Session 218: Exploring the Landscape of Black Women In Reality TV

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, okay. Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast,
a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all
the small decisions we can make to become the best

(00:21):
possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr Joy hard
and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more
information or to find a therapist in your area, visit
our website at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While
I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast,

(00:42):
it is not meant to be a substitute for relationship
with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so
much for joining me for session two eighteen of the
Therapy for Like Girls Podcast. We'll get into the episode

(01:03):
right after a word from our sponsors. Watching reality TV
shows are one of my favorite pastimes. Some of my
favorites have been Trading spaces early seasons of the Real

(01:23):
World and of course the Real Housewives. It's been really
interesting to see how programming in this space has developed
over time and to follow the commentary, and what has
been most interesting is the way the space has been
accommodating or not so much to black women, cast members
and black audiences. To help us explore this world Today.

(01:43):
I'm joined by Dr Rockhale Gates. Dr Gates is an
Associate professor of Film at Columbia University and the author
of Double Negative, The Black Image and Popular Culture. She
received her PhD from Northwestern University's Department of Screen Cultures
and holds an Emma and Humanities from the University of Chicago,

(02:03):
as well as a b s. And Foreign Service from
Georgetown University. Currently, she's working on her second book, titled
Hollywood Style and the Invention of Blackness, for which she
was awarded an Academy Film Scholar Grant by the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Her writing appears
in both academic and popular publications such as The New

(02:25):
York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Film Quarterly.
She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and two sons.
Dr Gates and I chatted about the complicated nature of
black women's representation on reality TV, how audiences often respond
to majority black cast, the stereotypes that are both upheld
and dispelled through reality TV, and the changes that often

(02:49):
happened between seasons one and two of a show. If
there's something that resonates with you while enjoying our conversation,
Please share it with us on social media using the
hashtag tv g in session. Here's our conversation. Thank you
so much for joining us today, Dr Gates. Thank you
so much for having me. Yeah, I am so happy

(03:12):
to have you here. Reality TV is like one of
my favorite things to enjoy, so I love to talk
to you, you know, people who are researching in this area.
So can you start by telling us a little bit
about what fascinates you about media studies and how you
got into studying reality TV? Sure? So, what fascinates me
about studying media but also film is that I think

(03:35):
that film and television are these sources of connection between people.
And I think that, you know, sometimes in spite of
our backgrounds, sort of our shared experiences with different movies
or different television shows allow us to tap into something
and sort of form a site of human connection. I
also think that sometimes we can work out our own

(03:59):
feelings and experiences vicariously through watching film and television. And
I think that's where reality television is particularly unique, because
it's so much about sort of daily lived experience, and
of course that's like played for drama and you know,
for comedy and all kinds of things, but I think
that at its core reality television in particular, you know,

(04:21):
the draw is this sort of very real connection with
the cast members, and I think that's a huge source
of pleasure for the audience. For me, how did I
get into studying reality television? So I'm by training, I'm
a film and media study scholar, and I'm also a
fan of reality television. And you know, there's a point where,

(04:44):
at least from me, when I was sort of reading,
you know, like newspaper articles or just sort of listening
to the ways that people were talking about reality television,
it always seemed to sell the genre kind of short,
and it seemed to resume a lack of sophistication on
the part of the audiences, which are primarily women. And

(05:05):
for me, the light bulb went off, because that's typically
what happens when you are talking about genres that are
primarily enjoyed by audiences who are not like straight white men.
And so for me, I really wanted to sort of
turn a segment of my research to reality television to

(05:26):
really sort of get at the nuances of what make
it so pleasurable. But also I would argue so powerful
and so enduring. Mmmmmmmmm. So it feels like the genre
really has kind of expanded, right, Like I think I'm
guessing you probably know this better than I do. Like,
is the real world kind of like our first real

(05:46):
fury into reality TV? So can you talk just about
like how the genre has expanded beyond stuff like real World? Sure,
I mean people always cite the real world, right like
that two moment I'm I think of that is like
the dawn of the contemporary era of reality television. But
if we're thinking about the nuts and bolts of what

(06:08):
makes something reality television, like the idea that it's unscripted,
the idea that we're getting like a behind the scenes
look at either a person or a community that we
don't normally get, then I'd argue you have to actually
go back to the nineteen fifties, right, and something like
um Edward Murrow's Person a Person, which was a television
show where the journalist would he'd go visit the home

(06:29):
of celebrities and get this sort of candid interview where
they would talk about various things in terms of their
personal life and their in their professional lives. You have
to think about something like Candid Camera, that television show, right,
which is about playing jokes on unsuspecting people. You could
also think about all of the game shows that became
really popular in the nineteen fifties. There's a television show
that I like to teach in my reality TV class

(06:52):
called Queen for a Day, which was, you know, this
show where women would come on and they would sort
of talk about, you know, all of the things that
we're going wrong in their lives, and if like the
audience thought their sob stories were pathetic enough, they would
win something, they'd win a prize. And it's clearly a
predecessor to something like Extreme Home Makeover, you know, which
is a show that we're more familiar with now. You know.

