The major characteristic of ratchet reality is messiness: These shows and these women, according to some, have negatively defined hop essay love and hip hop essay.
But recently, thanks to Shonda Rhimes and her Shondaland production company, the conversation has shifted towards a perceived new Golden Age of TV diversity.
After all, in just a few years, the hop essay has had a hand in creating two of the most talked about and influential black female characters on TV: Both shows have been lauded for /sujet-dissertation-frangais-personnage-de-roman.html diverse casts, and for the powerful positions of the black women at their centres. So up until love and hip recently, the most dominant images of black women dissertation advice television did not come from network dramas—they came from reality TV.
And unlike the positive reactions to post-Shondaland TV, the conversations love and hip hop essay black women and reality television have hinged on the apparent harmfulness of the imagery, as well as the extension of stereotypes. But before we can discuss black women on reality television, love and hip hop essay must first discuss black women on television in general. In the mid s, most televised images of black women were on sitcoms, usually as maids or homemakers reacting to white hop essay.
Hip hop essay and a general lack of imagination had black actresses playing modern variations hip hop essay the mammy jovial fat hop essay womanthe jezebel shameless hussyand the jigaboo for laughs. Often, these actresses would have hop essay navigate hop essay tightrope of trying to present positive images of poor black folk while also thanks to overwhelmingly white writing staffs juggling the perpetuation of perceived stereotypes and archetypes.
And then, in the s, Clair Huxtable arrived. Educated, conventionally attractive, and endlessly poised, hop essay challenged notions learn more here what black motherhood and black womanhood looked like through the mode of respectability.
She was a hop essay href="/dieter-meiners-dissertation-example.html">dieter meiners dissertation example image for white audiences to consume, and one that black audiences could not link approve love and hip but aspire to.
And while she represented a kind of love and that indeed existed, she was somewhat of a fantasy.
The s came along, and with them a boom in black women and black people love and hip hop essay TV. These shows, shifting click here away from family and toward the lives of single black professionals while capitalizing hop essay the mainstreaming of love and hip hop essay culture, enjoyed high ratings across various demographics. Indeed, networks including UPN, The WB and Fox seemingly used these series to boost ratings, only to eventually cancel them to make room for shows that would appeal to white audiences.
Of course, the dearth of scripted black shows in the early aughts was also love and hip in response to the rise of reality television.
The genre was easy to produce, cheap to make, and attracted millions of viewers. VH1, along with a few other cable networks like Bravo, was at the forefront of the trend love and hip a first wave of love and hip that included Flavor of Love and its spinoffs I Love New York and Real Chance of Love.
These series presented some of the earlier archetypes of hop essay women on hop essay TV—the gold digger, the fighter, the party girl—which all seemed to play on long-established ideas of black as materialistic, violent hop essay hypersexual. Hip hop essay is a world of formulas and algorithms: Set in New York and following an assortment of male music producers, rappers, and their girlfriends, the show was an instant hit.
The Atlanta instalment of the franchise has proven to be the most popular and the most lucrative. According to Nielsen it is love and hip highest rated show among black women love and hip hop essay the demo, and its third season premiere was the love and hip hop essay in VH1 history with 5. Atlanta is the love triangle between producer Stevie J, hop essay mother of his child Mimi Faust, hop essay former stripper turned reggaeton artist Joseline Hernandez.
Later, Stevie marries Joseline, read more Mimi moves on with a rapper named Niko.
Beneath the popcorn melodrama and the trashy good fun, however, is the politics of black femininity, played out in sometimes disturbing modes. Other fan favourites play into the misogyny.
Let them come in and out. Let them know you only in and out, in and love and. Do what players do.
And how do players play? Inthe VH1 show Basketball Wives literally about the wives and mothers of basketball players in LA was the target of a massive boycott, after an online petition love and out the violent fights between its cast members surfaced online.
Presumably, post-Shondaland shows and black female hip hop are a godsend for protestors working to combat the kinds of images and storylines Scott-Young claims her audiences are thirsty for, stories that have essay chipped away at the perception of black womanhood.
But while it can be argued that reality television essay perpetuated some stereotypes, it has also subverted them. NYasserted her personhood against critics of her modelling and former sex work.
Michelle and love and hip manager Yandy Smith, have been able to parlay their involvement love and hip hop essay the series into successful businesses and careers in their respective fields. At what point does a stereotype stop being a stereotype?
After all, shows like Mob /write-me-a-research-paper-junior-high.html Dynasty and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills present similar images of women behaving badly, but rarely are they chastised for reflecting badly on an entire race.
Policing the identities of the black women on ratchet reality television is also policing the identities and the realities of the black women who watch it. To Andreeva, black audiences are a monolith, and they watch certain shows not because they appeal to hop essay on specific, individual levels but merely because they see more than two love and hip faces on the screen.
For hop essay longest time, the onus has seemingly been on black people to promote respectable images of themselves in the media in order to change ideas about blackness in general—even when oftentimes access and control of said images was limited.
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