Wedding Reality TV Bites Black: Subordinating Ethnic Weddings in the South African Black Culture

Abstract

Black South Africans generally celebrate two types of weddings, one white and the second ‘traditional.’ This article uses the political economy theory and draws from multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the televisual representation of these two types of weddings. Analyzed here are 10 episodes of two South African wedding reality programs, Our Perfect Wedding and Top Billing Weddings. The analysis reveals that South African wedding reality television programs displace cultural diversity and stay within the strategy of reproducing sameness by dominantly focusing on white weddings. From this perspective, ‘traditional’ weddings are backgrounded. In addition, natural black hair is erased as the shows consistently feature brides with chemically processed or store-bought hair rather than the brides' own natural hair. This article argues that white weddings and White feminine looks are normalized as attractive, while blackness is either erased or represented as inferior.

Keywords

representation reality TV weddings culture

Introduction

South Africans largely celebrate weddings when the weather is beautiful and bright in the summer months (November to January). In the Black culture, there are two types of wedding ceremonies, the white and the ‘traditional’ or ethnic wedding. In this article, I use traditional and ethnic interchangeably to mean a wedding event that hinges on ethnic beliefs that are understood to have been practiced by the Black culture over a period without being wiped away by the influence of the European culture. Using the word ‘traditional’ wedding is also an attempt to stay close to the everyday language used in the Black society to differentiate between the two types of weddings. In general, Black South Africans refer to the ethnic wedding as a traditional wedding. These traditional or ethnic weddings are premised on African cultural beliefs and traditions in which the wedding party and guests generally dress in ethnic clothes rather than the more European dress code that is associated with white weddings such as white bridal gowns and suits.

The reason Black South Africans also celebrate a white wedding rather than just the ethnic ceremony is a result of cultural contact between Black and White people. Sustained cultural contact between these groups happened when the British from the late 1800s colonized South Africa. It is during the colonial period that Black people were introduced to Christianity and church or white weddings. As such, compared to ‘Western’ cultures, white weddings are relatively new in the Black South African culture as these only began in the 1930s (Erlank, 2014). I use ‘Western’ to refer to the broad category of developed countries that include the United States and European countries such as the United Kingdom.

Before colonization, it is understood that the common practice was customary marriages (Erlank, 2014). Customary marriages are commonly concluded among family members, and unlike civil unions, customary marriages are not officiated by priests of government officials.

Theoretically, this article is underpinned by the political economy theory. By using this theory, this article investigates the production and representation strategies of two locally produced television wedding reality shows Our Perfect Wedding and Top Billing Weddings. Writing about the production practices of media organizations, Chávez (2015) has argued that the media tend to stick to uniformity rather than deviate and risk losing audiences. In addition, scholars such as Hunter (2013) have also argued that the media reproduce what has worked elsewhere to ensure profits. This reproduction of sameness negates cultural differences (Chávez, 2015). Guided by the political economy theory and drawing from a multi modal critical discourse analysis approach, this article investigates how South African wedding reality programs navigate cultural differences in locally produced shows. This is an important focal point given that South African audiences have for a long time been exposed to foreign produced wedding reality TV shows such as Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?, Destination Weddings, and Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. In these international versions, focus is on planning a lavish white wedding.

Given the media's production practices in which “producers copy the format of successful European shows and frenetically scan U.S. channels for ideas about attention grabbing plot twists” (Murray & Oullette, 2004, p. 1), what do we learn about the production and representation choices made in locally produced reality TV shows? This article grapples with these choices paying attention to the weddings of Black people, the largest racial population group in South Africa.

Literature Review

This literature review is divided into three sections. The first section deals with literature on reality television, while the second delves deeper in the subject by surveying literature on wedding reality television shows. The third section provides an overview of research conducted about media representations around issues of race and ethnicity.

Reality Television

There is a wealth of literature on reality TV. As a genre of television, reality TV includes an expansive range of programs such as entertainment, drama, information, and documentaries in which participants are seen to be “real people” (Hill, 2005, p. 2). In addition, the people are portrayed as if engaged in real-life activities (Palmer, 2004). Other scholars have noted that the programs are a mix of marketing, real life and entertainment (Murray & Ouellette, 2004). The broad and expansive nature of reality TV has made it hard for scholars to define what reality TV actually is (Bignell, 2005). However, research indicates that reality television is growing in part because it is cheap to produce (Bignell, 2005; Hill, 2005; Weber, 2011).

