation. There were so many moments that just made me sick to my stomach. People get blown to smithereens with all the gravitas of concert pyrotechnics. It’s all the more frustrating as the film begins with a clearly Conrad (and Coppola) inflected philosophical debate about war’s “barbaric nature.”
The movie doesn’t deliver at all on the promise of that initial venture into the state of exception, but damn if it wasn’t thrilling. Because the gunplay in the movie is very well choreographed and exciting, it’s all the more galling. In the end, file this under horrifically offensive movies I really liked. William Eubank has a great eye, having enjoyed his work in Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021) and The Signal (2014). I’m just very surprised Letterboxd hasn’t been lighting this one up and instead awarding it best movie to watch on the couch on TNT with your dad or whatever.
“Kayfabe” and Disavowal in Season Twenty-One of The Bachelorette
I’ve talked in the past about my periodic disappointment in The Bachelor (2002) and Bachelorette (2003) recap podcast, Game of Roses (2019). This past week’s recap episode, covering episode two of the twenty-first Bachelorette season, is one of the most egregious examples. The co-hosts, Lizzy Pace and Chad Kultgen, fail to even mention a historic moment in the history of the franchise. A simple chyron: “shouldn’t have mentioned he’s scared of spiders”:
In the moments that follow this chyron, the contestant Hakeem is forced to perform a photoshoot with a large spider. The implication of the title card is clear: the producers have chosen to pair him with a spider because he disclosed his fear of spiders. Even before my days of being a Game of Roses listener, I have always understood reality TV at large to have a torturous component to its participants to the end of occasioning relief or schadenfreude or both in its audience.
The Game of Roses hosts have a sense of this too, particularly in The Bachelor franchise. Insofar as they function as strategic guides or advisors for Bachelor/ette contestants in their podcast, they offer this advice consistently: “don’t tell the producers your fears — they’ll use them against you.”
I don’t mean to be uncharitable or antagonistic to the hosts of Game of Roses, who have revolutionized not only the reception but the production of The Bachelor franchise. Their opportunity to discuss this chyron is one that’s painful for me to see them pass on because, in my view, they are the cause. Their (mostly) rigorous analysis of the “gameplay” of The Bachelorette and keen understanding of the obscured circumstances underlying the show’s production requires production to respond to it. But The Bachelorette adopting an ironic attitude toward the artifice inherent in reality show production is also antagonistic to Kultgen and Pace’s brand of close reading. If the production of the show displays what Kultgen and Pace seek to reveal through careful examination, their discursive critical space shrinks. They have less to talk about. Nonetheless, it seems to me that this chyron presents an opportunity. If it is indeed a salvo directed at Game of Roses, or even an acknowledgement of what they have long argued, it demands a response. Or, at the very least, some self-congratulation.
What the duo did discuss extensively in the recap and the subsequent “This Week In Bachelor Nation” episode is a contentious conversation between two contestants, Devin and Aaron. In the wake of a group date where the two rubbed each other the wrong way, Aaron sits down with Devin to mock and frustrate him in the guise of patronizing concern. He gives Devin a book that he claims belongs to him and that he has read, Principles for Self-Growth by Dr. Brandon O. Conner
If you look at the image above from the episode, there are a couple reasons you might assume that Aaron is lying. It seems pretty difficult to me to read a book that doesn’t exist. The issues Game of Roses covered is the mismatch between the slip cover (yellow) and the book itself (red) which is unusual, though not impossible. More egregious, and the issue to Kultgen and Pace that seemed to establish beyond the shadow of a doubt that the book is fake, is the spelling error on the spine. If you look, despite the title of the book being Principles for Self-Growth, the spine says “Priciples” with no “n.” Kultgen and Pace also searched for any record of the book, of which their is none — no social media posts, no createspace Amazon listing, no nothing. There is, in fact, no indication that the author exists, which to me is not very surprising. “Brandon O. Conner” is a very bizarre name, with the “O” as middle initial rather than as part of the surname, as with O’Conner. I can only think of the most famous person with O. as their middle initial, David O. Selznick, who famously did not have a middle name and simply added the middle initial to distinguish himself from an uncle.
Hakeem’s chyron and the fake book, provided by producers to sow chaos, are underwritten by the same kind of logic for the minds behind The Bachelorette. The producers can make it obvious elements of the show are controlled, constructed, or downright mean spirited if the result is good TV. Most people won’t care about these details, and those that pick up on them will find them funny or interesting. In the July 19th “This Week In Bachelor Nation” (TWIBN), Kultgen likened the use of the fake book to build drama (still ignoring the chyron) to the WWF “Attitude Era,” from 1997 to 2002. Kultgen specifically references a promo from Vince McMahon where McMahon describes wrestling as “sports entertainment,” doing away with the idea of “kayfabe.”
