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A couple times a week I enjoy seeing people demeaned for their personal style and, sometimes, "ethnic" features. I laugh at women portrayed as vapid, man-hungry gold diggers. I watch as "bachelorettes" compete to define their worth through the approval of (often worthless) men. I am entertained by a parade of ugly stereotypes: angry black women, dumb blondes, "spicy" Latinas and dusky, hyper-sexed, buffoonish lotharios. Yes. I watch reality TV.
And the popularity of the genre tells me you just might watch it, too. Admit it. You like a little guilty pleasure: an episode of What Not to Wear to soothe your mind after a hard week; maybe a little Real Housewives of... for a laugh; the sweet, sweet schadenfreude of consuming other folks' poor life choices. Just mindless fun, yes?
In her new book, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV [Seal Press, 2010], media literacy advocate Jennifer Pozner highlights the problem with "mindless" reality TV watching and examines how reality programming reinforces stereotypes and negatively impacts women, people of color and future generations.
Back in 2009, on the blog What Tami Said, I wrote about the Real Housewives of Atlanta (RHOA), the first entry in the ongoing Bravo reality franchise to feature a mostly-black cast and a series on which Pozner says the old Sapphire trope of black women as "rude, loud, malicious, stubborn and overbearing" thrives. I wrote:
To be sure, the women on RHOA are no role models. They are alternately bullying, narcissistic, back-stabbing, money-grubbing, cliquey, disloyal, arrogant, self-involved, willfully ignorant, poorly spoken, wasteful and tackily nouveau riche. The show features street fights, wig tugging, name dropping, pole dancing, sugar daddy-funded goodies, "baller" fetishizing, vanity business projects, cattiness, loud arguments in nice restaurants (and nice offices..and nice homes), and whole lot of "flossing" and faux importance. Whether editing or reality is to blame, the women read like gross caricatures of the bourgie set, garnished with a little Jerry Springer. Read more...
We are led to believe that the RHOA cameras are benignly capturing reality. And, if this is so, then perhaps there is some truth to the angry, black woman stereotype. But Reality Bites Back reveals that reality television is specifically cast and edited to court controversy and, thus, ratings. And show creators regularly leverage racist and classist tropes to do so. This presents a problem in an environment where race bias remains prevalent and positive representation of people of color by media is scarce. Reality characters become stand-ins for all people of color, all women.
The result: audience reactions heavily filtered through racial and gender bias. From my RHOA post:
A foray into online coverage, blogs and TV forums like the ones on Television Without Pity will uncover frequent use of the word "ghetto" and "hood," references to this or that housewife looking "like a man," hints that the housewives are high-classed "hos"--promiscuous, scheming she-devils hot on the trail of big money, snark about big booties, talk of how the women are embarrassing black folks. Hmmm...sounds kind of like the type of criticism often thrown at black women, even those who act demurely and properly. (Have you seen the stuff folks say about Michelle Obama and her daughters?)
And so, what do we do? We could deny the makers of reality TV the viewership they crave and the resulting ad dollars. More and more, I am inclined to do just that. But there should be room in life for "guilty pleasures"-decadent dishes, silly pop songs, romance novels, action films and, yes, trash TV. The key, Pozner says, is to consume media mindfully, arming ourselves against "cultural and consumer propaganda."
Reality Bites Back includes sections that offer exercises and resources to help viewers advocate for better television programming, but also to aid viewers in being skeptical vs. cynical viewers of reality TV.
"Reality TV has conditioned us to be more cynical, thinking ‘Of course this isn't real, but ...whatever,'" says Pozner. "But being skeptical is a state of perpetual questioning of messages and agendas and motivations of everyone from politicians and media producers. Skepticism is healthy. When we are skeptical of media we can resist. Be better citizens."
So, I can keep my Sunday night date with a certain popular reality program. And you needn't shy from the fun of trashy reality TV either. But we must all avoid viewing reality programming as mindless fun, allowing stereotypes about people of color, women and other marginalized groups to take root in our minds and communities.
Photo Credit: leunix