(07:14):
I also throw out the film sociological experiments that happens
like in the sixties and the seventies, the Stanford Prison Experiment,
things like that. And you know, one of my favorite
examples that I like to teach JFK's filmed televised birthday
party at Madison Square Garden where Marilyn Monroe comes out

(07:34):
and sings this very you know, sort of sexy version
of Happy Perthday to him as his wife watches it right. So,
like when you think about what makes reality TV reality TV,
I think that, you know, especially American audiences have been
engaging with you know, that type of thing well before

(07:55):
we had an official name for the genre. Mm hmmm. Yeah.
And as you talking and also made me think of
this show with Regions he said, what's his name, Region's
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with um with Robin Leach. Right, Yes,
I thought was famous, which is totally the predecessor to Cribs.

(08:15):
Absolutely absolutely, It's fascinating. Yeah. So now you know you
mentioned a couple of things, right, So we still have
the real world type kind of shows where we have
things like Extreme Makeover, we have the game shows. Are
there other types of programming that kind of are also
considered reality TV? I mean, I think anytime you're thinking
of unscripted, I think something like An American Family, which

(08:39):
was a docuseries that ain't that aired in the seventies,
which was about you know, sort of looking at it
was like a domestic drama, you know, sort of seeing
what was going on with the family and parents eventually
split up and one of the sons is gay and
he leaves their town and he goes to New York,
and I mean it's a lot of scholars sort of
cite that as like the pre reality TV text and yeah,

(09:04):
but I think that when you start like pulling the
threads of all of the things that make reality TV
reality TV, then I think we realize that a lot
of shows actually sort of have fit into that for
quite some time. Mm hmmm. So you mentioned earlier that
you feel like something that's incredibly powerful about the genre
of reality TV is like the relationships or para social relationships.

(09:25):
I guess in some ways that people form with the
cast members. Can you say more about like why that
is so powerful? What I think happens with reality television
is I actually think it provides an opportunity for residents
and it provides an opportunity for empathy. And that's different
for me than identification. Identification is that character reminds me

(09:46):
of myself because profession is similar. They look like me,
you know, something like that. But residents is there's something
about what they're dealing with that connects with me. Right,
I don't have to have anything else in common with them.
I think about the Kardashians, right where even people can't
stand that show whenever the sisters fight. I always noticed
this online that people will say, I don't even like

(10:08):
the kardashi is, but man, when she hit her sister
with the purse, like, yeah, I felt that. I know that, right,
And so I think that reality TV, because of the
unscripted nature of it, you get a lot of those moments,
these sort of small things that connect with us on
an experiential level that in any other context wouldn't really
make for good television, like it it has nothing to

(10:29):
do with the plot. They're not really good narrative beats.
You get those moments, and you get that in reality
television because of the nature of what reality television does. Mmmmmmmmm.
And I want to just drill down a little bit
specifically when we think about black women in reality TV, right,
and so you know Heather b was of course on

(10:49):
the Real World, but you're talking about like even before that,
are there other instances where we can kind of trace
the history of black women in reality TV? Well, I
mean I think in terms of sort of before that, right,
we have like black women's celebrities who are on game shows, right,
I mean, we we definitely get that, right, I'm thinking

(11:10):
of like Horn and Dorothy damage being on these games shows, especially,
you know, the ones that are focused on celebrity, and
those are always sort of fun moments because you get
to see them, you know, being silly and being you know,
I don't want to say being real, because they're obviously
still performing, but you get to see a version of
them that's really different than they're sort of, you know,
very carefully curated Hollywood film version. I actually think that

(11:33):
if you go back to like the origins of cinema,
like in the eighteen nineties, you have these interesting moments
um where blackness is sort of both the side of
performance and a side of authenticity. And and so what
I mean by that is, you know, early cinema, it
wasn't like narrative yet. I mean, some things were sort
of stage and little scenarios, and some things were like

(11:55):
look at this black woman washing her baby, right, because
so much of it was about just the fascination with
the medium itself, not necessarily with the content. And so
I think in early cinema you have this interesting slippet
which is relevant to black women in reality TV today,
where this line between are they being real, are they
being themselves? Versus are they performing or are they performing

(12:18):
for the camera that's not always clear and that's a
little blurry, And I would argue that's part of the
pleasure in early cinema, and I think that's also part
of the pleasure in contemporary reality TV. But that's also
the kind of conundrum that leads to some of the
debates that we have about representation of black women on
reality tube. Mm hmmm, yeah. And so can you say

(12:40):
more about that? I mean, because you know we exist,
especially in the US, we know that there are stereotypes
that people play into when they're you know, casting particularly
black women for certain kinds of shows, And so can
you talk more about, like how some of those stereotypes
do you play out and the investment that the genre
has in like casting certain kinds of black women. I
think a lot about Amar Rossa from The Apprentice when

(13:04):
this topic comes up. You know, Amar Rossa, who is
like like an almost cartoonish, like angry black woman, kind
of like i'll put this in quotes, even though no
one can see me, like black bitch type of character, right,
like like a very like typical TV villain. And I
always remember seeing her on an episode of Dr Phil
after her season had aired she was talking about the

(13:25):
backlash that she got and you know, all this stuff,
and and he was like, well you did that. You
have to take responsibility for yourself. And she said, which
I thought was so brilliant, there were a lot of
black women at that casting. They could have picked anybody
they wanted to. What I presented on this show is
exactly what I brought to the casting. So is it
me who sort of playing up a role that I

