The Good, the Baddies, and the Ugly

(upbeat music) - Reality TV is a spectrum. On one end, you have gentle competitions like the Great British Bake Off. - Jamaican breakfast? - Yes. - I like it. - In the middle, you have drama and high stakes, highlighted in mainstream stalwarts like the bachelor and selling sunset. - Yes. - He's sound actually ridiculous. - And I know it. - 'Cause you don't want to admit that you were wrong. - And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the chaos on Sue's network. ♪ Welcome to Betty ♪ (upbeat music) - Sue's network was founded in 2018 by television producer, Lionel Plummer, who serves as CEO, alongside digital creators, Distorm Power, Amanda Cerney, and Andrew Bachelors. For only $6, you can get access to shows like Jocelyn's Cabaret. I love you, Bobby, per, featuring the Lake Great Influencer Rolling, right? - I came here to have a conversation. - And we have a one. Welcome to the Sue's network. And LaPiece, the resistance, the Batty's franchise. - Batty's where you wish! (crowd cheering) - The idea for Batty's began as a reunion special for cast members of the reality show, Bad Girls Club, from the Mid-Auts, but soon expanded into a multi-verse of content. Batty's East, Batty's West, Batty's Midwest, even Batty's Caribbean, also Batty's Africa. The premise is that these young women, and sometimes young men, travel the country doing club promotion gigs, or just living together in a house barely big enough to fit all of these personalities. But the real draw of the shows, the fights. At any point, and sometimes for no reason, the show can go from two people having a conversation to an all-out, unedited brawl. - Hey, let her go, hey, let her go. Zeus is a subscription network, so their streaming numbers aren't public, but just to give you a sense of how many people are watching. Here's what we can say. The official YouTube channel for Zeus Network has 1.21 million subscribers. Super trailers for its series like Batty's West, and Batty's South consistently hit 1 million to 5 million views directly on the channel. Sometimes even more. The company has also said that between its cast members, influencers, and content creators, they are reaching a global audience of over 100 million people. Zeus Network co-founder Lemuel Plummer says that these shows give participants a platform to share their talent, and viewers a "raw-real-authentic" look at life. But as you watch more and more of the shows, the Batty's house starts to look less like a paradise and more like a pressure cooker. So I'm curious, is this just TV 40 generation or are we crossing a line? To find out, I'm here with Dr. Dunitra C. Allyson, professor and chair of Africana Studies at Stockton University. Welcome to the show, Dr. Allyson. Thank you so much for having me. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Loose, and you're listening to its "Benham Minute" from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. And a reminder, if you love its "Benham Minute," which from the sweet comments y'all have been leaving, it sounds like maybe you do. Be sure to follow or subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app. That way you get new episodes the moment they drop. I want to get a lay of the land, talk to me about how we got here. What shows have normalized a type of chaos that led us to what we're watching now? You know, via companies like Zeus Network. Yeah, I mean, first of all, reality television, you know, started as hitting camera shows, right? So, that's one thing. But then, you know, when you fast forward to the '90s and we get to the real world, seven strangers picked to live in a loft and have the lives taped to find out what happens. What? When people stop being polite. 'Cause you get the phone and start getting real. The real world. I think that's what really started this whole idea of people living together in a house and let's see what happens. So that really opened the door essentially for what gave birth to where we are today. Is just this almost intentional put people together. Let's see how they clash, kind of thing. We all see if they fight. And it's just got progressively more and more on real world, it was more like arguments. And then, of course, fast forward to the day and baddies and it's just all out brawls. I've watched a couple episodes of Jocelyn's Cabaret. I can't, I can't talk about this on the show if I've never seen it. I've seen a few episodes of quite a few Zeus Network shows and I'm like, I saw a blood drawn. Okay, Jocelyn's Cabaret. I'm like, I'm supposed to be putting together a cabaret show. How do we get to drawing blood? Like, it doesn't make sense. But also, I mean, to your point, we have obviously, you know, shows like the real world and things like that were as arguments. And then I also think about shows like Mori and Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones to a certain degree, sometimes Ricky Lake. But I would say like Mori and Jerry Springer are really up there. Where like a heightened dramatic conflict became really normal to see every day. There was enough conflict on those shows that even the security guard got a play enough to get his own show. It's not like this moment right now with Zeus Network totally came out of nowhere and just like is occurring in a vacuum, whether it's Jerry Springer or Mori or, or even like housewives, right? Like, I mean, I've seen those girls flip tables and bunch each other watching conflict on TV is obviously like nothing new. But there is something