Posted on 01/12/2013 9:42:41 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
It's official. Reality-television executives have lost their minds. The reality-TV shows featuring mostly black casts debuting in 2013 are setting back images of black folks in television at least 60 years.
While critics are obsessed with the controversial film Django Unchained, there is a movement taking place in reality television that has elevated black buffoonery to the highest level possible while diminishing black culture to the lowest level in recent memory. The images of blacks on TLC's reality shows Best Funeral Ever and The Sisterhood and Oxygen's All My Babies' Mamas are appalling. They are also reminiscent more of images of blacks in film at the turn of the last century than of blacks in television during the last 60 years.
While we're spending hours upon hours debating one film on social networks and in the media, tomfoolery is raging on TLC and Oxygen in the form of reality-television programming that has little to no entertainment value and is more exploitative than any Tarantino film could ever be. As my late grandmother would say, we are "focused on the wrong thing." The images of blacks as buffoons, jezebels, coons and Aunt Jemimas are circulating through our living rooms on a daily onslaught in the form of reality-TV promos, reruns and marathons.
As if trying to survive the damage done to our televisual images by Real Housewives of Atlanta, Basketball Wives and Love and Hip Hop franchises isn't enough to manage, here comes a slew of shows that would make the "ladies" of those shows gasp and swoon...
(Excerpt) Read more at theroot.com ...
Shameful crap. I don’t know anyone who watches so-called reality TV.
Ever seen a black criminal on any of the Law and Order shows?
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There will be complaints now of not hiring enough minorities. Can’t win.
Next they need to make ebonics the official language of the black community, that should help seal the deal.
Many years ago mega millionaire Bill Cosby purchased all the
Amos and Andy TV shows from the early 1950s in order to keep
them from being shown. They were considered an embarassment
and an affront to African-Americans. Well, Mr Bill, what do you
have to say about this?
Reality hurts doesnt it. Anyone remember the huckstables? Not many families in the hood could relate because it wasnt REALITY. Author knows the truth is about to surface, only we knew this many years ago. The propaganda networks at the time portrayed and fed us the typical black family in a white setting as the norm. Meanwhile the democrates and thier high paid overlords in the hood, the NAACP and the congressional black caucus reside over the destruction of the black family and they purposley blame it in the republicans the rich and the racists in society.
Jerry Springer?
Jersey Shore?
Still waiting for the name Chlamydia. Seriously. I remember a U of OK running back called “Rotney”. Yep.
Not to mention the archaic beliefs of the nation of islam. Those folks are consumed with hatred of other races and everything is race based to them.
Aaron McGruder was right all along.
What the writer doesn’t acknowledge is who watches these shows and why they are popular enough for the networks to produce and run them.
You know the answer to this is that blacks are the majority audience or we’d be hearing to the contrary.
Like most ‘reality’ TV there seems to be an element of viewers feeling better about themselves and their own shortcomings and situations by watching those who appear to be more ridiculous or more poorly managing their lives. I’d imagine there’s the same demand in American black culture that there seems to be in American white culture, though perhaps the circumstances have to be more extreme to have the same effect.
Until we are able to answer the issue of least-common-denominator in our popular culture generally, I don’t see where it’s likely to be resolved in black popular culture specifically.
You are correct, sir!
The natural destination of all racial/ethnic/regional stereotypes is precisely in this area of Reality TV.
Even the (very) few shows that still manage to hang on to
an ever-diminishing sense of “reality” and interest, like
Pawn Stars, American Restoration, and American Pickers have gotten too cutesy and stagey, with contrived situations of tension and backbiting between and among all the principal players, just to heighten
the “interest” in the show. As time goes on , even the tolerably “normal” characters in the less offensive shows begin to look like Attention Whores. But don’t forget also that the initial growth spurt of “Reality TV” years ago started because the shows were so much cheaper to produce than regular TV programming. The worst of Reality TV (and almost ALL of it is bad, cheesy, and sleazy) serves as a
self-conscious parody and joke, not at the expense of the principle “actors” in it, but at the expense of the growing audiences for all of them out there who get their guilty pleasures by watching them.
“Is the money he makes from this show going to pay for child support?”
——Hey, every little bit helps.
Don’t underestimate 1. The financial incentive for ANYONE to
do these shows in the first place, which is linked to
2. The free publicity for both the business enterprises portrayed in the show (like the “good ones” I mentioned) and the “celebrity” of some of the principals, which can be parlayed into personal appearances on OTHER TV shows, and meet-and-greets based on the flimsiest of pretexts. Ultimately, of course it’s all about $$$$$$ for all involved, and that starts with finding willing participants who can conceivably garner an initial 15 minutes of fame, and extend it into 15 months, or 51 months, at which point they become legitimate “celebrities”
with recurrent interviews, book deals, cameos in movies, etc. etc. It’s all just the apotheosis of the celebrity culture, with the new ingredient of the “common man celebrity”, who starts OUTSIDE of showbiz,being introduced into a new infinitely expandable definition of showbiz.
so does everyone want to be a celebrity, no matter what they may be famous for?
This guy is involved with 10 different girls??? Holy Toledo. Can’t imagine the issues each of these girls has to be involved with someone like this dude. But anyway, these girls may see being humiliated on a show such as this as their ticket to fame, eventually.
These people may become famous for being famous, not for actually achieving anything productive in their lives.
MTV has helped to kill the black family in America.
And Duck Dynasty, and everything on MTV, and Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Toddlers in Tiaras (how we got introduced to Honey Boo Boo). There’s plenty of sad examples of white people on TV too. That’s the glory of reality TV, it’s all about trainwrecks regardless of skin color.
To be fair, Bill Cosby has been very outspoken about the disaster that is the current black society.
He has been a voice in the wilderness.
I think what people want is free money. If somebody walked up to you and offered to pay you 10 grand a week to follow you around with a camera while you do what you do, just be natural, that’s a hard offer to pass up. On some level you might ask yourself if they want to follow you around because you’re pathetic or because you’re cool, but in the end you’ll probably decide a 40 thousand a month just to be you and wind up on a show watched by very few people (these shows generally only have audiences of 1 or 2 million, most folks only know about them from reading articles like this) is just too tempting. Heck I’d probably say yes.
Cosby helped derail the destruction of the black race in the 80’s by speaking out against out of wedlock child bearing, welfare and gangs. He made a lot of Black race haters furious.
As of late he has served as just another race baiter. I was surprised he did not speak out about gansta rap. It’s such a destructive and violent gang sub-culture.
I didn’t realize so many white people were playing the fool on television.
I forgot the Kardashians. Not that I’ve ever watched it. Or plan to.
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