On the Real: Can Reality Television Be a Good Thing?

2008-09-25
By Ronda Racha Penrice

Hate or hate it, reality television isn’t going anywhere. It’s become so ingrained in the television landscape that it even garners Emmy recognition. Just for good measure, this year, a category for top host for a reality competition show was added. Making matters worse, The Emmys, the 60th annual edition mind you, ventured from the standard award script to adopt a rather cheesy format of multiple hosts, including failed jokes by Heidi Klum, Ryan Seacrest and company. Really it seemed to take its cue from beauty pageants and game shows. They even had The Deal or No Deal girls and their host Howie Mandel there to drive home the point.

One thing remained consistent: we were in short supply. Oprah opened the show with a spiel on television’s power for good that wasn’t untruthful. After all, Vanessa Williams, Chandra Wilson, Alfre Woodard, Diahann Carroll, Glynn Turman as well as Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald for A Raisin in the Sun, which was nominated for Outstanding Made for Television Movie, all received individual nods. Only Glynn Turman, for his outstanding guest role on HBO’s gripping series In Treatment, where he grappled with the suicide and closeted homosexuality of his son, a former navy pilot played by Blair Underwood, won, but not during the live telecast few of us, white or Black, watched.

With so many reality TV shows running wild, how many more opportunities will Black actors have to even earn a nomination? Not even a good two years ago, Monday night was unofficially “Black Night” with UPN-turned-The CW playing host. The night began with Everybody Hates Chris and ended with All of Us, Girlfriends and The Game. Now, only Everybody Hates Chris and The Game remain and they are moving to Friday nights followed by an encore presentation of America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks’ juggernaut reality TV career booster. That hasn’t left Monday nights without any color. There’s plenty of color on but it’s not necessarily the kind of attention we all crave.

I Want To Work For Diddy, New York Goes To Hollywood and Luke’s Parental Advisory are this season’s Monday night line-up but VH1 is no stranger to “Black Night”. They’ve been here before with I Love New York, Flavor of Love, Gotti’s Way (which is on its way back to the screen on Monday, November 3) and The Salt-N-Pepa Show. For some time now, Monday nights has been VH1’s resident “Black Night”. The main difference, though, is, unlike UPN or The CW, VH1’s “Black Night” attracts more than a Black audience and that can be a good or bad thing.

Flavor of Love kicked it all off. The Surreal Life, the reality show that threw celebrity has-beens into a house together, put Flavor Flav, Public Enemy’s well-known hype man, on VH1’s radar. Certainly, Flava never set out to become a Black reality show pioneer but that’s exactly what happened. Let’s face it, the inside joke was “who would want to date Flavor Flava?” He’s never been considered particularly attractive or cool, unless sporting a clock around one’s neck raises one’s hip factor. That joke, however, turned into a ratings bonanza, with Gayle King even revealing on best friend Oprah’s show that she watched it. For Flavor of Love’s second season finale, 7.5 million viewers tuned in. If that weren’t enough, his spin-offs also proved ratings winners, with I Love New York leading the pack.

Featuring Tiffany Pollard, who brought attention to herself by loving her some Flavor Flav, I Love New York came about when Flav didn’t return the love. So, like him, New York used reality TV to find love, or at least a healthier bank account. When the first season of I Love New York premiered in January 2007, a record 4.43 million tuned in, making it VH1’s highest series debut in history. That bested the previous record holder, Flavor of Love 2’s season premiere of 3.3 million viewers. After two failed love connections, she’s decided to become a bone fide Hollywood actress, with the cameras in tow. When she desires to play characters based more on Condoleezza Rice than herself but can barely read the words of the script, what statement does that make?

To those who remember Bill Cosby on I Spy or Diahann Carroll helming Julia, her own sitcom, a real historic first for Black women, reality TV is probably akin to rap music; there’s just no way it can be good. On the flip side, it may prove equality has to come to all genres, not just the prestigious ones. We certainly show up more on the tube than we did then. And perhaps that’s why the outlandish antics of New York, the ridiculous tasks one must complete to even be considered worthy of working for Diddy or taking a unexpectedly normal glimpse into the home life of Luke, best known for getting as freaky as he wanna be as the leader of the proud to be nasty rap group, 2 Live Crew, might not do much harm.

While reality television, and our part in it, is far from ideal, maybe it will expand what’s plausible. When hip-hop hit the mainstream nearly three decades ago, who knew that a rapper could use television, a sitcom nonetheless, as his gateway to becoming one of the world’s top box office draws, not to mention a two-time Academy Award nominee? As other aspects of history have shown, you never know from which direction change might blow and television hasn’t made it this far always banking on predictability.

Veteran freelance writer and self-diagnosed television junkie Ronda Racha Penrice is the author of African American History For Dummies, which includes a chapter on film and television.