different going on with these shows on Zeus Network. I mean, you've seen these shows before. I wonder when you watch them, what makes them entertaining and what makes them troubling? I know a lot of people who really do enjoy these shows. And the most common reasoning I hear from them is it's an escape, but like it's a kind of mindless fun and you're just watching people go crazy. And so that's really what I think attracts people. Just like, you know, people want to see a train wreck or people slow down when they see an accident. I feel like it's on that same order, but in terms of what's harmful, I mean, I've spent decades researching black depictions and portrayals on television and in film. And the negative perception that we often receive is connected to how we're portrayed on TV shows and in film. And that's what's harmful. I feel like it just feeds into this idea that like black women are just wild and crazy and all that kind of thing and they can just snap in any minute and start fighting. And for some people, it confirms that. And even more so because it's called reality TV. So I think that's really what's harmful about it is this idea that this is reality. - I mean, a lot of what you're saying resonates with me. I think these shows are very distressing to watch. You know, I'm looking at the people going through all this and I'm like, oh my gosh, I just feel for them so much. It's like it's too much. It's like there's too much hoot and hoot and hollering. They fight and, okay, so let's say you see somebody get into a fight on housewives because it has all of this bravo polish and tons of money. They've got all these different story producers and all these different editors trying to figure out how to show the moments most cinematically. And whereas on Zeus Network shows, it's just too much chaos for me. Where I can't even follow what's going on. - Right, agreed. - But some of the people on the shows, though many of them are beautiful, many of them are young. A lot of them are charming or interesting in their own way. Some of them end up being like talented. It doesn't surprise me why people would connect with them and want to continue to follow them on social media and support what they're doing. I mean, I think about Biggie from Baddie's. Every song that she's put out is very good. I'm actually actually an extremely talented rapper in addition to being successful and beautiful. I understand why some of the people who are participating in these shows are so attention grabbing and why audiences would be interested in them. And also to the other thing I think is that a lot of the things that the women on these shows do or the people on these shows do, argue by, try to get famous, cry, get drunk, experiment with drugs, perhaps, party, like these are all things that young people have been doing for generations without cameras around. I don't have really any judgment on those activities per se because if a bunch of cameras are following me and my friends around when I was that age, Lord have mercy. Who knows what they would have seen, right? But watching these shows makes me really, really question like a business built on mining those moments of drama for entertainment, especially when there really isn't that much else to balance it out. I think with other sort of reality TV shows, even like you said, obviously there's tons of like talent ones and even some of the talent ones had drama, like I remember watching "Making the Band" and when I was like high school age and there was tons of drama, but also you would have it countered in a way through like seeing a bunch of people singing and dancing. ♪ I'm gonna do it baby, baby, baby, I'm gonna do it ♪ There's a lot of drama on Drag Race, obviously, but you also get to see all of these really talented people show off, or even, like, housewives. There's, like, not saying that housewives has tons of routine qualities, but more so because you're shown so many different areas of the participants' lives, you end up seeing them in a much more well-rounded way than this sort of acute, dramatic, heightened, conflict situations that you are just repeatedly seeing on shows like the ones on the Zoos Network. Right. Yeah. And again, it's just feeding a negative narrative about black women as it is, right? Are there women who do exactly what we see on Zoos? Absolutely. But, like you said, if there's not a counter narrative, then it leaves the implication that that's how all black women are, right? And that's all there is to the women that are on the show. That's all there is to them. Exactly. And really sad that, like you said, some of them are talented in other ways, and it's kind of sad that that's the way you have to get your foot in the door these days is, you know, if you are a good singer or rapper or whatever, to get your foot in the door, you have to kind of do this. And that's kind of a sad commentary, I think, on where we are that some people feel like that's their only way to do it. You might see them on something else and it's like, oh my God, she's very sweet. And she's this and she's that. And I wouldn't know that from what I've seen on baddies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really, really good point. The violence that we're exposed to while watching the show, I mean, it feels like a real escalation of violence and conflict that sometimes to me can feel like a race to the bottom. Like how much more shocking can we get in order to attract attention, right? I see people fighting so hard that like