According to Hill (2005), reality TV emerged in the United States in the late 1980s to early 1990s and made its way to the United Kingdom in the 1990s. Also see Raphael (2004) who adds that reality TV programs emerged at a time of subdued financial prosperity with distributors looking for cheap programming (p. 124). However, given its recent emergence in South Africa, there is scant literature on reality TV and its function in this postcolonial and postapartheid setting. For this reason, while scholars know about reality TV and its functions, literature is concentrated in developed countries of the global north (European countries and North America) rather than emerging economies such as South Africa. For instance, whereas programs such as Big Brother aired in the late 1990s, it was not until 2001 that South Africa had its first season of the same program but with local participants. By 2001, Germany was already in its second season, and it would take another 2 years before Big Brother would be broadcast across the African continent (Bignell, 2005).

The program format of reality television shows makes it easy for the shows to be exported and copied (Hill, 2005). For example, following the success of shows such as Big Brother, Survivor, and Come Dine with Me in the United States and the United Kingdom, these shows were exported to South Africa and reproduced with local participants. In fact, reality television shows “rely on original programs begun in one nation, which are repurposed to fit new markets or those that follow the same concept with slight modifications” (Weber, 2015, p. 6). Either way, reality TV programs tend to follow the same format (Bignell, 2005) and reinforce values about certain people and their identities (Weber, 2015). The seeming ease of reproducing reality TV programs fits well with the political economy notion of producing sameness.

Reality TV has potential to turn people into instant celebrities and blurs the line between what can be considered an ordinary person versus a celebrity (Turner, 2006). In part, this recognizes the role reality TV plays in the production of celebrities. The intersection of celebrity culture and class is well noted in research. For instance, Tyler and Bennett (2010) argue that “celebrity produces and sustains class relations” (p. 375). Celebrity therefore works as a class discursive identity (Wood & Skeggs, 2011), an important element in this study since one of the programs analyzed is a celebrity reality show in which culture and class exist in tension as this study will show. The latest form of reality television programming to emerge in South Africa are locally produced wedding and dating shows.

Wedding Reality TV

Wedding reality TV is a subgenre of both reality TV and wedding media. In both areas, there is growing research dominated by studies conducted about United States and the United Kingdom. As a television subgenre, reality weddings have recently become integrated into to the media scene in South African homes. In contrast, wedding reality television programs have been part of the U.S. television staple for many years.

In wedding reality TV, programs focus is on couples, their families, friends, and people providing wedding services. In the U.S. and U.K. contexts, there are various popular reality wedding television shows some of which have been academically analyzed. Examples include analysis of the wedding reality program, The Knot by Engstrom (2008) in which she found that the cost of the wedding and achieving wedding perfection through consumption is emphasized. Similarly, in another wedding reality show, Say Yes to the Dress, cost is displaced and explained away as important to achieve bridal perfection (Engstrom, 2012). Overwhelmingly, weddings have been found to be underpinned by excessive consumption (Ingraham, 2009) with the same excessive spending emphasized on wedding media (Engstrom, 2008, 2012; Sgroi, 2006; Stephens, 2004).

Race and Ethnicity in Media Representations

Media representations help to introduce and normalize beliefs about ways of living, defining what is important and attractive. Representations of race and ethnicity are one way in which audiences' beliefs about themselves are either normalized, disrupted, or affirmed (Milkie, 1999). This study connects media representations with portrayals of race and ethnicity.

There has been some work done in South Africa about the representations of Black people in the media although most of this work focuses on magazines. Work by Laden (2003) argues that consumer magazines worked to represent Black South Africans as consumers in the new democracy, an emergent middle class of Black South Africans.

Beyond general consumer magazines, most of the work published about women's magazines focuses on issues of beauty and class. In these studies, scholars have noted an oppressive representation of Black women whose appearance is constructed from a narrow White feminine ideal. In other words, magazines targeted at Black women have been found to predominantly showcase Black women whose features are similar to those of White women. These are Black women with a thin body type, a light skin complexion, and straightened hair (Pilane & Iqani, 2016). This means that White looks are privileged above those of Black people. In other words, Black women who have white feminine features are represented as being above those who do not, something that extends beyond media representations. For example, Molebatsi (2009) states that the Population Registration Act of 1950 provided privileges to people whose appearance was proximal to those of White people.

