A HUGE guilty pleasure of mine is religiously watching all of the Real World/Road Rules Challenges that MTV continues to film. I have never missed a season and I know far too much information about many of the cast members (mainly the male ones). But a lot of things have come to my attention since last night's airing of the new season, Fresh Meat II. The concept of Fresh Meat is to have veteran cast members select a partner to undergo grueling physical challenges in order to win a big cash prize. On last night’s episode, thirteen new cast members stood in front of a panel of veterans as they went through notebooks with each new contestant’s athletic statistics. A few things stood out to me. The first was that only one person of color (Darrell) was on the panel of veteran players; the other TWELVE people were white. I definitely felt a white supremacy undertone circulating between the pixels on my LG screen. Secondly, MTV has finally brought in what one could consider being a “typical” Middle Eastern man. Noor, a "fresh meat" person, has many physical characteristics of a Middle Easterner and I have no idea why MTV has waited until now to welcome on a person of his background. Though Parisa on Real World: Sydney was a proud Muslim woman, it would be hard to guess her heritage due to her lighter skin tone. I also do not think she is a good representative for one of the first Muslim people to be on Real World because no one ever remembers her (except for her annoying singing and infatuation with cast member Dunbar). So, what does all this mean? I do think that the idea of white dominance is very strong on these shows. The more I look back on previous season, the more I realize how constant it has been. White people are the primary cast members AND the white males are always the ones that take control over the game and most of the time, win. These shows are constantly reinforcing white, male, dominant norms. What surprises me is the lack of people who vocalize their concerns about this situation. But then again, I have gone through I do not know how many seasons of these Challenges and never thought about the gender and racial roles playing out on the screen. This realization only makes me want to watch it more.
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Nice job. There's a book called Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs that talks about this to some extent. You might like. Why do you think there might be so many white folks? Could it be that the show relies on people hooking up and there is still a resistance to cross-racial dating? Interesting how so many seasons have one person of color who fits a "role" of "difference" or "trouble maker." Nice job. Much better job on staying focused on the media itself. How could you connect this to ideology or hegemony?
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