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WHUT
It's long been assumed that Americans had a strong lead on really weird reality television. I mean, think about it, we had shows where people basically got married because the producers decided to do so.
Well, it turns out we may be beat. Zambia also has a show where 18 women compete in order to win the prize of $9000 for their marriage. But the show has a twist, all the contestants are prostitutes recruited from the streets of Zambia. Apparently they get voted off by the viewers, one by one, until the last one gets the grand marital prize.
Now, I can see how this show claims to do some good. The losers get hefty consolation prizes, and everyone apparently gets personal counseling and vocational skill training. In theory all of them will be offered full-time jobs, and the show seems to indicate that their goal is to show that prostitution is not a glamorous business in Zambia.
But as Wronging Rights points out, there's something that just seems really wrong about this show (already in its third season). And I can't help but think that if you really wanted to help prostitutes out there had to be a better way then turn them into a spectacle on TV and making them engage in cooking and housekeeping competitions on a show with the cringe-inducing title Ready for Marriage. Isn't there some other way you can show how bad prostitution is in Zambia, and how the people who are trapped in that field are real people who are willing to fight their way out if just given the chance, without forcing them to go through housecleaning competitions? Why not show them learning skills, getting jobs, building careers, and starting businesses instead?
It seems that even in Zambia, the only way television will let prostitutes leave their job is through the altar or the grave.
Well, it turns out we may be beat. Zambia also has a show where 18 women compete in order to win the prize of $9000 for their marriage. But the show has a twist, all the contestants are prostitutes recruited from the streets of Zambia. Apparently they get voted off by the viewers, one by one, until the last one gets the grand marital prize.
Now, I can see how this show claims to do some good. The losers get hefty consolation prizes, and everyone apparently gets personal counseling and vocational skill training. In theory all of them will be offered full-time jobs, and the show seems to indicate that their goal is to show that prostitution is not a glamorous business in Zambia.
But as Wronging Rights points out, there's something that just seems really wrong about this show (already in its third season). And I can't help but think that if you really wanted to help prostitutes out there had to be a better way then turn them into a spectacle on TV and making them engage in cooking and housekeeping competitions on a show with the cringe-inducing title Ready for Marriage. Isn't there some other way you can show how bad prostitution is in Zambia, and how the people who are trapped in that field are real people who are willing to fight their way out if just given the chance, without forcing them to go through housecleaning competitions? Why not show them learning skills, getting jobs, building careers, and starting businesses instead?
It seems that even in Zambia, the only way television will let prostitutes leave their job is through the altar or the grave.
no subject
The mind boggles. Women aren't prostitutes in Zambia because they *want* to be, but purely and simply to keep from starving. Instead of elevating just a few women out of that state, how about providing options so that larger numbers can help *themselves* out of destitution? How about providing economic opportunities for the men also? (Lest I be thought of as some MRA asshole, it's not because the men have it harder -- the women and children are much more exploited and need help much more -- but because if men can afford to settle in one place instead of always having to be away for work then the family unit can be much more cohesive. As it is many women who work as prostitutes in Sub-Saharan Africa are actually married. Their husband is just off somewhere, working for menial pay, and unable to support the family. So the women do one of the few things they can to get money, in spite of the profound danger it represents. It's a horrific situation.)
no subject
The Zambian thing is...odd. I can believe that the producers might have been trying to help the situation, but there had to be some way better then making a spectacle out of the whole thing. I can understand that they can't be expected to fix all, or even part, of Zambia's ills on a reality television show, but hell, can't they at least set up a sustainable system to help these women out of crushing poverty instead of doing the "18 lucky women a year" schtick? It's a disappointing thing when people who have good intentions get co-opted by people who want good PR, and then by people who want to make money.
no subject
So a woman's obligated to have sex with her husband whether she wants to or not, then, because he supports the household? Because that's what you're saying when you say that.
I see nothing wrong with viewing social interactions as a form of mutual exchange -- everyone should be doing their part, as opposed to one person doing all the taking, and the other all the giving, yes, but it's not necessarily *economic*. (And bear in mind, please, that I come from a fairly traditional cultural background that lays out strict rules. I am sometimes bemused when I catch it in myself, that things like guest-right and host-right are so deeply entrenched in how I view the world. I don't think, however, that male and female relations are dictated through economics, and people who view it (from both ends that way) have been unwittingly grossly short-changed by the society that taught them that view.
The Zambian thing -- I'm cynic enough to think that the producers wanted to make a popular sensationalist television show, that would put money in their pockets. So they came up with the most salacious thing they could get away with airing (television over there being considerably more conservative than say, Latin America), and they're exploiting the women even while they're helping them. The answer for why they didn't do something more useful? They didn't want to.
no subject
Maybe it says a lot to me that I tend to think of relationships as an evolving system of bartering and bargaining, but I do think that both people have to decide how best to use what they bring to the table. To me that act of constant compromise and continual bargaining seems profoundly economic, just not one that involves cash.
(I learned economics in a very broad school where the definition of the field was essentially the study of how you used your available resources to obtain your desired ends. Under a definition that broad the game theory interaction between two people can almost always be seen as economic - but not monetary).
no subject
Watching a few too many cases of that tends to make me think of relationships in a more give-and-take manner then I believe is commonplace in the rest of society. I'm not sure what that really says about me as oppossed to the rest of the world.
no subject
I think you've pretty much said what there is to say on the subject.
Thanks for linking Wronging Rights; I'd forgotten about that blog, and they have some interesting posts.