Reality TV and Primetime Desegregation
In today’s America, I do not know how prevalent racism is—personally, I don’t except to see Lou Dobbs celebrate Cinco De Mayo anytime soon. Neither I am looking forward to a Spike Lee movie on Bob Dylan. But that is not the point of this essay in any way.
What intrigues me about America, however, is the entirely unconnected lifestyle and interest among people of different races in this country. I am not talking about the way people celebrate Christmas or Thanksgiving. Those practices, typically limited to gift exchange and overeating, are blandly homogeneous all across America. I am talking about the most influential culture in today’s America, the primetime television culture—which in most part is mutually exclusive of one race to another.
When I came to this country eleven years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see how accepting this society acted. I found it fascinating that nobody asked me my religion or nationality. That, as my experience claims, is the first thing people want to know about you in most of the Asian countries. Soon enough, I found out what I had observed here was not an act, but an effort, that over the last couple of decades had become a way of life—even for the prejudiced faction that felt compromised. I remember my second mail to my parents back home. I wrote: “There is no such thing called a second class citizen here. The other day I had a dispute with a clerk at a pharmacy store called Eckerd’s, that woman lowered her voice when I raised mine. Try that in Hong Kong.â€
Only after I made friends of different colors and backgrounds, I grasped the gravity of cultural rift within America that pretends to be so obliging. It may sound trivial to most, but one of my biggest challenges was that I could not find a minority friend to talk about Seinfeld (the show). And I rarely found a College-educated Caucasian friend who talked about Michael Jordan without mentioning his marketable worth.
It was suffocating to be trapped between those cultures—the first of which did not live through the genius parody of the Seinfeld, and the second that cared more about the Nike-imprisoned CNN version of Michael Jordan than the ESPN version.
This progress from Black and White TV to Black or White TV can be easily explained. Minorities are attracted to television shows that feature people who look and sound like them. It is a requirement, not a craving. People don’t realize this, and those who do, don’t admit that it is still about recognition. But the big networks in the US seldom attempts to produce an ethnically assorted show, alienating the would-be minority viewers. That, I think, segregated America deeply between 7PM and 11PM. There were many Americas, split in the living rooms—coincidentally, waiting to claim the same social security and 401(K) checks.
Though I don’t think it was conceived on those grounds, Reality TV has inadvertently changed that tradition to some extent. This morning at work, I had a discussion with Ming-Hsu, Josh, and Lavanda about American Idol. Not only we all had something in common to talk about—we also agreed on who should become the next American Idol. In the middle of that conversation it hit me that we have been routinely doing this for almost six years—since the very first Survivor.
All these years, subconsciously, besides our unfeasible deadlines and eccentric bosses, we did indeed have something in common to talk about. No wonder when we go to a team lunch these days, awkward pauses are less frequent. I don’t have to explain to my semi-marginally informed co-workers for the n+1th time, why we Hindus don’t eat beef, because, now we have other topics of shared interest. Before the wait for the entrées becomes unbearable, someone always ends up saying something like: “How about that Chris Daughtry last night?â€
Our team meetings used to cure my insomnia; these days, even those meetings are becoming tolerable. On the political front, considering how polarized this nation is today, this is a remarkable cultural adjustment. As fanatical as we have become of late, Reality TV gives us something trivial to argue about.
Without a question, television is the most important mode of culture in the world today. It binds people together by staging a mutual theme of curiosity or distaste. To sustain, an eight-to-five equality may be sufficient. But it can be better if our seven-to-eleven choices too are personal, not ethnic. Isn’t this weird and wonderful, that, of all the people in America, one discourteous British man brings us together the most? Thank you Simon Cowell.
JC