Shunning Stereotypes, a Reality Show Stars Blacks
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
hen the journalist Kevin Powell appeared on MTV's "Real World" during its first season in 1992, the producers turned him into a prototype for what would become a stock character on reality television: the temperamental black man.
Season after season "The Real World" has flattened the nuances of its black men, creating caricatures who seemed to be staggering under the heavy chips on their shoulders. They became the scapegoats of the house. They were paranoid, the white kids said. But maybe they had a reason to worry. People kept turning on them.
With its flagrant sidelining and stereotyping of black characters, reality television rates poorly with black viewers; even the huge hits are not among their 20 most-watched programs. But no tokenism or banishment come into play on "College Hill," BET's documentary series about students at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., which starts tonight (9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time). Marketed by this 24-year-old network as the "first black reality show," "College Hill," whose principals are all black, might be expected to provide a corrective to white TV's grating vaudeville casting. And sure enough, it doesn't harp on the subject of male outrage.
But though Stephen Hill, the show's executive producer, has said that "there is college life, and then there's black college life," the series turns out to be not at all a polemic on race or masculinity. It is an inventive, salty, high-velocity comic drama. If it's a corrective to anything, it's to the dull, badly cast reality shows in which the participants have no innate sense of tragedy or humor, and jokes must be synthesized in post-production.
Among the eight students picked to live together on "College Hill," race simply doesn't come up. Instead, what's on their minds — for the first two episodes, anyway — is sexism, along with good old 1970's "I'm responsible for my own orgasm" second-wave feminism. The show's main lesson may be that there's humor in that bygone subject yet.
For example, once one of the women concludes that a girls-against-guys bowling game is "sexually biased," she and her teammates decide to spike the guys' drinks to keep them from winning.
The results are empowering. "The boys were just stronger and had better hand-eye coordination, but I cheated," this student says. "I cheated to the bitter end. We lost, but we went down cheating."
Similarly, Kinda, an exuberant freshman in bleached braids, is determined to make a point about the sexes. Every other night she's been sneaking into another dorm to see a guy she calls Ducky, whom "I keep over there."
"Why can't a female enjoy intercourse?" she asks. "Or anything that a man can, just as much? And be just as good at it? I mean everyone has their talent, right? So explore, and find your talent."
More female empowerment. But not everyone in Kinda's living quarters, a coed suite of students that has been set up for the show, thinks that Kinda's promiscuity (Ducky is only one of her conquests) is so admirably progressive.
A handsome, self-regarding upper classman instructs Kinda about herself, using the third person: "Unless you want Kinda to be wrapped up six feet under in a cute little coffin, then you're going to want to wake up and realize that everything that is a part of Kinda may not be the healthiest thing."
Kinda howls with laughter, undaunted. "Women have been oppressed so much in history," she says. "It's time for them to give us a break."
Later one of her efforts to combat oppression by breaking in to see Ducky is thwarted. Stuck outside his dorm, she warns the camera: "Where there's a will, there's a way. I'm telling you. I'm formidable. There's no way I can be stopped. I'm unstoppable. I'm" — here she breaks into an unexpectedly lovely singing voice — " `Kinda Unstoppable.' "
Kinda reveals that her heroes are Lil' Kim and Christina Aguilera, and that makes sense.
In the absence of white reality TV's rigid dramatis personae, others, too, find themselves suggesting celebrity templates by which the "College Hill" kids might be judged. Delano, a heavy, low-key guy, is described by another cast member as "almost like a Ruben Studdard, but, like, `urban.' "
Jabari, a devotee of Dance Dance Revolution, the Japanese dance arcade game, is called "our own little Rain Man." Which brings up the show's greatest accomplishment: the casting of Jabari. A Rastafarian nerd, Jabari is very odd but self-assured, a brand-new television type. His unpredictable conversation with Delano about his lapses in hygiene is a high point of the second episode:
"Hey, don't worry about the fact that I was sweating while I was playing D.D.R., because that's like exercise," Jabari says.
"No, man. It's an everyday smell."
"Uh, was I stinking Wednesday night?"
"Yeah."
"Was I stinking Wednesday day?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, I was? Then, if you want to register any complaints, you register it to Miss Joan, over at Mo Hair, because that's when I got my hair done. So any complaints about my hair, then, you register it to her. I'm sure she's going to appreciate it."
Finally, Delano rests his case: "That's what it is. You're a little strong."
Jabari thinks for a minute, then processes the news. "One of the traditional clashes of all time. The nerd versus the jock. One of the classic rivalries of high school. I've got to step up the hygiene because I have a stench."
As a reported virgin who has esoteric ideas about sex, Jabari may be the only character on the show to even hint at an interest in racial politics.
"My heartfelt aspiration is mainly to make this world a better place to live in," he says at the start of the pilot. As if talking off the top of his head, he adds: "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds."
Swiftly "College Hill" cuts to Kinda in an editing move that should tip viewers off to the incisive joke at the heart of this excellent show. Kinda, it seems, is also thinking about freedom.
"I feel that underwear sometimes is so constricting," she says. "And you know, we should all just be free."
Posted by P6 at January 28, 2004 07:30 AM
Trackback URL: http://www.niggerati.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/145
Comments
I'll be honest, as I was watching the commercials for this show I was thinking: Oh, this is going to be some lame BET knock off of the Real World.
This article actually has me interested though, maybe I'll tune in, then again, maybe I'm a little old for this. :)
Posted by Khandi at January 28, 2004 06:51 PM