(13:46):
knew would like get me on the show and get
me airtime. Absolutely, but the producers didn't have to cast me.
They didn't have to give me airtime. She pointed out
that on the season following her, there was another black
Apprentice member who barely got any screen time and they
edited out all of her stuff. Right, I think it
gets really complicated. You mentioned how there Be and one

(14:08):
of the things how there Be said pretty famously when
I can't remember who it was, I think it was
Tammy Roma, but it could have been. But it's sort
of a later a black woman in reality TV. You know,
it was like the editing, the editing, and Heather said, well,
they can't use what you don't give them, and that's true,
but also you can edit people in all kinds of ways, right.
I think that audiences now were very savvy about that

(14:31):
type of thing. But I think what we haven't necessarily
talked enough about is that it's also about legibility. It's
also about sort of the perceptions and the biases on
behalf of the audience that they don't even realize they're
bringing into their interpretation of the shows. And so an
example I think of a lot is when The Real
Housewives of Atlanta premiered, and that's the first black cast

(14:53):
Housewives show at the time. Now there's Potomac obviously, which
is premiered, which was amazing anyway, But when Atlanta premiers,
I remember reading like Housewives message boards and I saw
the women being talked about in a way I had
never seen with any of the white cast before. So
they were referring to them as lazy, you know. They

(15:16):
kept saying things like, oh, they're just so big, like
like things like that, right, I mean, like things that
were clearly sort of like stereotypes and tropes about black
women that had nothing to do with the show, that
had nothing to do with this particular cast, But even
saying things like they're lazy and their gold diggers on
a show that is literally about housewives, right, on a

(15:37):
show in which when women have gone out and worked.
I've also seen audiences criticized that as well. Right, there's
a constant refrain from the Housewives fans where people will
be like, there's no real housewives on here, and then
you get Atlanta where you have like housewives and they're
being they're called gold diggers, you know, and that that
has everything to do with perceptions of black women, regardless

(15:59):
of what they do or don't do. So you know,
I think these things get tricky. I think editing plays
a part. I think obviously past members have agency in
terms of what they choose to put on the show
and how they choose to behave on the show. But
I also think that audiences bring their own readings and
their own lenses in their own perspectives when they're watching. Yeah. Absolutely,

(16:19):
I mean, and you know, if I remember correctly, Real
Housewives of Alian of course was not the first one,
but like you mentioned, it was the first like kind
of black cast, but I feel like it was also
the highest rated. Was Oh, definitely, definitely, I mean Atlanta
has I don't want to get my numbers wrong, but
Atlanta has pretty much since it premiered been the highest

(16:40):
rated of the Housewives shows. Everybody knows that. Everybody acknowledges that.
And yeah, they were I want to say they were third.
It was o C New York, and then I believe Atlanta.
I was getting Atlanta Jersey sort of inverted into my head.
But but yeah, but I mean just kind of out
the gates. They were killing it in the ratings, you know, yeah, absolutely,
mm hmmm. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier, you know, like

(17:02):
that a part of what is attractive about the genre
is that people are able to kind of relate to
the stories people share. But I wonder if there is
something about, you know, like both The Housewives of Atlanta
and Photomac that non black audiences feel like they cannot
relate to the stories being shared by these women. I mean,
it's possible. There's an interesting thing that I notice among

(17:24):
who aren't presuming our white Housewives fans. I mean, I
don't know. This is just me going off of message
boards and Facebook groups and Twitter, where people feel very
comfortable saying I watched all the Housewives shows but not
Atlanta or Pretona and like, and they don't seem to
feel any kind of way about saying that, you know
what I mean, which is interesting, right, So you know,

(17:45):
I think that one of the strengths of the Housewives
shows is that there's different ways in And what I
mean is that the Housewives shows on Bravo, like Bravo
has a very different approach in my opinion, than a
lot of the v H one reality shows like Love
and Hip Hop. And what I mean by that is Bravo.
They call it the Bravo wink, and it what really,

(18:08):
what it means is that when you're an audience member,
you're always kind of on the side of the producers
against the cast, right, Like there there's an invitation, through
editing and through all kinds of things for you to
kind of snarple on the women or for you to
know sort of like laugh at them if you so choose.
And so I actually think that Atlanta and Photomac wouldn't
be on the air this long if white women weren't

(18:28):
watching those white white women and white men, Like it's
just that's just a fact, Like they wouldn't be on
this scene that were the case. So I think that
there are different ways in some people watch it and
identify with the cast and root for various cast members.
Some people sort of watch it to snarkle on the cast.
I mean, I think that what we see, especially with Atlanta,
and I think that the sort of popularity of Nanny

(18:49):
Lakes during the show and post show, it's sort of
evidence of the fact that it's sort of like culturally
specific of a cast member. As she is, she has
wide ranging appeal and lots of people connect with her
for all kinds of all kinds of different reasons. M Yeah.
And you know when you think about, like, like you said,
like Potomac just premiered, like the new season, and so

(19:11):
I feel like there is a distinct difference between like
the first season of Potomac and the second season. Can
you say more about like those differences. Yeah, I just
think Potomac is the best of this I just think
it's the best of the franchise at this point. Like
I don't even feel like that's debatable, but that's really Yeah. Okay,
I gotta hear you say more about what. Okay, here's
what I think is great about Potomac. I think the