This finding about oppressive media representations has been a consistent issue in research about beauty in South Africa (see studies by Gqola, 2016; Masina, 2011; Molebatsi, 2009; Wilton, 2015). The oppressive media representations are tied to consumerism and class logics as the whiteness ideal is portrayed as achievable by purchasing products. This connects self-expression in the form of self-representation to class and self-inflicted symbolic violence guided by the media. The notion of symbolic violence goes back to Pierre Bourdieu's notion of symbolic power explained as the cultural domination in which those dominated accept the dominance. People subjected to cultural dominance accept the dominance as something normal. This is like what Galtung (1990) has called cultural violence defined as a psychological process that is all consuming and relies on brainwashing to make violence feel right (p. 291).

In her analysis of evening television shows, McRobbie (2004) notes a similar symbolic violence targeted at women under the guise of correcting their appearance. For instance, McRobbie (2004) explains that in ‘make over shows,’ women endure ridicule from ‘experts’ who teach self-doubt and work to transform women's appearances. By participating in the shows, the women reproduce the dominance and accept the symbolic violence as something normal and well intentioned.

Similarly, in the South African context, to achieve the standardized appearance normalized as beautiful, Molebatsi (2009) states that Black women use of dangerous chemicals to transform their appearance. Findlay and De Beer (1980) have long noted a practice of lightening the skin through bleaching products with disastrous effects on the Black skin. In participating in skin lightening and hair straightened to achieve a White feminine look, women are engaged in a form of violence toward themselves as individuals and on the cultural group level. However, Gergen (1991) has also argued that in a postmodern world the body is fragmented as people make choices about self-representation, something the author also notes as a “dilemma of identity.”

The issue of media representations of Black women has been subject of study in other parts of the world including in the United States with similar findings. For instance, Byrd and Tharps (2014) have written that to be considered “feminine” Black women had to adopt features prescribed beautiful by White people, features including “long straight hair” since “dark skin and kinky hair were considered ugly and inferior” (p. 14). Cuvier (1833) had long asserted the superiority of White people in terms of beauty and intelligence, mocking Black people and their features particularly skin color and “woolly hair” (p. 50). As such, the brainwashing about beauty standards expands to media representations of natural Black hair.

Hair is seen to be an important part of the beauty package. Wolf (2013) states that “the mass media have made hair an important part of fashion and beauty” (p. 25). However, Hooks (1992) has found a general absence of natural Black hair in the media. Hooks (1992) argues that this erasure of natural Black hair has led Black people to place great importance in straightened hair rather than their natural hair. Hooks (1993) also writes of the “obsession” Black women have with hair, in part because for a long period an assumption prevailed “that straight hair was better and it took less time and effort to manage” (p. 85). Similarly, Thompson (2009) stresses that the emphasis on flowing hair as beautiful, negatively impacts Black women's ideas of beauty.

In South Africa, perceptions and representations of Black hair are no different. Hair in the South African context has been a debated issue of Black identity (Tate, 2007). For example, Stone (2007) narrates a story of Sandra, a girl raised by White parents but refused “white” education in part because her hair texture was not straight as that commonly associated with White people.

These media representations of Black women are consistent to the general treatment endured by Black people under colonization and apartheid. Specifically, about gender, Pelak (2005) writes of the material legacies of colonization and apartheid that continue to oppress women. Also, Onyebadi and Mbunyuza-Memani (2017) write of the triple oppression of race, gender, and class experienced by Black women under apartheid rule. As this study will show, in contemporary South Africa, it is still the values of White people that are represented as superior and attractive, a point long argued by Said (1993).

This study is located at the intersection of inherent White people's values that are tied with practices of a global and neoliberal world and how these interact with the local Black culture of South Africa. In other words, what do we learn from the production and representation strategies adopted by producers of local reality wedding television programs. Based on the production choices, how is the local culture represented in the television shows? This study grapples with these questions.

The Political Economy Framework

Theoretically, this study draws from the political economy framework, specifically as it relates to communication. Mosco (2009) defines political economy as the “study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution and consumption of resources, including in communication resources” (p. 2) Other scholars also explain that political economy relates to how economic and sociopolitical practices interact (Wasko, Murdock, & Sousa, 2011).The political economy theory is useful to understand issues of not just media production but also issues of distribution, power, and culture (Biltereyst & Meers, 2011).

