Rock of Love or rock of my adolescence?
Why one objectively bad show has a special place in my heart.
VH1’s original show, Rock of Love (starring Bret Michaels of the 1980’s band Poison), is having a bit of a cultural resurgence.
Lara Marie Schoenhals is currently recapping the first season for her podcast SUP, and Vice (much to my delight) published a ‘where are they now’-style piece last February about iconic Season 1 castmates Lacey Sculls and Heather Chadwell. I’ve noticed a slew of recent posts about the show in several of my interest-based Facebook groups. While I was tempted to attribute the renewed interest to a generalized nostalgia for simpler times like 2007, it’s likely because Michaels was the banana on Masked Singer back in April. (If you’re wondering, he looks exactly the same as he did in Seasons 1-3, but with some strategically placed facial hair.)
This recent coverage has pulled the show out from the ether and dusted it off, like so much change under the couch cushions of my brain, and I have been forced to acknowledge the fact that I really liked Rock of Love when it aired. After a full Season 1 rewatch over the last 7 days, it turns out I still do.
Rock of Love came out when I was 17 years old, working as a hostess at a seafood restaurant and genuinely crushing on a guy in his mid-twenties who rode a motorcycle and lived in an apartment above his parents, walls yellowed from Marlboros. I was going through a stage many suburban teens share in which leather, cigarettes, and hot pink under-dyed hair seem like a good idea. Reality TV was new then, and it had the sort of ethical connotations applied to it that we now reserve for more toxic forms of social media, like Instagram.
As the audience, we asked ourselves earnest questions like, is it right to do this to people? Is this real? What is her motivation for being here? Is she here for Bret?
I wasn’t jaded on the idea of ‘cast as a product’ yet. People were just starting to truly harness the power of the attention economy. The first iPhone had barely come out. The Apprentice was on for a sixth season. There was a thin veneer of suspended disbelief back then (inaccessible to me now, even as Love Island UK produced a married couple in 2016) that maybe Michaels would ride off into the sunset with one of these girls, that maybe he would have genuine feelings for a contestant and choose her as his real life girlfriend.
This media innocence, combined with being 17, made it possible for me to see some kind of dirty-penny appeal in washed up Michaels (especially if I put myself in the clear plastic kitten heels of the contestants, who seemed at least partially into him and here for the whole antiquated American rocker vibe). Not knowing anyone like them at the time, it was easy for me to imagine that in their hierarchy of eligible bachelors, he was something of a prize. I knew he was at least rich. Now, I’m forced to confront what should have been obvious to me then, that most of these women were far too good for him (Jes, the winner of Season 1, knew. She dumped Michaels right after the finale).
Like most things from my teen-hood, Rock of Love has not aged well. Even in 2007, the whole idea of a house full of girls trying out for one man’s attention was still kind of raunchy. The idea that they would compete for a has-been (and no cash prize) made it even raunchier. Going on team dates where 2-3 girls would share Michaels’ attention, even dutifully waiting as he and another contestant swapped spit, added new levels of debasement to the whole experiment. I’m not arguing that it ever was not trash. It’s just the kind I have a taste for, and I have to live with that.
Another problem remembering this show brings up is forcing me to admit that I don’t think Michaels comes across that badly (besides for, well, agreeing to do the show in the first place). Other than his extreme embrace of heteronormativity, and the kind of bodily objectification of women that defined major network media of the early aughts, he seems remarkably present. At the end of each episode, he presents a Backstage Pass for the women who are going to ‘stay in the house, and continue to rock his world’.
“It seems like he’s been pretty straightforward so far,” my boyfriend says one night before bed, semi-implicated in a couple episodes of my rewatch. I nod in agreement while reaching for my vaporizer. In the morning after making him iced coffee, I turn to him and ask: “Frank, will you stay in this house, and continue to rock my world?”
Given my bizarrely warm feelings for the show, it’s been difficult to read some of the takes first-time viewers are having. I find myself scrolling past new mentions of it on the blogs I read, ignoring the comments section, suddenly unwilling to hear valid criticism (usually citing misogyny, catfighting, “age gaps”, and general disgust with Michaels’ appearance). I feel like accepting the bias of the show is key to continuing down the road that is the Rock of Love viewing experience, otherwise, you just won’t get it. Of course it’s gross to watch a man make out with 15+ women in a single night. Of course it is kind of a joke (but not completely) that Michaels is considered an object of desire. Of course there has never been a worse dressed cast on the history of any VH1 program. But that is all part of the charm for me.