(19:33):
first of all, Potomac is super culturally specific. I mean,
you can have a black cast show that is not
culturally specific to black people, right. So for me, I
love Potomac because it's rooted in a place like it's
rooted in like the d m V area, right, like
in DC, Maryland, Virginia. Right, those women have history that
they weren't all flown in, you know. I mean, I

(19:54):
think about Atlanta when Kenya Moore sort of joins the
cast and she's great on the show, but it's all
are really clear that she was cast and she moves
to Atlanta to film the show, and that's different than
somebody who grew up somewhere or somebody who's lived there
and made a home there. Right. I also think that
Potomac has that great thing where the cast, some members

(20:15):
of the cast, they've known each other since before the show,
that they jell, they have history, right. You know. I'm
so fascinated by like Karen and Giselle's relationship because you know,
when they fight, that feels real. That doesn't feel like
just some on the show stuff. That feels like years
of whatever kinds of experiences that you know have led

(20:36):
to whatever tensions they have, and that always feels that
feels more organic to me then what I think happens
with some of the other shows in the cast are
kind of like cobbled together and they don't have history.
I think knowing that potomas I believe that the producers
who work on Potoma, because each of the housewife shows
they have different production teams, it's not like one universal team.

(20:57):
Knowing that their producers are black, I think that there's
a different handling of certain material than you see sometimes
on like other shows, like I just think Pto Beca
is so great, and I think each of the women
is there are such strong cast members on their own.
They have such interesting dynamics between them. Yeah, I just
think it's fascinating. But you you asked about like the

(21:18):
first season to the second, right, that was the original
question where I went off on that tangent. All right, Yeah,
I mean I think what you see with Potomac, it's
sort of like it's analogous to what happens with all
of these shows. Right Like the first season, I think
they're everyone, the cast and the producers, Everyone's trying to
figure out what the show is going to be. There's
like a lot of exposition. There's an emphasis on whatever

(21:38):
the pitch was, whatever the theme is, right, you see
that in something. I mean this is not black Women obviously,
but like Jersey Shore, right, Like a Jersey Shore is
pitched as this is going to be this show about
Italian Americans at the shore. That first season it's like, yes,
all they're talking about, you know, but that's also likely
all the producers are asking them about is how do
you feel about what what does being a guido mean

(22:00):
to you? Right? Because that's like the focus. It's the
second season where everyone's kind of settled in a little bit.
But also I think when the first season is aired
and they've seen themselves on television, that now you have
this slightly different engagement. It's a horrible analogy, but I
was thinking like Terminator too, there's this moment where they
talk about when the machines became self aware, Like that's

(22:21):
what kind of happens in the second season of a
reality show is they're like, oh, I need to go
get a better We've like, oh I need to get
a better wardrobe, I need a glad team. But also
I need to think very carefully about what I'm doing
on camera, what I'm presenting on camera, and how that's
gonna play. And I also think that by the second season,
the audience we have our understandings now who we think

(22:44):
the star of the show is right, and how we
understand personalities in certain dynamics. I mean, I always like
the first season of the show, but to me, the
second season is like really where things start to get cooking. Yeah,
like when you really really kind of get to meet
the gas like real stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More from
my conversation with Dr Gates after the Breaks. Another popular

(23:13):
you know, kind of type of reality show are like
these dating love kinds of shows. It does feel like
there is like a particular kind of black women that
typically is cast for these shows. So I just love
to hear your thoughts about, like, you know, are you
seeing the same kind of thing? Are are there varieties
in terms of like people who are cast? Well, what

(23:34):
shows in particular are you thinking about when you're talking
about the dating shows, like like two kinds of handle
love is blind? Well the Bachelor, you know, that's a
whole kind of thing like that kind of show, right, Right,
dating shows are not like not the thing that like
let me on fire in terms of a reality TV fan,
But what is what I think is interesting about the

(23:54):
dating shows, right, is we tend to talk a lot
about reality TV in terms of like the content, what's
in front of the camera, right, instead of thinking about
networks and thinking about audiences and things like that. What's
interesting to me about like the Bachelor and whatever has
been happening for the past couple of years with discussions
about blackness and the Bachelor is there isn't as much

(24:16):
of a discussion about, well, who's the audience for the Bachelor, right, Like,
there's all of this kind of cleata black bachelor, but
the woman he loves, like did some weird racist patch
and whatever that start. But but but to me, it
felt really clear that you can cast a black person.
But if, for instance, you're casting questionnaires never changed, if

(24:37):
your approach to casting is the same, this wouldn't have
been I mean, I don't want to say it would
have been issue, It wouldn't matter. But had the Bachelor
been white, and I'm assuming that for the one black
bachelor they picked the other four you know possible bachelors
were white dudes, right, this wouldn't have been this would
have made it to air, This would have been an issue. Right,
And so I think that when you're talking about, for instance,

(24:59):
like lotting black women into that formula, Like the formula
is the formula, and so you're going to get a
specific type of black women because they're not necessarily like
they're not interested in in I mean, diversity is a
tricky word anyway, right, as we've learned this past year,
but I mean not interested necessarily in like a diversity

(25:20):
of black women, right. They're interested in like a phenotypically
black body to slot into whatever they wanted for that show.
And I think dating shows tend to be much more
formulaic than I mean, I think dating shows. I think
any kind of competitive reality show is really what I
would say, like competitive reality dating shows, but all stuff

(25:41):
like Survive or The Amazing Race versus candid reality shows
like Real Housewives, Love and Hip Hop. I think that
the competitive reality shows tend to be much more formulaic,
and they tend to cast for type quite much more often.
And so I don't think it's ever really surprising that
you see the same recurring over and over and over again.