their bodies are popping out of their clothes. In a lot of ways, I feel like they get harmed even though I'm sure they feel like, you know, there's so many benefits for them to be on the show because, oh, they're their social media following goes up and like all of those other things do happen for them. But they also get kind of pigeonholed in stereotype like it's hard to once you've established like this is the way that I've become famous, it's it's difficult to move yourself to the next level where again, like if your aspiration is to be an actress, then, you know, what are the odds that you're going to get some really serious kind of important role if this is how you got your foot in the door. So I think that's harmful, but I also, and again, like I said, for all of us who are being put into this box of this is how black women behave, then that is also harmful for all of us in a lot of ways. I mean, I have been stereotype just as a professor on a campus, I'm still looked at as somebody who could potentially do what they're seeing being done on the show. So yeah, I've had someone say to me before like, oh, I'm so glad you don't have a attitude like I thought you were going to have. Oh, yes, in a professional setting, yes. So we're all being harmed if you ask me. Coming up after the break, if you're just a sweetheart and you really want to like act in a drama series or something like that, like it's going to be hard for you to cross over and make that transition from how the world came to know you. Stick around. Is it black women's responsibility, black people's responsibility to, you know, manage others' expectations of us, like perhaps these people are just being themselves. Why do we have to ascribe some sort of value to that? Yeah, I mean, no, first of all, I'll say no, it's not our responsibility, but it affects us most, I feel like. So, you know, it's just like, is it black people's responsibility and in racism, no, but we often are most affected by it, right? So yes, one could argue that all reality shows there's some level of foolishness and over the top and all of that. The real housewives that are all white, they're still throwing drinks in each other's faces and acting crazy, but we, as black people, often get put in a box that you see something over here or you see something on television or even the news and ascribe that to all of us. That for me is, no, that's not our fault or anything like that, but we do have some responsibility to address it, right? And not to contribute to it, which some of those who are now making money off of these shows are contributing to it. And that's what I think is problematic in a lot of ways is that, you know, we often get put in a box, like I said, it's not our responsibility or our fault even, but we do have to address it. When you look at this new landscape of, you know, bad girl's club successors, the depictions of them on screen, you know, seem to connect to a stereotype of black women that you have written about the sapphire. For people who may not be familiar, could you explain the sapphire stereotype and talk to me about how the portrayals of these women on the shows on this network kind of relate back to or even complicate the sapphire stereotype? Yeah, absolutely. So the sapphire stereotype, you know, it goes way back. I mean, one of the first kind of depictions that we point to is sapphire from Amos and Andy. Her name was literally sapphire. Now, we didn't really get sapphire. I'm going to have this out because you wasn't wrong, George Stevens. Even though you sit down, man, he's that presence without complaint on high goal to Chicago with my she was just ornery. She was just mean. It's a black woman who's constantly nagging and especially nagging black men, right? So that was like a early depiction of that. It also is this sassy kind of depiction where, you know, Nick Roland and child, let me tell you, you know, all of that kind of thing, right? And that became in later shows like, what's happening? The little girl, D, like she was just, she was a lot, you can't leave this house. If you don't, I'm going to run away and mama come home and find me gone and get hysterical. Roger rerun. They're trying to have fun and she's telling on them and she's, you know, this and that. So it was just this really over the top sassyness as well. I'm not saying I don't love Dee, but Dee was a lot, right? So, so it's also that. I mean, also to this framing is something, this framing that, that what we're, what the audience is watching is real and raw. I mean, that comes from the very top, let me old plumber, he's the co-founder and CEO of this network. In 2023, he said this on DJ academics podcast. You know, we brand ourselves as a real authentic network. Like I say, we keep it raw, we promote things being as real as it could be. I mean, we're not trying to produce or story produce certain shows. It's all about authenticity and the raw and realness of our projects. I mean, sometimes the people heading up these programs, like Natalie Nunn and, and Jocelyn Hernandez, you know, they were subject to the very same type of shows that they participated in when they were younger, like Batgirl's Club and Love and Hip Hop. And now, they either have, you know, a high sort of EP positions with Zeus network that got their own shows that they are in charge of and that they're EPing or in, in Jocelyn Hernandez's case, she has started her own streaming network called Why Are You Here TV? How should we think about them, even just through the lens of