In the promo, McMahon talks about the wide range of influences for the writing of wrestling storylines, including “soap operas … music videos … daytime talk shows … cartoons … sitcoms … and other widely accepted forms of television entertainment.” He goes on to say, “you the audience are, quite frankly, tired of having your intelligence insulted,” and all but explicitly says wrestling has predetermined, scripted plots. Kultgen thinks such an admission on the part of The Bachelorette would both improve the show and is necessary for an audience that has, in his view, become more and more aware of the artifice and producer involvement in The Bachelor/ette. Pace disagrees with him, noting that the vast majority of viewers do not watch the show as closely as the two of them. Likewise, while the self-aware camp of The Bachelor/ette has almost always been a part of the show, it is only on a modest upswing. We are far from the level of self-evident absurdity or paradigm shifting characteristic of the WWF’s Attitude rebrand.
Kultgen’s read on The Bachelorette and its fans aren’t quite right. In addition to failing to recognize the different disposition between Bachelorette and pro wrestling fans, he does not see the way in which things like a fake book or a chyron that admits producers use contestants’ fears to terrify them on screen might affirm or even create the belief that The Bachelorette is real. To understand how these self-aware elements of the show function in this way, one should turn to the Lacanian idea of disavowal.
In Alenka Zupančič’s titular book, published last month, she describes disavowal as follows:
Octave Mannoni has provided the most concise formula [for disavowal]: ‘I know well, but all the same….’ As is clear from this formula, disavowal differs from denial; it doesn’t deny facts but gladly announces knowing all about them, and then goes on as before … [D]isavowal … sustains some belief by means of ardently proclaiming the knowledge of the opposite[.] (1)
While I’m not really equipped to talk about the relationship of disavowal to pro wrestling and the “insulting of one’s intelligence” McMahon describes as the result of maintaining kayfabe in his ad read for WWF, The Bachelorette is clearly counting on this psychic mechanism to maintain the illusion of its text. It has already taken hold for a franchise that is nothing but the competition for a career in social media influencing yet still commands gossip column line items about the status of relationships that occur as a result of the show. In fact, The Bachelorette producers can continue pushing the envelope of absurdity to the end of increasing the viewing audience’s belief in the reality of the love depicted on screen. The belief in the process of The Bachelorette cannot emerge until the illusion of its sincerity is broken.
To illustrate this point, Zupančič turns to an example from Mannoni describing an episode “from the autobiography of the Hopi Indian chief Don Talayesva” (25). In the autobiography, Talayesva describes his belief in Katcinas, who were in fact his father and uncles for the purposes of ceremonial enactment. Zupančič says of Talayesva’s account, “when presented with the fact that the dancers that children were told were Katcinas are in truth their fathers and uncles wearing masks – at that point he started to believe in the magical presence of Katcinas” (25). This is the beginning of the setting in of disavowal, “a traumatizing blow.” Zupančič describes how this “traumatizing blow” is a structural necessity for how a society (or entertainment franchise) might utilize disavowal to simultaneously entertain and implicitly deceive:
[T]his traumatic experience functions in fact as the condition of our belief in (social) institutions. If children had not been deliberately misled and systematically encouraged to believe that the Katcinas existed and danced in pueblos, they would also have been spared the traumatic disappointment of discovering that the Katcians were in fact their fathers and uncles. In other words, in this case we can see that, socially speaking, traumatic experiences are often deliberately induced (in a controlled environment) in order to make institutions and belief in them work. Rituals of ‘initiation’ are usually just that: almost never without a certain traumatic dimension, such rituals aim to reinforce institutions that they seemingly undermine by their extra-normativity. (27)
Zupančič also uses military service and the hazing within a fraternity or sorority as examples of such traumatizing blows that occasion belief in a social institution that is less than it promises to be. She goes on to make the crucial distinction between the lack of knowledge of the children before they saw what was behind the masks of the Katcinas and the possession of knowledge that transforms deception into belief through disavowal (long quote ahead… but Zupančič is the GOAT):
Belief does not exist before knowledge and its possibly traumatic aspect, but the latter is a condition for the establishment of belief, and belief comes after or at the same time as knowledge. In this respect, too, the case of Talayesva is instructive. It would be a mistake to say that before their initiation the Hopi children naïvely believed in the spirits of Katcinas. No, they were objectively deceived. They didn’t know any better – the phrase is very appropriate here. They believed what they could see, what they could hear, and what they were told by knowing adults (that is to say, by the authorities). In short, it is not that in their naïve credulity they believed some crazy, unbelievable, fairy-tale story: this story was presented to them (by adults) as plausible and objectively true – a lot of effort was put into it. In fact, they only start to believe in the fairy-tale story after knowledge intervenes: from that point on, they start to believe in the mystical, invisible presence of spirits. The case thus nicely reminds us that belief is strictly correlative to knowledge and is established along with it, even if at a distance from it. As a form of disavowal, this belief requires the disclosure of truth; it requires knowledge and its associated blow as its inner condition. This is precisely why – and this is crucial – this belief is resistant to knowledge: knowledge cannot be the remedy for disavowal. The emphasis on ‘I know well’ cannot dissolve the ‘but all the same’, since ‘the sole reason for the “but all the same” is the “I know well”.’ (29)
To relate this to the self-aware turn in this season of The Bachelorette is trivial. Instead of dissolving a belief in the authenticity of “the process,” the knowledge of “the process’s” falsity is in fact what produces this belief. Up until recently, The Bachelor franchise has taken every effort to deceive its audience regarding the motives of its participants and the involvement of the producers. However, by revealing this deception, the show cultivates an even greater commitment from the audience to the ostensible reality. In relieving the audience of the necessity of naïveté (Zupančič 18), The Bachelor producers cause belief to emerge through the disavowal of their interference and motivation.