(26:03):
Mm hmmm. Yeah. I want to kind of stick with
your point around like really thinking about like the different
networks and like who their audiences are. When you mentioned
this idea, of the Bravo wink, right, like that we're
kind of positioned to side with the producer. And you
mentioned that you feel like that's very different from what
we would see on the Love and hip Hop. But
I'm also aware that it feels like the own network

(26:25):
is has developed a different kind of like slate of
reality TV. I love to hear your thoughts, maybe just
about the differences between like what we see on you
know which network. Yeah, I'm trying to which which owned
shows in particular are you thinking of, Because so there's
put a ring on it Ready to Love, which I
think is an interesting dating show to me, the people
who are on that show are very different than what

(26:46):
you would see on a Too Hot to Handle. Also,
what are the other ones? Loving? Loving Marriage Huntsville? Right,
So it's kind of in the vein of like a
Real Housewives, Love and hip Hop, but not quite the same. So, yeah,
so that's their slate. I mean, so there's a couple
of things I think that different networks have just they
just have different approaches to things, right, and so, like

(27:06):
I mean, I always compare Bravo and VH one, and
I compare those two very often because they both have
this kind of like late night soap opera like thing
that they right, And the Bravo does that with the shows,
and vh one does that with it shows too, And
to me, those are easy comparisons because you can see
the tonal differences because so much other stuff is sort
of similar, right, And what I mean by that is,

(27:27):
so you have the Bravo wink, you have a thing
where it's there's a clip from Potomac where where Wendy is.
She's like, she's just had like breast augmentation surgery, and
so she's going to the doctor for check up. She's
talking about that she had a breast done, but they
cut to like a producer saying, have you had any
other work done? And she's like, if I did, I
tell you. They cut back to the scene and then

(27:48):
the camera scans down to her stomach and the clear
implication is that she's had a tummy tuck, right, And
that's the that's production kind of winking at us the
audience saying, you know, she's not telling the truth, right, Like,
that's what that is, right, Um, this is all unbeknownst
to her, right, she has no clue, right like that,
This is the kind of communication that's happening between sort

(28:10):
of like production and audience. H one. By contrast, to me,
the tone of H one is is earnestness. So, you know,
I think a lot about I think it's the first
season of Love and Hip Hop Atlanta where we got
introduced to like Stevie J and Mimi and Johnson Hernandez,
and she Johnson Hernandez takes a pregnancy test, you know,
like in a bathroom style, and the camera comes with her,

(28:32):
and people have talked about like, oh, that's ridiculous that
she did that on camera, But what I'm always fascinated
in is the camera work in that scene. The camera
is focused on her face and it's just this beautiful
close up where she looks beautiful, but she also looks fragile,
and she looks like, you know, like anguished and sad,
and it's so close that you can see the tears

(28:54):
coming down, right. It's this moment that the camera is
making us, the audience, making us if you were identify
with her and connect with her. And for me, that's
always been this powerful moment because when I pop culture,
are we ever asked to feel sympathy for the side
chick when are we ever asked to sort of identify
with the woman who's like sleeping with this guy who

(29:14):
clearly has a long term you know, girlfriend and partner, right,
And so that feels really powerful to me. I think that, like,
if we were thinking about the shows on OWN, that's
a different demographic as well, right, I mean, I'd have
to sort of check the numbers, but I'd be curious
about the age demographic, right, I'd be curious about who
they envisioned their audience to be, and there for what
are the issues? I mean, I think, you know, the

(29:35):
fact that it's focused on marriage instead of relationships suggests
a slightly older audience than what you might what the
assumption is from v H one, right, which has to
capture people from like eighteen to forty, right, Whereas I
think that OWN. I don't quote me on this, this
is just this is my guess, right, But like, but
they sew a little bit older, right, But I think

(29:56):
that that tone of earnestness is still very much a
part of how OWN does this, and part like that's
also the reputation of you know, of the network, um, right,
And so I for me, it's really interesting to think
about how things like that like shape the shows, shape
how we view the shows even as viewers, right, Like

(30:18):
what are we expecting to see if we know something's
on v H one versus own versus Lifetime versus MTV, Right,
Like we come to it perhaps with different you know,
sort of reading strategies. Mm hmmmmmmm. You know. So one
of the major critiques of reality TV, I think specifically
as we think about like black cast members, is this

(30:39):
idea of representation about like, oh, what do white people
think when they see black women fighting on TV? Right?
And so they're still like the centering of the white days,
And I think, you know, the argument can be made that,
Like I think a lot of like black projects have
this burden, it feels like, right, like to kind of
speak for the entire race, can you talk a little

(31:00):
a bit about I mean, I think that what we
see with reality television is this intensive eyed discourse that's
really been happening since the dawn of cinema. Like, whenever
we have talked about the black image in popular culture period,
the burden of representation is always the discourse, right, Like
the politics of representation is always the thing that we're

