Is this telly transformation? From white people stories to black 'Reality TV' buffoons: iLIVE

Television is media space invented to broadcast visuals purportedly telling the human story, when in fact it has always told the story of white people and their cultural activities.

Through news bulletin, dramas or entertainment programs it reinforces ideologies that keep white people occupying the top space of the hierarchy while black people remain confined at the bottom.

Black producers in the field of television enter an inherited space dogged by imperialistic dogma. Black producers in that space could either be simple additions to advance preset notions of the way of life, or they could intentionally enter the fray of television to transform the narrative of black people’s story.

Only a few among us will dissent the view that reality television has become a major cultural activity of the 21 century. However phenomenal reality television has become, it does nothing to challenge social constructs that place certain races at the bottom while other races enjoy the view of being positioned on top.

Our Perfect Wedding is a television program aired on Mzansi Magic and produced by Connect TV, with a team consisting of a number of black producers. Given the patronising representation by the show of the black working class, it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that the producers have created that show for entertainment purposes and the sole objective of making a profit.

Stuart Hall writes “cultural symbol is something given in part by the social field into which it is incorporated, the practices with which it articulates and is made to resonate” with this definition in mind I would like for us to examine the effects our contribution of turning Our Perfect Wedding into a success have interpreting the collective dignity of black people.

The success of the program co-produces certain trends which can be best described as cultural practices. The practice entails the activity of watching the show on pay TV in social groups and the joining in on “the big laugh off” on pay per click social media platforms. This means the show is created to entertain viewers who can afford pay TV and internet data and that targeted audience is the black middle class.    

When the black middle class participates in the buffoonery surrounding the program they are motivated by the need to show off what they have. Humiliating pictures are taken on big screen Television sets, in opulently furnished TV viewing areas with high pixel camera phones. In just one click the black middle class shows off materialistic superiority while denigrating other black people.

All black people alive today automatically serve as symbols of blackness, regardless of the complex distractions of communal, political, religious, educational and economical backgrounds. For history’s books always bunch up the black experience in the end.

Every Sunday night the black middle class remove themselves from resonating with the conditions of other black people by laughing at them for entertainment sakes. This Heritage weekend their children will inherit a different meaning of what it means to be a black person and how to treat other black people of lower class ranking.

They will learn that you laugh at other black people lower social status, it’s for their entertainment. Instead of the black middle class using their purchasing power constructively by forcing connect TV producers to stop enriching themselves through creating hilarity on black people’s condition of lacking. Instead of using their education to interpret the Broadcasting code of conduct and then force multi choice to adhere to their demands, they laugh along.

While the new trend of the “The big laugh off” becomes a norm, Mzansi Magic is recording its history by archiving its most successful shows, they will go back and pull those archives each time they celebrate their anniversaries.

Each time they pull Our Perfect Wedding from the shelves, they will pull out certain cultural practices that were created by the success of the show, and the show created the cultural practice of “The big laugh off”. After all we shouldn’t be taking ourselves seriously isn’t that so? Yet we never find anything amusing when History books laugh at black people’s diminished selves.