Similarly, Griffin (2015) has written of the complicated relationship between production and consumption process particularly since there is often a binary process underway with producers being those with power, while those who consume are at times located at the margins. The production and distribution practices are underpinned by the desire to minimize risk while maximizing profits has also been noted by Deery (2015) particularly regarding reality television. On the lowest level of abstraction, what is produced and distributed embed ideologies that are intended for the consumption of audiences.

What is also significant in political economy is the issue of grabbing and maintaining audiences. To capture and keep audiences, TV programs compete across genres (Chávez, 2015) but also within the same genre of for instance wedding programming. In the context of wedding media in South Africa, the locally produced wedding shows emerged to compete with foreign (U.S. and U.K. shows) already broadcast to audiences. As such, the two shows analyzed here have emerged as artefacts competing for a share of the audience in a space already occupied by other wedding reality TV programs.

Since the South African shows are locally produced that raises questions about the extent the shows represent the cultures of Black South Africans in the context of weddings. For instance, do the South African programs show diverse representations of Black cultures and appearances or do representations cohere to an ideology that considers the dominant culture that represents values and practices of White people as attractive and superior as argued by Said (1993) and (Chávez, 2015), a binary between inferior Black and superior White? As Chávez (2015) argues, the political economy of television results in homogenous representations of people across different cultures leading to “erasure” and “suppression” of difference (pp. 7–9).

Using the political economy theory, Chávez (2015) argues that in the end, television programs “negatively impact” people (p. 13), although it may benefit businesses by minimizing profit losses by sticking to what works or has worked elsewhere thus enabling the reproduction of sameness leaving very if any space for diversity (Griffin, 2015).

The political economy theory, then, will make it possible to address the question of wedding representations in the Black South African society by two locally produced television programs. Contextualized in reality TV, this study draws heavily from the notion of producing and distributing sameness as articulated by Deery (2015) and how production choices displace cultural differences (Chávez, 2015).

Research Question and Method

Drawing on the literature discussed above and using a multimodal critical discourse analysis, the aim of this article is to evaluate how Top Billing Weddings and Our Perfect Wedding, two South African wedding reality TV programs, represent weddings. The question this article investigates is this: Given the political economy of the media that reproduces sameness, what production and representation strategies do producers of local television reality programs adopt and how is the local culture represented in the television shows?

Discourse is multimodal and is not reducible to just words (Machin & Mayr, 2012). Rather than analyze language, scholars also pay attention to visuals and the ideologies embedded in images. As such, multiple-criteria decision analysis reveals how words and visuals are used to shape peoples' interpretations and ideologies and in turn, how people contribute to constructing ideologies through discourse. Griffin (2015) also argues that interrogating representations must be done by analyzing images and verbal messages.

This article uses Machin and Mayr's (2012) and Van Leeuwen (2008) strategy of analyzing media texts by focusing on what is foregrounded/backgrounded in both words (lexical) and images (iconographical) to expose what is erased or included. Erasure and backgrounding are similar (Machin & Mayr, 2012; Van Leeuwen, 2008), and both indicate inferior treatment or “othering” when something else is placed on the foreground rendered visible and important. This strategy examines how the political economy of the programs shape decisions made that lead to representation strategies of weddings and brides in what is produced and distributed to audiences.

To further provide a comparative analysis regarding the representation of the two types of weddings in the reality programs, this study pays attention to time allocation and words used to refer to each wedding type. Time allocation helps to evaluate what is considered important or unimportant. Extensive time allocation means that something is considered crucial, whereas limited time allocation suggests that something is considered insignificant. The analysis of time allocation also makes it possible to identify outliers in the representations.

Ten randomly selected episodes of equal number from the two reality programs, Our Perfect Wedding and Top Billing Weddings are analyzed. All five of the Top Billing Weddings episodes are available on YouTube, while the episodes of Our Perfect Wedding were recorded for analysis. All 10 episodes were broadcast between October 2013 and November 2016. Episodes of Our Perfect Wedding are an hour long, while Top Billing Weddings average between 5 and 10 minutes of broadcast time.

These programs are the only two wedding television reality programs broadcast in South Africa. Top Billing Weddings features weddings of celebrity couples from different racial groups, while Our Perfect Weddings largely showcases the weddings of Black South Africans who are not considered celebrities. I discuss the findings here.

