I suffered through 45 minutes of the lovely television program known as “The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Georgia” thanks to Hulu. Hulu is great, because the commercials are short, and honestly I don’t think I would have been able to watch 15 minutes more of this absolutely infuriating TV show. 11412^^43vbasjklfjqekla234kljfkas (an outward expression of my frustration)
The program itself follows the lives of five housewives in the Atlanta area (notably none of them seem to live in the city itself…): Lisa, DeShawn, Nene, Kim and Sheree. Only one of the participants is characterized as being white on the show (Kim), and one of the participants is biracial (Chinese and African-American). The other three participants all appear to be African-American. This episode (#4: Bring on the Bling) follows the short narrative line of a benefit gala put on by DeShawn at her private home for her foundation to support girls with self-esteem issues. Due to poor planning, the gala is a huge flop and DeShawn is out $20,000. Other big events include going to the spa and Lisa getting a successful jewelry distribution deal.
In terms of industrial specifics, the show is aired on Bravo and produced by True Entertainment, a subsidiary of Endemol, the international production and syndication group that made the infamous Big Brother series, as well as Deal or No Deal. It appears that season one has been completely aired on Bravo at this point in time.
As I watched the program on Hulu, a streaming television site on the web, it was hard to tell exactly who the target audience was by just looking at the advertisements (there were only four of five ads throughout the entire program… a nice and welcome change). But the program itself seems to glamorize the lifestyle of the idle, rich housewives of upper-middle class gated communities. Conspicuous consumption is what it is all about. Kim sees a bracelet she likes for over $15,000 dollars and buys it in a snap. NeNe puts down nearly $7,000 for a custom tailored suit for his son. There are Escalades everywhere. These people are portrayed as living “the good life.” Having taken the conspicuous consumption that goes on in the program into account, I’m going to say this program is aimed at lower-middle and lower class America. Only the flash of capital could make anyone want to watch this program…
Where do I begin? Should I start with the problematic “I am smart somewhere under all this blonde hair” or “You are the black version of me?” Instead I think I would like to quote Kim and just say that the whole show is just “fucking bizarre.”
In terms of structure the episode was simple. The gala sets the show up as a 45 minute long narrative, with the aftermath of the gala as the endpoint of the story. Handheld cameras, one-on-one cinema-verite-like interview sessions and participants using the speakerphone option on their cellular devices all lend the production an air of reality.
However, there are just a couple of times where I was left saying to myself that these people could not possibly be this stupid. For instance, when Kim goes to a French restaurant and picks up a menu and then exclaims “What is this, poisoned fish?! What language is this?” after confusing the French poisson with the English translation right next to it. I think in ways like this (I’m assuming that this was scripted, I really am) the program tries to attract viewers with what Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette call “our desire for the authentic… [which] paradoxically hinges on our awareness that what we are watching is constructed and contains ‘fictional’ elements” (Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, Introduction, 5).
There was also the appearance of a queer character on the show. Being a gay identifying male he was of course a hairstylist (sarcasm mine). Thanks for breaking the mold, Bravo. Thanks. NeNe’s hairstylist “gay boyfriend” helps her pick out a suit for her son. NeNe quickly warns Dwight (the “gay boyfriend”) that he has to “stay away from the pink,” to which Dwight responds that he is “comfortable with [himself]” as if being comfortable with pink was a qualifier for being queer. Hmm….
But perhaps most interesting about the show is how it deals with questions of race, as well as how it represents them. At first glance it seems odd and maybe even subversive that four out of five of the women on the show are women of color. But implicitly the message seems to be one of containment. Best put by one of the participants themselves, the message is “don’t be a hater because other people have it and you don’t.”
Demographically, the number of people of color in the upper-middle and upper classes of America is just not that big (and definitely not 80%). In the end, the program does not simply present reality and race, but tries to produce it and make the interlocking issues of race and class unproblematic (Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture; Country Hicks and Urban Cliques: Mediating Race, Reality and Liberalism on MTV’s The Real World by Jon Kraszewski, 179). This issue of race on the program is an issue of what is and what is not making it into the frame of our television sets. The program makes it seem as though race is no longer a socio-economic issue. And as long as “success narratives” like these are propagated by the mass media, America’s race problems will be largely ignored and voices of dissent silenced.
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