Abstract
The frequency of black characters on television has increased over the years, now media research needs to look at the quality of that representation. This research seeks to examine the representation and audience perception of the dynamics of black families’ relationships on South African reality television programmes. Thus the study looks at the extent to which viewers identify and relate with the representation of black people on these shows. South Africa is in a healing process and is still transforming away from the racial prejudices and stereotypes that affected the country socio-economically and politically, and reality television is an example of South Africa’s transformation that it is still undergoing, whilst developing a new identity.
There are several studies based on reality television, however, there is a gap on focusing exclusively on race within the genre. This research study contributes to filling that gap by adding to the discourse of race within reality television, especially in the South African context. The theoretical framework for this study was based on Stuart Hall’s Representation Theory, and Stuart Hall’s developed Reception Theory centred around the “Encoding and Decoding” model of communication. This study is a qualitative research study, undertaking an interpretivist research paradigm. Data gathering consists of an audience-cum-content design. This is the combination of media content analysis and studying how audiences interpret the selected reality television programmes. The study used two methods for data gathering. Digital archival research and focus group discussions, which were analysed to reveal the various representations and audience perceptions of black families on South African reality television.
The key findings of this study showed that South African reality television shows depict black family relationships in a negative way, portraying black families’ relationships as unstable, and in a manner that perpetuates stereotypes; revealing the same discriminatory mannerisms that television during the apartheid era did. The findings from the audience perceptions showed a great level of self-awareness that black audiences have of the negative portrayals of black family relationships on television, regardless of media’s polysemic nature. A possible avenue for future research is to explore the separatist tendencies that contemporary reality television shares with the representations that were shown on television during the apartheid era.
This study concluded that representation itself has the power of showing its audiences who and what is important. Unfortunately, the current South African reality television programmes, especially the ones that air on Moja Love and Mzansi Magic, are portraying black families’ relationships as untable, without love and fraught with stereotypes.