In all episodes of Top Billing Weddings, couples are first featured ahead of the white wedding engaged in fun activities and talking about how they met. In the scenes that follow, couples are often shown getting ready for the wedding, during and immediately after their exchange of vows. Scene after scene, viewers are treated to what has become hegemonic of white wedding preparations in this show including interviews with bridal gown designers, shoe designers, grooms' suit designers, and wedding planners, a sort of infomercial to advertise their services. These scenes are interspersed with displays of consumer excess through medium and tight camera shots of glittery décor elements set on tables, exquisite cakes, and interviews with other celebrities (with subtitles that mention their statuses) as if to justify the celebrity status of the couple.

In the case of Our Perfect Wedding, the show also adheres to the generic format of reality TV shows but works to include moments of conflict and disappointment as brides' plans crash. Interestingly, in the celebrity version, Top Billing Weddings nothing ever goes wrong, couples even have time for other activities such as horse riding, and brides are always in a relaxed mode and mostly surrounded with a few people whose presence is justified such as white wedding gown designers helping the bride into the gown and providing last-minute adjustments. Anything that goes wrong in the Our Perfect Wedding show is dramatized through brides acting out their frustration and anger on screen, a representation absent in the celebrity version.

Culture and Social Class: Displacing Blackness

The analysis illuminates a pervasive treatment of Black people's ‘culture’ via ethnic weddings as disposable. Based on the extensive amount of time allocated and the discursive features of the two programs, it is the white wedding that is predominantly positively represented. The ethnic wedding on the other hand is constructed as a disposable and inferior event and occupies very little televisual time. This is in both Our Perfect Wedding with its hour-long episodes and in Top Billing Weddings with its brief episodes that average 8 minutes. For example, in the Top Billing Weddings episodes featuring Gugu, the groom and Letshego, the bride lasting 7 minutes and 3 seconds (07:03) and another showcasing Siya, the bride and Akhona, the groom spanning a little under 7 minutes (06:55); there is no audio or visual representation of these couples' ethnic weddings. In these episodes, the ethnic wedding is completely erased.

This finding indicates that in these Top Billing Wedding episodes, a show that features celebrities, the ethnic wedding is wiped off consistent with the political economy orthodoxy of displacing local and non-Western cultural practices. Machin and Mayr (2012) and Van Leeuwen (2008) refer to this absence as ‘exclusion’ or what Chávez (2015) has termed cultural erasure, an end result of the political economy of television. Also, Machin and Mayr's (2012) and Van Leeuwen (2008) argue that something that is deemed to be inferior is excluded in visual and verbal representations, evidenced by these Top Billing episodes.

The erasure is like what Galtung (1990) conceptualized as “cultural violence” in which people are brainwashed to accept something other than their own practices. In this setup, it is as if associating celebrities with African cultural activities would dislodge their celebrity status and set them on a downward economic spiral. The binary created is that of a superior, indelible, and universal white wedding versus an inferior disposable traditional wedding. In other words, the ethnic wedding is represented as an event that has negative implications for celebrities. The ethnic wedding is therefore synonymous with what is inappropriate for celebrities. Wood and Skeggs (2011) discuss that the celebrity identity attaches itself to a higher social class, something of an expectation. From this perspective, the representation of celebrity weddings demonstrates that for the celebrity ‘class’ status to remain intact what does not fit the presumed higher class identity and in this case the ethnic wedding must be discarded. This also illustrates that it is those social activities that can be repurposed, reproduced, and redistributed with ease (the white weddings) that are fed back to society as attractive events of glamour and higher class. A person's value is thus measured through class (Skeggs, 2009). The celebrity status of the couples is examined through their social class made visible in the programs via the heightened consumption signified through wedding décor elements, venue, and other wedding paraphernalia.

It is interesting to note that in all the analyzed episodes of the noncelebrity version, Our Perfect Wedding, the ethnic wedding is represented, albeit backgrounded. In an episode featuring Ratanang, the bride and Wanda, the groom there is one audio reference to the ‘traditional’ wedding. The word ‘traditional’ is mentioned as a bridge between scenes. That is, between the white wedding and the final segment of the show. As the couple walks off the camera frame after the white wedding, Tumi, the presenter says, “the bride and groom go off to change into their traditional outfits.” Seconds later, the audience is shown the couple dancing while in ethnic clothes. The entire representation of the traditional wedding with the couple in their ethnic clothes receives a total of 1 minute and 19 seconds of airtime in an hour-long episode.

