(ThyBlackMan.com) I just spent one hour of my life watching VH1’s Love & Hip-Hop Reality Check; the behind the scenes wrap of the reality series that would have to suffice for an actual reunion since half the cast can’t stand each other. While watching the show I learned Mona Scott-Young, the only voice of reason on the show for the brief moment we saw her (when she told Yandy her resignation email was all wrong), is actually the show’s executive producer. I learned the show had been in the works for nearly as long as Jim Jones and Chrissy have been together. And I learned to no surprise the producers chased story lines calling them scenes as if the show were an actual scripted drama instead of what is purported to be the random moments that happen in these people’s lives caught on camera and slickly edited together. 99.9 percent of the TV watching world knows reality television is as real as a plastic plant set in the sun to shimmer. But what got me the most is when Mona said to Erica Mena “these shows don’t represent everything about who you are?”
If these shows are not a complete representation, which we know they’re not, I have to ask the stupid question of the day, why are they made out to be so? And more importantly what is their impact? 
I just spent one hour of my life watching VH1?s Love & Hip-Hop Reality Check; the behind the scenes wrap of the reality series that would have to suffice for an actual reunion since half the cast can’t stand each other. While watching the show I learned Mona Scott-Young, the only voice of reason on the show for the brief moment we saw her (when she told Yandy her resignation email was all wrong), is actually the show’s executive producer. I learned the show had been in the works for nearly as long as Jim Jones and Chrissy have been together. And I learned to no surprise the producers chased story lines calling them scenes as if the show were an actual scripted drama instead of what is purported to be the random moments that happen in these people’s lives caught on camera and slickly edited together. 99.9 percent of the TV watching world knows reality television is as real as a plastic plant set in the sun to shimmer. But what got me the most is when Mona said to Erica Mena “these shows don’t represent everything about who you are?”
If these shows are not a complete representation, which we know they’re not, I have to ask the stupid question of the day, why are they made out to be so? And more importantly what is their impact?
I ask because the airwaves are now being inundated with reality television shows that are neither real or representative of the group represented; especially the casts prominently featuring Black women.
The drama on Real Housewives of Atlanta continues to wrack up ratings. The pointless fight between Marlo and Sheree incited by a “well-meaning” but messy Cynthia made absolutely no sense. The fist-fighting, drink throwing, weave pulling, name calling, finger wagging, “Bitch, you better behave” season of Love & Hip-Hop was apparently more about knowing your place in the show’s line-up than chronicling the lives of women in the game, in the industry, or just attached to the hip of the right man in the game or in the industry.
These shows have no real elements but the cities they are set in, they represent nothing more than foolery and fuckery at its best and substance is so severely lacking that I learn more from Kathy Lee and Hoda waking up with wine every morning than I do from a group of women to which on some level I could possibly relate to; if it is in background only.
Yet here we are seeing these shows and their spin-offs. Love & Hip-Hop is heading south for Love & Hip-Hop Hotlanta. Basketball Wives is returning and apparently Jennifer and Evelyn are no longer friends. That franchise spawned the spinoff Basketball Wives: LA and Baseball Wives. BRAVO’s Real Housewives franchise is in several locations but Atlanta is always the spicy one. Those that don’t measure up to the brash ladies of the South are cut; i.e. the miserable failings of Real Housewives of D.C. and Real Housewives of Miami.
These shows are all horrible. Yet it hurts my heart to know it is Black women helming these shows toward a quick rating and a worse stigma attached to the whole of African-American women. Shauna O’Neal, Mona Scott-Young I’m talking to you.
Yes I see my part in the contribution to the rating and stigma by watching. But these shows are soooo bad they are good. It’s like when a former boss told me that if I fucked up I better fuck up so bad it’s amazing. Love & Hip-Hop, Basketball Wives, and Real Housewives of Atlanta fit the description of the epically beautiful fuck up.
The fuck up doesn’t happen when the cameras are rolling. The fuck up happens when the cameras stop and actual reality sets in. Just how Chrissy was pissed by being manipulated into being a brawler, or how Nene realized how stupid she looks when she argues by seeing herself mirrored in Marlo is how the whole of how Black women feel when some choose to relate to us on a reality TV level that we may hold inside but in no way represents us in totality.
Yes I can be angry. Yes I can be a bitch. And if I had to I might could probably fight and throw a few blows and bows. But what woman can’t if put in the right pressure cooking situation where all your buttons are being pushed and you go into survival mode; fight or flight, and the camera’s closing in don’t allow you the option to leave. Under those circumstances I may get a little out of character too. But I’m not under those circumstances everyday, not even at my job where a camera somewhere is usually rolling. Likewise, I highly doubt our celeb-reality characters are constantly in these circumstances.
And here in lies the fuck up factor. When the camera’s stop rolling perception is reality. What is perceived to be real is in the mind of the beholder. Watching these shows driven by conflict only is antagonistic toward viewers. Black women watching these shows either identify with the hackneyed drama or are disgusted that they may be presented with this foolishness at some point in their day and have to combat the ignorance with a smart quip that is witty while offering the requisite “shut the fuck up talking to me about that bullshit.” Black men watching these shows may categorize the women in their lives according to the characters on the screen, seek out women like those represented (the ride or die, the docile and meek, the down for whatever) hold the women in their lives that much tighter, disregard all Black women as being what is portrayed (reinforcing already negative stereotypes) or have a myriad of other reactions that have a 50:50 chance of being in the representation of a Black woman’s best interest. Then there are the other viewing demographics who have no innate knowledge of what it is to be Black or Black and female. They may watch these shows and take them at face value even when their daily interactions with women of color say otherwise, they may watch these shows and write them off as foolish shenanigans of TV producers, or they may form no formal opinion but their actions, ways and means show they have soaked up a false representation that now influences their own subconscious personal beliefs.
The endgame of reality television and the endgame of the perception is reality thought process that reality television creates do not align. The endgame of reality television is to entertain. The endgame of the perception is reality thought process is to draw a conclusion. The two are not congruent. They don’t go together. This is what makes the fuck up so beautiful. The solution found is proven true with each new episode of the airwave poison. Just like a junkie who finds heaven in a high, reality television watchers find real life situation solutions in a show meant to purely entertain.
This fuck up is only epically beautiful in just how far it is able to set back groups of people based solely on how said people will process the information given. But eventually the entertainment is gone, it is worn out and all that is left are a set of conclusions and solutions attached actual reality. Just like when a junkie loses a high they may live some form of Coyote Ugly, when a viewer loses their entertainment they’re living in a world of surreality where nothing is as what it was.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, reality television viewers of all ages, it’s time to put the pipe, the bottle and the stupid box down and go to rehab.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Do you need a break from reality?
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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