These interesting, seemingly revelatory moments in The Bachelorette do not necessitate a breaking of the audience’s suspension of disbelief from the producers. Instead, they challenge the class of commentariat that makes their money revealing the supposed secrets of the show’s productions. As those secrets move from closed to open and transform from deception to inside joke, the “conspiracy town” of Game of Roses becomes the metropole of Bachelor fandom — and the producers pay for the trip. To include the audience in The Bachelorette’s artifice, rather than exclude them, means the emergence of a deep belief in the authenticity of the supposed love on the screen. It is the appeal of a suspicious critical disposition that is endangered by these creative decisions, not the “kayfabe” of The Bachelor.
Evo 2024 Scene Report
Once again, the Evolution Championship Series has delivered an entertaining spectacle. Since Evo’s acquisition by Sony (under the “Playstation Tournaments” banner), I have been impressed by how the Evo team has maintained the grassroots feel of the event. The most important element of Evo, in my view, is its open bracket format. There are no qualifiers or invites. Anyone can enter and play, which is reflective of the DIY ethos that underwrites the fighting game community.
As a brand, Evo has really leaned into its grassroots history. Frankly, I assumed that corporate ownership and this kind of approach to tournament operation and broadcast were completely incompatible. I am happy to say I have, so far, been proven wrong by the new Evo stewards. In fact, the only thing Sony has done is bring in some cringe inducing product placement (something that is different in degree, not kind, to sponsors of the FGC’s past) and codified some of the apocryphal legends of FGC history. Next year, Sony will put on the first annual Evo Awards, which I hope will codify epithets like the “Five Gods.”
Sony has also turned up the “content creation” arm of Evo, with well produced videos attempting to turn well known fighting game players into internet personalities, documenting tournament history, and allowing players to reminisce about old rivalries and iconic matches. Evo as an event also benefits from this expanded purview of the brand. This year, they put on a number of entertaining distractions, like a live gameshow of “FGC Feud.”
This was a riot. There were also exciting announcements, like that of SVC Chaos (2003) which is now available as a re-release for modern consoles.
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (1999) made its return to the Evo main stage in one of my favorite events of the weekend. It’s always funny watching people whiff normals endlessly to build meter in this game. MOV, another fighting game legend, took home the Evo trophy — the only gap in his resume of unprecedented success in the game since its release.
But my favorite competitor was the Hugo player, Hayao, who entertained from pools til the top six.
Another fun crossover for me was watching some streams from RDC World, the sketch comedy masters who attended the event as competitors. Following up from some arcane subplot from their video game streams that I had no idea about, Mark Phillips faced down Tekken 8 (2024) player Afrosenju in a first to seven exhibition match. Apparently, the last time they played, Afrosenju had Phillips’s number. This time… well… it’s worth scrubbing through.
It’s nice to see what looks like, for the moment, sustainable growth for the FGC. There are no more crazy esports hail marys, no more over the top attempts to celebritize guys who are only as good as their last tournament results. Just a lot of Chipotle commercials. Hell, even the commercials aren’t so bad. I got a laugh out of one starring commentator Majin Obama in the style of late night “as seen on TV” ads.
Not a bad way to spend a part of my weekend. After nearly two decades of spectating, maybe I’ll actually go next year and see that Marvel vs. Capcom 4 announcement in person.
Weekly Reading List
I just have tunes this week.
Until next time.