This 1 minute and 19 seconds includes the final interview with the presenter, which is conducted while the couple is still in their ethnic garb. During this interview, there is no mention of the ‘traditional’ wedding or clothes worn as is the case with for instance, the white bridal gown. It must be noted that when a couple celebrates both weddings, the two events occur sequentially with the white wedding ceremony celebrated first and later followed by the ethnic wedding. It is for this reason that episodes of Our Perfect Wedding conclude with the couple in ethnic clothes (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Ratanang and Wanda.

While the episode featuring Ratanang and Wanda is representative of the sample of Our Perfect Wedding episodes analyzed, like the celebrity version, there is one episode that is an outlier, suggesting tension in the representational mode of this show. In this episode showcasing Thandiwe, the bride and Mfanafuthi, the groom, the show spends about 4 minutes (04:00) focusing on the bride's ethnic Zulu garb. In this episode, a woman introduced through subtitles as a ‘traditional designer’ explains the isiZulu garb that the bride will wear. She talks about each piece of clothing and accessories taking care to explain what each item means in the Zulu culture (see Figure 2). Our Perfect Wedding is predominantly targeted at the Black audience. Yet, the show generally ignores the very culture of its audiences and the Black participants who appear in the program.

Figure 2.

Thandiwe, second from left flanked by the women who helped make her clothes.

Audiences are bombarded with the white weddings in ways that subordinate and displace certain African cultural practices in the form of ethnic weddings. What is represented as important and attractive are practices that are a legacy of colonization. This is like the argument by Said (1993) who states that the values of colonizers continue to be treated as better and to be preferred by people in previously colonized countries. Embedded in these texts is the treatment of practices copied from White people as if better and more important. In this way, the wedding reality TV shows bite rather than celebrate blackness. The point is that the representation of ‘traditional’ weddings is marginal and does not compare to the airtime given to white weddings. The amount of time spent showcasing white weddings and the way in which these weddings are represented reinforces the idea that white weddings are fun, attractive, and better.

Although the production and representation strategies of the two shows cohere to popular foreign TV shows and thus displace the local culture, there are complications with this arrangement. The complication arises where weddings of celebrities with cultural royalty are represented as discussed in the following.

Culture and Social Class: A complication

The cultural erasure discussed above is complicated by the inclusion of and extensive focus on the ethnic ceremony in at least two Top Billing Weddings episodes. The visual and lexical inclusion of the traditional wedding in Top Billing Weddings is a recognition of the ‘royal’ ethnic lineage and higher social standing of certain celebrities. For example, in two episodes of Top Billing Weddings, one featuring Siyolo, the groom and Criselda, the bride, and the second showcasing the wedding of Khulubuse, the groom and Fikisiwe, the bride, there is a connection to “superior” ethnic lineage that works to justify the inclusion of ethnic weddings in varying degrees (see Figures 3 and 4 for these couples).

Figure 3.

One of Siyolo and Criselda's ethnic wedding photograph included in the program.

Figure 4.

Fikisiwe and Khulubuse.

Regarding Criselda and Siyolo's wedding, the time spent talking about the couples' white wedding clothes amounts to 1 minute and 12 seconds in a 10:02 minute episode. In comparison, the amount of time spent talking about the couple's ‘traditional’ wedding gear totals to zero. However, the audience is treated to still photographs of the couples' ethnic ceremony (in these images, the couple is dressed in ethnically inspired garb—see Figure 3). The images are not discussed but are included as b-roll material during the introductory segment as the couple narrate their love journey (the story of their first meeting offering tit bits about their relationship and how they relate to each other). In addition, Siyolo is verbally referred to as a “son of a Xhosa¹chief” to justify not just the inclusion of the images (since this is not usually the case) but also the couples' outfits that depart from the usual white bridal gowns and tailored suits dominant in the program. Siyolo's father is not interviewed in the television program.

The next outlier via Khulubuse and Fikisiwe's wedding is even more interesting. The entire 7 minutes and 45 minutes (07:45) of the broadcast focuses on the couples' ethnic wedding to the complete erasure of the white wedding. Khulubuse is the South African president's nephew, while Fikiswe is the niece of the Swaziland² King. President Zuma, Khulubuse's uncle is interviewed and so are three of his four wives, Nompumelelo, Gloria, and Thobeka Zuma also introduced through subtitles as “President's wife.”

