Black Entertainment Television, long a backwater for gangsta rap videos, black-themed sitcom re-runs and late-night infomercials, is branching out into edgy content that embraces and satirizes African-American life in a way that has riled the irony-challenged. The latest artistic endeavor by the Viacom-owned network that has stirred some critics to accuse the network of perpetuating racial stereotypes is a very good animated music video in which the DC-based, college-educated rapper/poet D-Mite exhorts black Americans to “read a book, read a book, read a motherf*cking book” in a hip-hop version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
The video also encourages African-Americans to “raise your g-ddamned kids,” “wear deodorant,” “brush your teeth,” “buy some land” and “drink water” instead of alcohol. The profanities are bleeped out when shown on the TV version of the network, but remain intact online.
It’s a superb piece of social commentary and drives home its points in a way that no preachy, respectful or politically correct message could. Although the video has been popular on MySpace for a while, even before it hit BET’s TV programming schedule, it purportedly was developed by a new division of BET called BET Animation.
Even though some viewers criticize the video for its profanity, most critics object to what they perceive as perpetuation of negative racial stereotypes. But most viewers don’t object to the video at all, judging from the comments on YouTube. Typical of the prevailing opinion on YouTube is this comment:
Fact, this song was written by an educated Black man in efforts to get a point across to those who may not pay attention to his message unless he purveyed it in like minded terminology.
More controversial is BET’s recent decision to translate a popular user-generated video site called Hot Ghetto Mess into a TV show. Two days before that show aired, blogger and activist Gina McCauley forced BET to rename the show by convincing one of the program’s advertisers, Geico, to pull out.
McCauley’s big beef was the name of the show, which she contended makes African-Americans look bad. BET decided to rename the show…We’ve Got to Do Better, which, while certainly not derogatory, is absurd and little too rah-rah, particularly given the original authentic name of the program. As Multichannel News’ Tom Umstead writes regarding BET’s decision to cave to McCauley’s campaign, “It’s one thing to listen to the needs and wants of fanatic viewers. It’s quite another thing to give them the keys to the asylum.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:00 AM | Print | Comments (2)
Blogs We Read