Massage and War? For me, it doesn't make it any better. I don't, like even Mona Scott Young, who was over Love and Hip Hop, like I don't necessarily see that as, well, at least they're running things, and some people do. Some people will say, oh, well, at least they're running things now. But I'm not sure that that necessarily makes it better or more admirable to me, you know, even the whole thing that just came out with Tyra Banks and, and like, how she was behind the scenes with her show and it's like, okay, you went through all of these challenging things as a model and then why would you subject other models to those kind of things? So it just makes me question them more, not necessarily say, oh, well, at least they're in charge now. Yeah. Yeah. Thinking more about the people who are talent, right? That's making these shows. On that same podcast with DJ Academics, Zeus Network, co-founder and CEO Lemuel Plummer had said that the trade-off for doing these shows is exposure or a platform to kind of showcase themselves or their talent. You know, we identify certain people that people want to see and people that they find entertaining that have a unique story to tell, and they want to see it. and outlet to tell their story. - In very rare cases on reality TV, especially like high-conflict reality TV, this does happen, you know, think party B, right? And even biggie, like I said, she's really talented, like she's, I think has the potential to have a really big impact in music. But what's the catch 22 in sort of the promise of exposure as the ultimate payment? - Well, I mean, again, there's a way that you became exposed, right? So people come to know you in a certain way, in a certain light. And I think that it's probably hard to move away from that if you're trying to do something else with your talent or with your career. And so I think that's probably the catch 22 of it and the challenge of it. And even, as you say, like some people do kind of make it from this world, but I would argue that that's few, right? Like we can name, you know, on one hand, maybe two, the people who really came out of it and did a lot more beyond that, but of the dozens and dozens of girls who came through these doors from bad girls clubs to baddies. You know, I would argue that it's not necessarily the case that they just blew up and made it big in some other way. I do think that it's challenging and there's definitely a catch 22 of it. Especially if what you want to do ultimately or your talent is different than that. - Right, different than what you're showing on the show, sure. - Exactly, exactly. If you're just a sweetheart and you really want to like act in a drama series or something like that, like it's gonna be hard for you to cross over and make that transition from how the world came to know you. - Yeah, that's true, that's true. I mean, and I'll say like I looked into sort of how much it seems people are making, 'cause Zeus Network keeps a lot of their financial information private. If you look up what people who have appeared on these shows have said, you can see things running the full gamut. You know, you've got someone like Biggie on one end who is making apparently a lot of money. She has said this and also Natalie Nunn has said this, but then you also got someone like Russian cream who was on baddies Africa who said that she was only paid $20,000 for that season. I just bring that up to say that like they've all said, you know, different things about how much they've gotten paid to appear on these shows. And so I can't really be sure how much money they're making, but I will say it does seem like people at the very, very top are definitely making a pretty good amount of money. - Oh, absolutely. A lot of what we talked about today are essentially labor issues. How do you see these labor issues with Zeus Network replicated in other areas of society? - Again, as a whole financially in this country, black folks have struggled quite a bit. Yes, there are wealthy folks and there are people who are doing really well, but when you're talking about larger numbers, it's typically people who are at the bottom. So, Hadi McDaniel, who was like the first black person to get an Oscar, her entire career she played a Mammy. But she famously once said like, I can either play a maid in a movie, you know, and make a pretty good amount of money, or I'd really be one, like those were her limited choices in the 1920s and 30s when she was famous, right? So, I think that's the real kind of challenge of it all. A lot of these people that go this route for these kind of reality shows are people who might have otherwise been in a tough situation financially. And so they make these choices at that being their option. That's our societal structure. And it's unfortunate, but that's reality. Now that's reality, that's reality. Well, oh my gosh. I really appreciate this conversation. So, so much, I have learned so, so much here today. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, thank you. I enjoyed having the conversation with you. I enjoy your show. And yeah, I look forward to hearing more from you. That was Dr. Dunitris C. Allison, professor and chair of Africana Studies at Stockton University. This episode of It's Been A Minute was produced by. Cory Antonio Roos. This episode was edited by Nina Patuck. Our supervising producer is. Sheriff Vincent. Our executive producer is Barton Gurdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been A Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.