In addition, many other celebrities (actors, actresses, and musicians) are interviewed. On the bride's side of the family, Prince Sgombeni is also interviewed and talks about the cultural artefacts of the wedding. In fact, the entire episode moves between interviews and dancing. The social and cultural level of the interviewees and the couple being married as well as the extensive focus on cultures of the couple function to emphasize the superior cultural and social importance of the couple. This is particularly obvious in a show that predominantly showcases white weddings. This means that for the traditional wedding to be portrayed on television, it requires cultural justification that hinges on the cultural royalty of the couple. In voice over narration, the word “royalty” is mentioned three times to stress the higher social standing of the couple and their families. Noteworthy, interviewees and the voice over talk of “two nations coming together” through the wedding and a “strengthening of country ties.” It is therefore possible to argue that the extensive focus and singular representation of the ethnic wedding is because of the couples higher social standing not just as celebrities but also as perceived cultural and national icons. The entire wedding appears as a lecture on culture (Zulu³ and Swati,⁴ the cultural identities of the couple). In a voice-over narration, it is mentioned that “dances and traditions were learned and swapped as families exchanged gifts” suggesting something of a cultural educational process in which ethnicity is foregrounded. The celebrity wedding becomes a key moment for justified deviation. Even with the deviation that includes a focus on culture, the celebrity status of the couple is safeguarded by the repetitive mention of their royal status.

Evident in these episodes is class laddering via royal statuses. What this means is that even with celebrities, there is a social class hierarchy that operates to differentiate between celebrity levels. In other words, celebrity is not a homogenous identity or class. For example, the ethnic wedding of a son of a Chief is included through still photographs flashing in the background for 22 seconds. However, the couple connected to a higher level of ‘royalty’ in the form of a country's President and King is represented engaged in an ethnic wedding for the entire duration of the program. This illustrates that within the celebrity group, there is a conformist fulfillment of ranks structured within this higher social class. The two couple's connections to cultural principles warrant attention to their ethnic weddings, the only departure from the reproduction of sameness and the dominant television representation that portray celebrities participating in white weddings. This means noncoherence to the political economy logics of erasing the local culture warrant a higher social class and a tie to cultural royalty. In other words, while culture and class are generally represented as dialectical opposites that do not coexist, in a higher social class achieved via cultural importance, culture and class are shown to mutually coexist.

Class is used as a constant, whereas cultural lineage is a disposable feature. In other words, representational choices are stabilized by class. A couples' class justifies how and which wedding will be showcased. Celebrities who are not tied to ethnic royal lineage are homogenized, while the royals complicate the representation calling attention to ethnic lineage, thus warranting recognition of the couple's ‘powerful’ ethnicity and lineage. Class therefore becomes a prime currency to produce weddings befitting celebrities.

Black Bridal Looks

This analysis is based on bridal images or what I call the hegemonic bridal look that illustrates symbolic violence against Black brides. Focusing on hair is not a suggestion that beauty is reducible to hair; however, scholars have argued that hair has become one way in which beauty is coded in the media. Wolf (2013) states that hair has become a big part of the beauty package. Whether by accident or intentionally, predominantly Our Perfect Weddings and Top Billing Weddings feature Black women whose idea of beauty seems to be rooted in whiteness specifically regarding hair (see Figures 5 –8).

Figure 5.

Ratanang (Our Perfect Wedding).

Figure 6.

Criselda (Top Billing Weddings).

Figure 7.

Aletta (Our Perfect Wedding).

Figure 8.

Siya (Top Billing Weddings).

Machin and Mayr (2012) state that in conducting iconographical analysis, some of the questions to be asked include how people are represented and what beliefs are communicated through the representation. In these bridal images, it is as if ‘natural’ hair is ugly and ‘un-bride-like’ and or that a bride with ‘natural’ hair is failing to be a beautiful bride. As such, blackness is either ignored or whitewashed. In other words, there is symbolic violence against Black brides by the wedding media that teach brides the proper bridal look by consistently showcasing Black brides with unnatural hair.

The stable televisual representation of Black brides with fake hair is consistent with the Hooks' (1992) assertion that there is a general absence of natural Black hair in the media. The bridal images sampled above emphasize the practice of spending money to ‘fit into’ the constructed and normalized beauty standard. The reality television's political economy agenda constructs Black looks as inferior and in need of white correction via consumerism. Through their participation in these shows, Black brides act as neoliberal subjects functioning to stabilize Black looks as inadequate and in need of white improvement. This representation coheres to the oppressive treatment of Black people dating back to colonization and apartheid where blackness was criminalized.

