Money Isn't Everything

For nearly eight months, the nation has engaged in a sordid love affair. Although the romance has been undoubtedly strong and faithful, it has been eccentric and abnormal as well. Conversation abruptly ends whenever ABC closes the telephone lines. Visitation rights have been suspended so the nation can ogle Regis only three times a week. No matter what the complications or the concessions, however, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" has won sweetheart status across the nation.

Last Tuesday, however, the nation's once-passionate love affair with "Millionaire" went dry as television watchers found something bigger and better--or at least richer and seemingly illegal.

Fox Network debuted their new show "Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire?", and to the dismay of everyone in America toting a conscience, it was a huge success. More than 50 women paraded across the stage and introduced themselves by name and occupation. The group was then chiseled down to 10 contestants who participated in an interview with the show's hosts and strutted down the runway in seductively skimpy bathing suits. During the show's final half-hour, the five remaining contestants donned bridal gowns and a mysterious man behind a screen--of which the audience and the contestants knew only one thing: his monetary worth--chose one extraordinarily lucky gal to be his bride.

The mastermind behind this display of onscreen prostitution? A certain Fox executive named Mike Darnell. The bride? A Suzanne-Sommers-in-her-better-days nurse from Southern California. The groom? A cool, calm and collected real estate agent who's also--you guessed it--a multi-millionaire. The wedding song? Appropriately enough, Savage Garden's ballad "I knew I loved you (before I met you)."

Fox's defense? According to Darnell in a New York Times interview, "If you looked at these people at the end of the show, you could tell it was less about the money than it was about the relationship."

Yeah right.

The multi-millionaire and the nurse's first kiss--first embrace, first sign of intimacy--was the smooch that sealed the deal. His first words to her were "You are so beautiful." I, personally, would have asked how she got to be so pathetic. National Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland said to the New York Times, "It took something like this to make the Miss America pageant look good to me. At least with the Miss America pageant, you get scholarship money and the guarantee of a yearlong run."

The ordeal reminded me a bit of a movie from the early '90s, Muriel's Wedding. Muriel, a pathetic and overweight Abba-loving Aussie, weds a handsome Olympic swimmer she does not know so that the Olympic committee can consider him an Australian for competition. One of the movie's taglines claims, "She's not just getting married, she's getting even." Muriel was ostensibly rebelling against the ridicule and banter she endured as a lonely single woman. The film evoked pity and sympathy from audiences across the globe.

But "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" missed that mark completely. The show combines one of our worst characteristics--our ever-lasting pursuit of monetary success--with one of our most respectable social institutions--marriage. The "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" web-site beckons to only two types of people. The right side of the screen summons anyone who wants to marry a multi-millionaire and the left side of the screen gestures to anyone who already is a multi-millionaire. Anyone who doesn't have any dollar bills to throw around or possesses enough ethics to prevent themselves from picking the Franklins off the ground need not apply.

The marriage, of course, is supposedly all for show and it can be annulled as soon as the bride and groom place their John Hancocks on the dotted line. (Why else would Fox broadcast the show from Last Vegas, Nevada?) Regardless whether the bride and groom fulfill their vows "to love each other forever," both have signed a standard prenuptial agreement and the bride will walk away with nothing less than a two-week vacation (the honeymoon), an Isuzu Trooper and a $35,000 diamond ring.

According to television ratings, "Who Wants to Sell Their Soul?" gained audience momentum as the night wore on. Apparently the show was especially popular with teenage girls and young women viewers. I could only hope that these women shared my motivations for watching the show; that their confusion and disgust that someone would marry a person they knew nothing about except the size of his stock portfolio prevented them from tearing their eyes away from the screen.

More disappointing than the high ratings was the fact that the Fox web site www.whowantstomarry.com crashed on Wednesday afternoon because of the number of requests from women to be on the next edition of "Multimillionaire."

But perhaps recent developments will halt this fever for amoral marriages. According to the New York Times, last week's groom, Rick Rockwell, was the subject of a 1991 temporary restraining order after a woman filed a petition saying Mr. Rockwell had threatened her life after she broke off her engagement to him.

Ironic, isn't it? The same man who received an avalanche of requests to say "I do" allegedly threatened another woman for her unwillingness to say the exact same words.

Last week, Fox executives assured the New York Times that they had done a thorough background check on Rick Rockwell to make sure that he was in fact worth the millions of dollars that he claimed he was worth. Even Fox realized the superficiality of their background search in light of this new discovery, and have cancelled the next showing of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?"

Let's hope Fox divorces itself from the show for good.

Jordana R. Lewis '02, a Crimson editor, is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House.