Oxygen Channel to
Stop All My Babies’ Mamas From Airing
A few weeks ago, the Oxygen channel made an executive
decision to cancel the TV special All My
Babies’ Mamas after facing strong opposition from an online petition from
Change.org and several other organizations throughout the country. All My Babies’ Mamas was a TV special
(although many specials turn into a series) set to air this spring about an
African American man and his 11 children with 10 different women. Opposition
felt the show would only perpetuate a stereotype of “Black men and women as hyper-sexual
and unfit parents” (colorofchange.org), which often times results in negative,
real world repercussions.
After reading this article from The New York Times and
researching a little more on the views of other organizations, I was reminded
of the article we read by Henry Giroux, Rewriting
the Discourse of Racial Identity: Towards a Pedagogy and Politics of Whiteness
in which he discusses the racial stereotypes in two films – Dangerous Minds and
Suture. While the story lines in these films are different from this reality TV
series, I think it brings up interesting points about the media’s
representation of different racial stereotypes that perpetuate racist
viewpoints in today’s society. Even though Giroux is speaking about students, I
think it applies to everyone when he states, “The electronic media –
television, movies, music, and news – have become powerful pedagogical forces,
veritable teaching machines in shaping the social imaginations of students in
terms of how they view themselves, others, and the larger society” (301).
In an age of reality TV – from All My Babies’ Mamas to Jersey
Shore and Honey Boo Boo, these shows may be created to be funny and make money,
but I believe they have the ability to, like colorofchange.org said, enable these
stereotypes that result in harmful, real world consequences for those not
associated with these shows. What do you think?
What, indeed, an exceptionally good example you chose! The "genre" of the reality show hits dead-on, exemplifies the mode of the hyperreal as what, outside of it, the "actual" social world around it, is indeed "real"; by ascribing unto itself a constructed reality, which is just that: constructed, simulated.
ReplyDelete"Performance" in the mass media needs to be viewed as:
1. Being multiplied among wide audiences, and
2. A constructed ‘unreality’ which points toward the Real of our everyday performances.
In the first case the analysis is obvious: consistently normalized performances (race, gender, class, ethnicity)legitimize as "true" those modes of behavior, and most importantly train the audiences to simulate, train on, and internalize those performative identities; thus replicating the simulacra (that is, without a credible point of reference).
Eco (1983) in Travels in Hyperreality, says that the simulacrum not only produces illusion, but "stimulates demand for it" (p. 44). Furthermore, in his media criticism, Baudrillard’s metaphor of Disneyland may well be employed: the constructed realm of fantasy exists "to imply that the rest of the world is real." (1994, p. 12)
The obviously "unreal" performances of characters in reality television -and on film- need to be examined especially for their significant role of convincing the audiences, the "apathetic observer", that their own social performances are "real", thus providing them the "most foundational Other" to concretize all identities.
Deleuze's analysis of Plato's skepticism of the media, and the view of the Platonic Cave as an exemplar of the notion of simulacrum, as well as the very good article on Sara Palin, are very helpful here.
The reason why many of these reality television shows is such a success is because they fascinate us (as in the general population that has the time and money to watch television, a certain class and group unto itself); these people live different lives than we do, and we are fascinated and entertained to see how people live differently than we do. Although I understand the value of entertaining television, it often does come at a price to the social and cultural groups that are depicted.
ReplyDeleteThe immensely successful MTV show Jersey Shore, which followed young Italian-American men and women living and partying in the Jersey Shore, earned criticism from Italian-American groups for negatively depicting their culture and people (one story: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/mtv-show-jersey-shore-angers-italian-american-groups/story?id=9292815). Although this criticism earned some coverage in the media, the huge international success of the show triumphed and the show has continued for six seasons. Despite the coverage of the criticism decreasing in the media, I also believe that these people suffer real-life consequences as a result of the stereotypes promoted by the television shows. Although I do not know of a personal example, I could imagine a situation in which a young Italian-American woman, who fits the physical attributes of her culture impersonated by the actors on Jersey Shore, applies for a corporate position in San Francisco. As soon as she mentions that she is from New Jersey, the interviewer could automatically think of the drunk, irresponsible characters on Jersey Shore and project those characteristics on this young woman, and possibly not offer her a position because they think of her that way as well. This situation could be applied to many television shows which depict a certain group, and definitely has the possibility to continually negatively impact the groups long after the show is finished.
I would agree with your opinion. Unfortunately, “Audience ratings manipulate everything” has become latent rules nowadays. Media, usually being considered as a gatekeeper, sometimes will inevitably falls into a dilemma: survive (attract audiences’ attention) or die (fail to bring up topics so that lose the attention). Since we are always curious about new things, like a TV series with diverse cultural backgrounds and exotic stories will absolutely attract our focus. It also reminds me of culture backflow we talked about in Christof’s class. Culture backflow has been mentioned quite often by “periphery countries”, which believe that their culture has affected “dominant countries” to some extent through literature, TV series, movies and music. However, as I see it, culture backflow is a fairy tale or a dream that the dominant made to blind the periphery. Using Chinese movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as an example, there are two reasons for it becoming a masterpiece that has been welcomed by the western world: first, Chinese characters with western value. Second, exotic martial arts. For the value, the periphery should follow the dominant’s preference to rebuild or refurbish some traditional values. For the martial arts, I would like to say that it is a kind of stereotype enforced by the western culture since whenever it comes to fights or martial arts in Hollywood’s movies, Chinese actors/actresses come out, and only martial arts stars can get a seat from Hollywood. Such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Lee and Jay Chou. In a word, Hollywood/western/the dominant never care about the normal and ordinary life of Chinese/the periphery/other cultures because they are boring.
ReplyDeleteMedia should concern the influence of transmitting information but according to the trend, it is hard for them to stop.