(31:20):
talking about, right, And to me, I think when you're
talking about pop culture, I think it's the wrong question, right,
because I think it's what what it does is it
narrows down the possibilities, right. It takes a few things
for granted that I would actually push back against. One.
It would it's that people enjoy things because they identify
with it. The second sort of assumption is that television
and pop culture serves it's like a role model type

(31:43):
of thing, where like you see it and you want
to imitate it, which has never been proven true. Like anywhere,
these are always like the underlying assumptions, and so if
you start with those as presumed facts, that leads you
down a really narrow path, right, which is like what
is this good or bad? Or black people? And there's
I think like kind of a deboisan double consciousness, right,

(32:05):
which is, well, how does this make us look? And
the implicit thing is like well to home? Right. I
think when you're able to sort of cast that aside
a bit as a consideration, I'm not saying that that's irrelevant.
That is a dominant way of analyzing media. I think
it's faulty because I think there's so many other things
to attend to besides like the politics of representation, which

(32:29):
most media studies scholars challenge anyway, Like, we don't think
that media works that way, and we certainly don't subscribe
to what some people call a media effects argument, which
is that like media makes people do things. There's the
example that I've I've used, you know, a bunch of times,
is you know scenes where people fight. Right, There's a
scene and from Basketball Wives where Evelyn Lozatta gets so

(32:51):
angry with someone that she like jumps up runs across
a dining table to attack this woman. And it's like
jumps off the table and goes out. It's insane. And
I remember when that air and people said, well, if
little girls see this, they'll think that's okay. And that's
kind of like a logical leap isn't really grounded exactly
in anything, right, And what I would say is, well,

(33:12):
why do we read it that way as opposed to fantasy,
as opposed to emotional catharsis right? Maybe you don't watch
that and you're gonna like go out and like run
across the table, but maybe you identify really strongly with
that feeling when you're sitting at dinner and someone's jabbing
at you and then make a little comments and like
you're trying to hold it together, but you feel like
you could explode, which I think is that feeling like
a lot of black women have had in their workplaces

(33:33):
and in different stressful So you know, there's something pleasurable
about seeing somebody who has no bearing on your life
be able to do that thing that you kind of
secretly wish that maybe you could do, right, And so
that's how I read a lot of that stuff. I
also think that, uh, the criticism of reality TV tends

(33:54):
to focus on the most salacious moments and never on
the quieter moments, which are the things that I act
really think connect with fans more often. M hmmm. So yeah,
more from Dr Gates after the break. So I'm really

(34:18):
glad you share their doctor gains because I hear that
argument all the time. But of course I'm not a
media scholar, so I thought there was some truth to
this idea of media effects, right, like that people imitate
kind of what they see. So where do that come from?
I think there's a couple of things. I'm sure that
they're sort of a different strain of media studies scholars
from more based in like psychology and sort of calm

(34:40):
studies who might make that argument, right, And I don't
think that that argument is inaccurate, But I don't think
it's accurate for this particular type of media, right, Like,
do I believe that you can see so much violent
content that you become desensitized to seeing violence? Sure? Right?
Like that's media effects argument. Right. Do I think that
if you sit and watch Evelyn Lazat to run across

(35:02):
the table, that suddenly you're gonna lose all your good
sense the next time you haven't an arguing with somebody, No,
of course not right, That's just silly. So I think
that what happens is that gets applied across the board.
And I also think it underneath it is a lack
of credit being given to the presumably like black audiences

(35:27):
who are watching these shows. And I think you see
that across all types of sort of art stuff, right,
there's always this idea of like even literature, right, Well,
you can't let these people have access to this thing, right,
I mean, this happens, you know. I'm thinking of scholar
Kathy Davidson's work about sort of the attention um and
the anxiety around the development of the printing press, because

(35:49):
there was this idea that, like, you can't just have
literature and news be widely accessible. What do you do
with these uneducated masses. You can't just let them have
access to information? Right, It's that same idea that some
people cannot handle, you know, access to content. I also
think that that you know, when we're talking about black people, right,

(36:10):
I think that we understandably because of the history of film,
because of the history of television and the ways that
those are connected to racism and racist imagery, that we
have a healthy suspicion of what these images do. Right. Like,
we know that d W. Griffiths film The Birth of
a Nation was used as a recruitment tool for the Clad.
We know that, right, But there's a distinction between using

(36:32):
a film as a recruitment tool and thinking that showing
people that film is the thing that made them racist,
and and that's not the same thing. I think we
have to be really careful when we talk about how
people engage with media, because our real life experience is
nothing like what those critiques say, right. And I've I've
heard this before. We're somewhere someone has said, well, you're

(36:55):
you're a professor you understand this. I'm like, you can't
point to any that you know or have experienced who
has imitated a thing they've seen on reality TV. Right,
There's not some young promising girl on the South side
of Chicago where I'm from who was like about to
go off to college on a scholarship, but then she
watched Basketball wives. It's just they treated like it's reefer madness,

(37:17):
you know what I mean, like this sort of paranoia
around these things that are going to ruin black people.
I think that there's very valid concerns about black representation,
particularly brown black women's representation. But I also think that's
a that's that's one lens, and there's multiple lenses with
which we can be viewing these shows and talking about
these shows. Mm hmmm. So in addition to Put homeg

