“Hot Ghetto Mess” Unwittingly Indicts Its Creators
Black Entertainment Television’s “Hot Ghetto Mess” made its debut Wednesday night, and though its intention might have been otherwise, the show could be seen as an indictment of the network that produced it.
Yes, the name was changed after criticism that showing black people at their worst was demeaning. It is formally now called “We Got to Do Better,” but host Charlie Murphy kept calling the show by its original name, “Hot Ghetto Mess,” after the Web site that inspired it.
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“We got to do better”— as Murphy kept reiterating — can apply as well to BET.
As Andrew Wallenstein reported two weeks ago for the Hollywood Reporter, “Mess” was supposed to be a compilation of viewer-submitted home videos and BET-produced man-on-the-street segments that exhibit blacks in unflattering situations that typically illustrate the excesses of so-called hip-hop culture.
Instead, the show most prominently featured various man-and-woman-on-the-street interviews in which people were asked “How many African Americans are on the Supreme Court?” “What is the black unemployment rate?” “Who’s richer? Jay-Z or Bill Gates?” “Who is Barack Obama?” “Which came first, blacks joining the military or blacks being able to vote?” “When did slavery end?” and “What do the letters NAACP stand for?”
The level of ignorance was astounding. Some thought that with one more album, Jay-Z could be wealthier than Gates, whose net worth at the end of 2006 was estimated by Forbes magazine to be $56 billion. The hip-hop star’s earnings were $98.9 million last year, that magazine said.
How many blacks on the high court? “I don’t know, something like 10,” was one answer. NAACP? “National Colored People Something” or “National African American . . .” were two of the responses.
When did slavery end? “1757.” “Something ’72.” “1920.” “1926. “It was so long ago, I don’t even remember.” A couple of respondents engaged in polemics: “Slavery ain’t never ended.”
It must be pointed out that there were whites in the mix as well as African Americans, and that some answers were on target: Most knew that African Americans were in the military long before they got the right to vote.
However, a viewer might wonder why the respondents weren’t more civically aware. Could it be that they spent all their time tuned in to BET, the most-watched television network oriented toward African Americans?
The National Association of Black Journalists awarded BET its Thumbs Down award this year “for its depiction of black images in the media, lack of news and public affairs and the network’s neglect to broadcast live the funeral of civil rights icon Coretta Scott King in 2006,” the association announced in May. For the King funeral, the network did periodic cut-ins and left the live coverage to its Web site. The death of civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks three months earlier got similar treatment.
BET cried foul. NABJ had conveniently ignored “the announcement of the biggest investment and broadest array of black programming in television history,” the network said. Things have changed, it insisted.
“Hot Ghetto Mess” became part of that change. It was preceded Wednesday night by “S.O.B.” — “Socially Offensive Behavior” — another updated version of the old “Candid Camera” that Wednesday night featured Asian women racially insulting African American women to whom the Asians were giving pedicures.
Black actors playing priests were shown in a bar coming on to women as the “priests” read and discussed pornographic magazines.
It was more pandering to the lowest common denominator, in its way the equivalent of music videos with gyrating, scantily clad women and men aspiring to pimphood.
Fifty years ago, the NAACP demanded that “Amos ‘n’ Andy” be taken off the air in part because television viewers did not need to see blacks only as caricatures. Should we ask how far we truly have come? (Spike Lee answered a few years ago with his film “Bamboozled.”)
How much time does BET devote to showing African Americans at their best as opposed to their worst?
When BET founder Bob Johnson was criticized for the content of BET programming, Johnson would always plead that the “E” in “BET” stood for “entertainment.” Then he gutted the network’s news and public affairs programming: “BET Tonight,” “Lead Story,” “Teen Summit” all were canceled. No one was watching, he said.
Now, under the current CEO, Debra Lee, the regular public affairs programming appears to consist of one show, a discussion program called “Meet the Faith” that airs on Sunday morning at 11 a.m., when many are in church.
“Hot Ghetto Mess” concluded with Murphy repeating, “So much mess, so little time.”
He added that the lesson for him was, “I should be watching a whole lot less TV and reading more books.”
Was he talking about BET?
- Eric Deggans, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: BET diversifies with confidence
- Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Was BETâ??s â??We Got to Do Betterâ?? a Hot, Ghetto Mess? After Debut, Some Critics Say Yes
- Nekesa Mumbi Moody, Associated Press: Review: ‘Hot Ghetto Mess’ Tepid, Tired
- Jay Smooth, illdoctrine.com (video): Lukewarm Ghetto Snooze
- Marcus Vanderberg, “Everybody Hates Marcus” blog, AOL Black Voices: New Name Doesn’t Hide ‘Ghetto Mess’
