The Lasting Impact of "Realness" In Black Reality TV
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There’s a scene in the second season of reality dating TV series I Love New York in which Tiffany Pollard, better known by her persona name New York, tells the remaining men competing for her affection that she wants to bring back former competitor, Buddha. In a prior episode, Buddha was kicked off the show for instigating a violent altercation with rival contestant Tailor Made.
During the Bachelor-meets-Survivor-style elimination portion of the following episode — featuring Pollard handing out chains instead of roses — she announces that she’s taking back control of the house in her efforts to find true love. She is tired of the mess, delivering the news with confidence and without contrition as Buddha joins her side with a bouquet of flowers. Next to Pollard, her mother and trusted chaperone throughout the series, Sister Patterson, sits in her red chair throne surveying the potentially future son-in-laws as she holds a clipboard with a stack of papers.
“The producers did not want me to do this,” Pollard stresses to the men, their “I Love New York” chains glittering from their necks. “I’m going to call you guys up one at a time and ask you to sign this piece of paper stating you are ready and willing to bring Buddha back,” Pollard continues. “And if you have love for New York, you’ll do it.”
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The remaining contestants know that to reject their former competitor’s reentry into the competition is to jeopardise their own places, so one by one they approach Sister Patterson, now holding a pen, to sign off - perhaps waiving responsibility for VH1 and the show’s producers any future consequences. Mentioning the producers has the potential to remind viewers that what we are witnessing is a controlled and curated experience. Instead, Pollard’s admission grants the show an authenticity. We’re not supposed to know the series’ facilitators are unhappy but she’s telling us anyway, as if she is saying to both the competitors and her television audience, “Forget the cameras, imma keep it real with you.”
“Of course, the contrivance of genuinity dictates reality television as a genre, but it is especially pertinent for Black casts, where authenticity and “real” have their own cultural relevance and meanings.”
After competing as New York on 2006 show Flavor of Love, where twenty-something-year-old women competed for the affections of forty-something-year-old hip-hop legend, Flavor Flav, Pollard catapulted into reality TV stardom as show villain and resident HBIC (head bitch in charge). After being named runner up not once but twice in the bid for Flav’s affection, Pollard helmed a spinoff where she presided over her own array of eccentric men, battling for her attention.
The drama of Buddha’s return is reminiscent of New York’s famed final elimination on Flavor of Love. “Why the fuck did you bring me back then?” she yelled as Flav countered, “I want everyone to know that this is not for the fucking cameras, this is real.” Their argument was dissimilar from popular fellow reality shows like The Hills, which though comparable in its construction of reality built on artifice, saw its characters feigning ignorance of spectatorship. The participants of I Love New York and Flavor of Love not so much broke but gestured towards a fourth-wall, calling attention to our voyeurism into their quests for fulfilment.
Of course, the contrivance of genuinity dictates reality television as a genre, but it is especially pertinent for Black casts, where authenticity and “real” have their own cultural relevance and meanings. Real, as in realness made legible in Black queer spaces of ballroom culture. Keepin’ it real, exemplified in hip-hop reminds one to be one’s most true self, to not put on airs. Realness isn’t inherently hindered by performance, it is, in many cases, beget by theatrics in which one exaggerates aspects of their personality. On TV, this realness has less to do with performing expected norms of Blackness via speech or dress but rather showcasing mannerisms that are an honest representation of lived performances offscreen. The question of whether or not a moment is scripted becomes less important than determining if one’s (re)actions are sincere. This interrogation and replication of authenticity rippled from television sets, permeating digital culture at large.
Though the cultural impact of reality television is not relegated solely to Black talent, it is these stars that are most frequently referenced and relivened. Pollard’s incredulous question of “Beyonce?” is repurposed whenever the renowned artist does anything of note. The many memorable quotes of NeNe Leakes of Real Housewives of Atlanta have been compiled into “best of lists” across numerous sites. In cycle four of America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks shocked the nation when she ignored the politics of respectability that she typically enforced on young Black contestants to shout one of them down in her infamous “We Were All Rooting for You” speech.
The meme-ableness of Black life, particularly Black women, has led to sometimes false enactments of our likeness. These instances of digital blackface, as coined by Joshua Lumpkin Green and popularised by Lauren Michele Jackson relies on invoking visual cues of Blackness to denote an exaggeration of feeling or action. Black people too, use these images, to signal to one another as well as nonblack people. There has been outcry, at times justified, about the negative depiction of Black women in these reality series and the misogynoir embedded into their construction—seemed most notably in Flavor of Love. Though I can’t help but wonder if these dissenters, often assumed to be of upwardly mobile or academic Black classes, use the language gifted to us from current and former reality stars like Pollard and Cardi B.
The popularity of blackness as used in memes, gifs, or reaction videos exists not only for humour, hyperbole, or a witty articulation of a common experience but for the perception of Black authority on authenticity. Like when NeNe Leakes asserts, “I said what I said?” That is so real. And when Megan Thee Stallion and Dua Lipa pay homage to Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey that is real recognising real. To insist that we, as Black women, are never exaggerated or hyperbolic could imply that we never should be.
In this way Black authenticity is close kin to Namwalli Serpell’s Black nonchalance which “is neither political action nor political passivity. It’s style. Nonchalance doesn’t step forward or turn its back. It loiters, hangs, leans, brushes past.” Extending beyond moments of virality, authenticity and realness, as tied to Blackness is imbued in the acts of contemporary influencers, current reality stars — would the Kardashians take to Twitter in an attempt to reup a televised fight, if audiences hadn’t previously shown interest in fourth-wall bending? — and digital life where we compete in the “idgaf wars” and regale audiences, imagined and actual, with “story times” (an internet phonenonmen itself predicated on Black sex worker and writer Aziah "Zola" King’s viral Twitter thread).
When watching reviews of wigs I rely on the candour of Black YouTubers, prioritising the accounts that I’ve learned to give the most accurate information. “You know I’m always going to give you my honest opinion,” these women tell me, along with hundreds of others who are viewing. When they make unforced jokes and admit their own incredulity over rising prices but reduced quality in wigs, I trust them. Their admission that they are selling me products — but only ones they would buy, that they truly use — resembles the lessons of stage-management of their reality star forebears, who often had little to peddle beyond fame and recognition themselves. Which is not to say all online performances of influencers and other digital avatars of the present are inauthentic but rather stem from a long trajectory of practice.
Words: Madison Jamar