(37:41):
what are some of the other shows that you are
really loving and is there anything that you're excited to see,
like somebody who has done something really different with reality
TV that you enjoy? I mean, I gotta be honest,
like this past year, all of my viewing has just
been shot because I've my my our five year old

(38:02):
twin boys. They were home from school for like a
really really long time. There was not a whole lot
of viewing that was happening, except for like Disney films.
But I love Potomac like I love Potomac. I love
all the Real Housewives shows, although I this year has
been a weird time, and I think partly because of
like COVID production things that have made filming kind of bizarre,

(38:23):
but also because they all are kind of trying to
deal with racism and these very course inelegant ways, which
which doesn't always make for the viewing. I I was
a huge, huge fan of Mob Wives when it was
on in like two thousand and two thousand and eleven.

(38:44):
I thought it was one of the like the first
two seasons of that show. I will always say if
some of the best television I've ever seen, scripted or unscripted.
I just thought it was an amazing show. I was
really into Jersey Shore for a very, very long time
and still keep up with Jersey Shore. What am I
excited about on Horizon? I'm kind of excited. This is
like a broad comment. I feel like we're at this

(39:07):
moment where reality TV has gotten very meta. You know,
it's not just the Real Housewives shows. Now we have
the All Stars Real Housewives Show, which is going to
air sometime soon, right, Like we have that, we have
shows that are like very self referential, where we're talking
about the show as a show. And we've seen that

(39:27):
on a bunch of things white shows and black shows,
where they talk about production as part of you know,
as part of the show. I mean Atlanta was like that,
right this season with the bachelorette party and portion who
slept with a stripper who didn't write this whole so
much of the storyline was about, hey, we thought we
weren't filming right, and we have an understanding for what
it means when we're not filming right and ken you

(39:48):
you broke. I mean that's fascinating to me. I wish
I had specific shows, I said, I was excited, but
like that as a thing that is a thing is
fascinating because my question is, well, then where do we
go from that point? If we're at the point where
the shows are now about themselves, the show is very
much about filming the show, Like Kardashians, is that right,

(40:11):
it's this is their last season. The whole season is
like and we didn't know how to tell the producers
and so here are the producer, and we had them
on and let's watch the old footage. I mean, it
feels to me like we are at this moment where
something is going to radically shift, because like where do
you go from here? And so I feel like where,
you know, I've said, you know, in sort of other

(40:33):
places that I would rather refer to reality TV as
a mode rather than a genre, like it's a way
of engaging, it's a you know, um because there's such
a diversity within reality TV. The genre seems like, you know,
like to sell it short. I think I'm curious to
see like where this is headed now, you know, when
we're at the point where, you know, a magazine like

(40:56):
US Weekly is it's mainly reality show ours and there
those are the celebrities and the blurring of the line
between who is a quote unquote legitimate celebrity versus who
is a reality celebrity feels like what do you do
with Bethany Frankel? What do you do with me Nie Leaks?
Like what do I mean? My dad knew who these

(41:16):
folks are, you know what, people who have never watched
the shows don't know who they are. So I think
we're at this really kind of fascinating moment in terms
of sort of seeing the collapse of high culture and
low culture and different forms of celebrity. You know, we
just came off a presidency of a reality TV cast member,

(41:39):
when we had the kind of big slate of Democratic
candidates and Bernie Sanders had Cardi B doing videos with it.
You know, it was like this moment where I thought,
are we still don pretend like reality TV doesn't matter? Right?
Because we got one Reality TV dude in the White
House and we have Cardi B from Love and Hip
Hop like essentially campaigning right for Bernie Sanders. Like this,

(42:00):
something has changed, something has shifted. So I don't know.
I'm just curious to see what happens at this point
because I have like no predictions honestly, right right, And
it seems like, you know, with the rides and social media,
like you know, people on TikTok are like amassing like
some of the same numbers as a show on a
v H one, right, you know. So it to me

(42:21):
is interesting that it almost seems like the new wave
of reality TV so to speak, might be existing like
in a place like tikto I mean, I think we
also are in this moment where even our understandings of
what constitutes media has changed. Like when we say TV, like,
what are we talk I mean, especially thinking about what's
happened during COVID, right. I mean, there's two strains we

(42:42):
can think about. One is the fact that social media
has become so prominent that most of the beefs that
are happening on these reality TV shows like originating on
social media somewhere and the show's happening that they have
to show screenshots of like Twitter and people's d m s,
and you know, like and that those are things that
people are leaking, and then the producers are like, rap,
we gotta pull that into the show now, right, Like,

(43:02):
but they also I think they also expect that we
as viewers were totally on Porscheaus Instagram and we totally
saw that, Like they know that we know, and you know,
they can't just they're reacting to stuff. Now. They can't
just control, they can't just throw out the story and
expect us to buy it. We're like, no, no, no,
because I saw that they un followed each other, right,
and I know that happened to me soon. But I think,

(43:25):
as you point out the other thing, that's happened, particularly
within COVID, when you have production in film and television
grinding to a halt or being severely compromised because of
the pandemic, When you have the rise of TikTok, when
you have the rise of social media influencers, and now
we have this kind of additional breakdown, this additional blurring. Right,