The notion of a diverse and fragmented body in a postmodern world (Gergen, 1991) may be used to challenge and defend the brides' self-representational choices. Gergen (1991) argues that the self is dynamic, fluid, and fragmented. However, what the bridal images analyzed here illustrate is that the fragmented self and “dilemma of identity” (Gergen, 1991) largely relates to Black looks. In other words, it is blackness that fragments. As the pieces of the Black identity fall away during the fragmentation process, what emerges is an identity that is underpinned by white femininity, at least in relation to hair. Black brides assimilate themselves to white looks, a process that is connected to consumerism to suggest that blackness is connected to frugality and ugliness in wedding spaces. The notion of a fragmented self and self-representation therefore function to justify the erasure of natural Black hair and elements of the Black identity.

Through this stable representation of brides that assimilates itself to white looks, the programs safeguard the hegemony of how brides and women in their daily lives ought to showcase their beauty. There are three simultaneous processes in action. The first is the perpetuation of consumerism that is tied to class and that works to emphasize a hegemonic beauty standard. The second is the erasure of Black bridal ‘natural’ looks. The third is the inferior construction of Black women's beauty that communicates the belief that to be beautiful, Black women must be whitewashed. As such, the TV shows, in capturing the imagination of women, collapse consumerism and a hegemonic a bridal look together such that both function as indicators of beauty. In this regard, South African audiences are deprived of the opportunity to experience cultural diversity and to see beautiful Black brides with looks that are not underpinned by emulating white femininity.

Conclusion

This article has examined the production and representation strategies of South African reality wedding TV shows. Drawing from the political economy framework and a multimodal critical discourse analysis, the article has argued that there is evident cultural and symbolic violence to which the African culture and Black looks are subjected. The production choices evident in the representations demonstrate three interrelated issues. First, there is positive representation of values and practices that are underpinned by whiteness. This is evident in the superior representation of white weddings as if universal and normative, a form of cultural violence in which Africans themselves participate. Second, and still with cultural violence, while the white wedding is tied to a higher social status and normalized as better, the ethnic wedding is represented as a disposable feature of blackness. In wedding of noncelebrities, although not a discursive feature, the traditional wedding is stabilized through repetitive inclusion. The inclusion of this type of wedding with people who are noncelebrities suggests a class-based strategy in which the African culture is associated with those in the lower social classes. On the second level, the erasure of traditional weddings in the celebrity television program illustrates a conflictual relationship between class and culture. In this arrangement, culture and class are represented as if they do not coexist.

Erasing the African culture in the higher class is complicated by cultural royalty as people with significant cultural lineage are associated with ethnic weddings something not done for other celebrities. As such, whereas White people's values and practices are stabilized irrespective of class, the African culture is represented as requiring justification for inclusion depending on cultural royalty in instances of people with a higher social class.

In very similar ways, Black feminine looks are also subjected to symbolic violence. Hair, specifically, is rendered inadequate, whitewashed, and standardized. Such action is indicative of symbolic violence toward Black women whose hair is being erased, a violence in which Black women embrace. This is because Black brides seem to accept a version of bridehood that downplays their Black features and assimilates itself to whiteness and sameness.

By choosing to produce shows that feature Black brides whose idea of beautiful hair emulates white feminine looks, the shows conform to the representational mode that homogenizes women and in the process, also disallows racial difference. As such, these TV programs construct an image of Black bridehood that hinges on representing Black looks as if inadequate and in need of white correction, an illustration of deeper politics of racial inequality in which White looks are represented as superior and attractive.

The political economy of these programs is clear: Profits should be maximized irrespective of cultural ruin and whatever does not work to increase profits or does not fit generic scripts should be largely ignored. Save for a few complications, it seems that the representation of weddings in South African reality television predominantly exposes audiences to what audiences have long been exposed to through “Western” imported wedding reality TV shows such as Whose Wedding Is It Anyway, Destination Weddings, and Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. Although Black South Africans celebrate two types of weddings, fundamentally, the discourse of reality wedding television displaces blackness.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani holds a PhD in Mass Communication and Media Arts from the Southern Illinois University. She teaches courses in media, culture, and communication and is interested in issues of representation, activism, and social change.

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