(43:48):
you know, what, what is TV anymore? Is it like
me sitting in front of like my actual television that's
like wall mounted, or is it me or like with
my smart phone? Right? Like which one of those is
the medium? Which which one is the sort of the
dissemination of content? When you have I can't think of
her name, but a famous TikTok or who then is

(44:10):
on keeping up with the Kardashians as a friend of Courtney,
Like I don't and I have no idea who she is,
so I have to go to find out, right, Like
it's it's I think that what we're seeing is not
just shifts that are happening in terms of the content
that's on the shows, but even like the medium's right, Like,
is TV still going to be the thing? Are we

(44:31):
still gonna be tuning into eat or Bravo or whatever,
or are we going to be sort of primarily on
one of these social media or streaming platforms, right, you know,
I don't. I don't. It's a it's a weird As
a media studies scholar, it is a it's a weird time.
It's a exactly what it's weird, right, right? Okay, So

(44:53):
one last question before we wrap up, because I feel
like we could talk about this forever, as you were
talking earlier about like the sages that surrounded the Real
Housewives of Atlanta cas and I don't know enough about
like the positioning of what married to Medicine was, but
it almost feels like that was like an answer to like,

(45:13):
all these women aren't doing anything right, and so then
we cast these real housewives type I feel like women,
but they're actually you know, some of them are actually positions. Yeah, yeah,
So do you know anything about the positioning, Like do
you think that that was a response. I mean, look,
I don't work the Bravo, so I can't say I
know what. I can't say definitively if I had to guess,

(45:36):
when Real Housewives of Atlanta comes out, and it comes
out of two thousand, um and it comes out Basketball Wives,
which is not on Bravo, right, which is on VH
one Love and Hip Hop. They all get lumped together,
and you notice that when you start reading like newspaper
critiques and stuff like that, they just lump all of
them together, which is its own form of like kind
of racist, gendered like stereotyping, right, because real house side

(45:59):
Atlanta is a very different children basketball lives. But I
think that what happens is there's so much critique and
there's so much kind of you know, uproar about that. Yeah,
I absolutely think that married to medicine is supposed to
be like the corrective, right, or Okay, we're gonna show
professional black women or you know, or in women married
to two doctors and etcetera. It's interesting because a lot

(46:20):
of times I've also noticed like people use the same
stereotype around those women, which at some point like yeah,
maybe it's the cast, and maybe it's the production, or
maybe it's the audiences. Maybe there's this way where like
audiences are not ready to see black women in all
of their complexity, which means that you can be professional

(46:40):
and also be kind of messy sometimes, right, and like
that's that's being human. But I think that in the
realm of media, where black people and black women have
so often been portrayed as being inhuman or subhuman, human
doesn't feel like corrective enough, right. We want like clear Huxtable.

(47:01):
We want, you know, sort of the perfection of Olivia
Pope who never has the hair out of place, right,
And I think that it's an unfair standard. But I
also think we close ourselves as viewers off from something right,
which is sort of appreciating humanity and the humanity of
black women in all of its nuance and all of
its complexity. Mm hmmm. So, Dr Gates, what are some

(47:23):
of your favorite resources for anybody maybe who wants to
dig a little deeper into like all of the things
you've shared today. Oh goodness, let's see. So I write
about reality TV in my book which is called Double Negative,
The Black Image and Popular Culture. I recommend work by
scholar Christin Warner, who's who writes about reality TV and casting.

(47:45):
Also the work by scholars Lori Lett and Amanda Klein,
who write a lot about like reality TV in general.
Amanda Klin has a really fabulous new book about It's
a Cultural History of MTV you, which I think is
like pretty great. Alice Leppard has a fantastic piece about
the Kardashians and like capitalism and sisterhood. Those are I mean,

(48:08):
just I'm not forgetting a bunch of people. I'll be
mad at myself, but those are the people who come
to mind. Uh. Laura led and Susan Murray have a
have a textbook that I used to teach my reality
TV class and it's just a collection of fabulous essays
by fabulous reality TV scholars. So yeah, I love it.
Thank you for those And where can we find you?
You already mentioned your book, but what is your website

(48:30):
as well as any social media handles you'd like to share? Yeah,
so my website is www dot Roquell Gates dot com.
You can find me on Twitter, Instagram like at Raquel Gates.
Pretty sure, it's the same thing everywhere, so we'll find
it inficially. That's where I am. That's where I am, like, yeah, perfect, Well,

(48:51):
thank you so much for in the same time with
us today, Dr Gates. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
It was so great to chat with you and be
able to like wax poetic about all things reality television.
I'm so glad that Dr Gates was able to share
her expertise with us today. To learn more about her
and her work, visit the show notes at Therapy for
Black Girls dot Com slash Session to eighteen, and don't

(49:14):
forget to text two of your girls and tell them
to check out the episode as well. If you're looking
for a therapist in your area, be sure to check
out our therapist directory at Therapy for Black Girls dot
com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging
into this topic or just be in community with other sisters,
come on over and join us in the Sister Circle.
It's our cozy corner of the Internet design just for

(49:36):
black women. You can join us at community that Therapy
for Black Girls dot com. Thank you all so much
for joining me again this week. I look forward to
continue in this conversation with you all real soon. Take
good care.

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Dr. Joy Harden Bradford

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Session 218: Exploring the Landscape of Black Women In Reality TV