Anyone feel that "Real Housewives of Atlanta" stereotyped the city? (Alpharetta: insurance, to buy)
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Anyone feel that "Real Housewives of Atlanta" stereotyped the city?
Does anyone feel like the bravo hit reality show "Real Housewives of Atlanta" stereotyped our city? My girlfriend was in love with this show and forced me to watch it, at first I thought it was okay but stupid but then i started to think about all the negative stereotypes the show was projecting.
4 out of the 5 women on the show were black, which is 80%. I think its great that black woman are getting a larger role in televison but considering the city of Atlanta is 55% black and the northern suburbs where the woman lived are much less black than that do you think that the producers were trying to mislead viewers by making atlanta seem much blacker?
Also I didn't care for the gold digging , "bling bling" aspect of the show. Atlanta is a largely working class city but the show made it seem like we all ride esclades with spinners and buy diamonds like they are candy. The women kept on saying in Atlanta money and class is everything. That might be true to a certian extent in the richer 'burbs but that does not hold true for a large part of the metro area.
Does anyone feel like the bravo hit reality show "Real Housewives of Atlanta" stereotyped our city? My girlfriend was in love with this show and forced me to watch it, at first I thought it was okay but stupid but then i started to think about all the negative stereotypes the show was projecting.
4 out of the 5 women on the show were black, which is 80%. I think its great that black woman are getting a larger role in televison but considering the city of Atlanta is 55% black and the northern suburbs where the woman lived are much less black than that do you think that the producers were trying to mislead viewers by making atlanta seem much blacker?
Also I didn't care for the gold digging , "bling bling" aspect of the show. Atlanta is a largely working class city but the show made it seem like we all ride esclades with spinners and buy diamonds like they are candy. The women kept on saying in Atlanta money and class is everything. That might be true to a certian extent in the richer 'burbs but that does not hold true for a large part of the metro area.
Any responses?
Were the producers trying to 'mislead' by implying that Atlanta as a whole was more black than it is? No, but it is kind of an interesting question.
As for Atlanta being working class, that's very debatable. Atlanta in my opinion has much less of a working class consciuosness than the larger industrial cities like Los Angeles and Chicago. Not to mention less of an industrial feel to the place. When you drive into Atlanta, what greets you? Sleek post-industrial palaces and not the massive industrial fortifications and complexes (vast plants and factories) like there are when you come up into the city of Chicago from the south, say from Gary, IN, which makes you think Wow, this must have been one of the big motors of modern industrialism in its heyday. That whole thing basically passed Atlanta by. So, though class is very real here (where is it NOT?), it's like other things in the South. It's heavily racialized, which gets back maybe to your original question.
Obviously though to producers from LA/NY, Atlanta is a black mecca (see other current thread) and more particularly an upper-middle class and upper class black mecca. So that's going to be seized on a pitched as a show concept. It's not really any more realistic or less than using these ritzy OC ladies as representatives of Orange County.
Does anyone feel like the bravo hit reality show "Real Housewives of Atlanta" stereotyped our city? My girlfriend was in love with this show and forced me to watch it, at first I thought it was okay but stupid but then i started to think about all the negative stereotypes the show was projecting.
4 out of the 5 women on the show were black, which is 80%. I think its great that black woman are getting a larger role in televison but considering the city of Atlanta is 55% black and the northern suburbs where the woman lived are much less black than that do you think that the producers were trying to mislead viewers by making atlanta seem much blacker?
Also I didn't care for the gold digging , "bling bling" aspect of the show. Atlanta is a largely working class city but the show made it seem like we all ride esclades with spinners and buy diamonds like they are candy. The women kept on saying in Atlanta money and class is everything. That might be true to a certian extent in the richer 'burbs but that does not hold true for a large part of the metro area.
Any responses?
why do they call it "the Real Housewives of Atlanta" when none of them live in Atlanta? They are all up in Alpharetta and Sugarloaf areas.. none of them live in Atlanta.
By working class I didn't mean industrial. I meant that the lavish lifestyle that is projected by this televison show is the not the one of your average Atlantan. The average income for a family in Atlanta is $55,000 so for the show I do believe the show is misleading people by showing images of the fabulously wealthy because that is definitley now how Real Housewives in Atlanta live.
Atlanta is NOT a workingclass city. There are some parts of it that are, but Atlanta is largely a professional city... lots of Yuppies. When I think of a working class city, I think of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, etc..
I'd put Atlanta in teh category of Dallas, Washington, DC, Seattle, and Denver.
why do they call it "the Real Housewives of Atlanta" when none of them live in Atlanta? They are all up in Alpharetta and Sugarloaf areas.. none of them live in Atlanta.
Probablly because if they called it the Real Housewives of Sugarloaf people wouldn't have no idea where that was but the brand name "Atlanta" is much more well known and more dynamic which in the producers' minds will make people want to watch the show.
Probablly because if they called it the Real Housewives of Sugarloaf people wouldn't have no idea where that was but the brand name "Atlanta" is much more well known and more dynamic which in the producers' minds will make people want to watch the show.
That's a good one AtlGuy! I almost spit out my drink laughing!
It's show business my friend! (Talking to the OP here.)
Don't you think there have been a few folks in the humbler parts of Anaheim and Garden Grove who grumble about the way their Orange County is (mis)portrayed?
Unless what you're saying is that it's not accurate to refer to people in Alpharetta as being in Atlanta. Well, let's not get that argument going again. Alpharetta is just as much 'Atlanta' as Chevy Chase is DC, Scarsdale or Greenwich is NYC, or Evanston is Chicago. W/o Miami you don't have Ft Lauderdale or Palm Beach (the list goes on and on). They are part and parcel of the regions they are integral to. Period.
As others have said, Atlanta is NOT working-class. We're second only to NYC in the percentage of the population that considers themselves "professionals" in their fields as well as being a top 5 for post-b degrees. And, the average income for the Atlanta area is quite high compared to the rest of the US.
Bravo has caught a lot of hell from even local businesses that were shown on the "Atlanta" version - they didn't want their names associated with it once it got on broadcast and they saw how trashy this version was. My coworker who is HOOKED on all the damn housewives shows found some blog where one of the NYC housewives was really trashing the Atlanta ones or something. So heck, even the women from the other housewives versions of the show thought it was junk. LOL
But yeah, they record it and bring it in to work and watch it on the lobby TV. I sometimes hide their disks. It makes me want to regurgitate.
Hey, at least those ladies in the OC and NYC ones mostly have JOBS. A lot of realtors, insurance saleswomen, etc. Heck, one of the Atlanta women had a job. The rest were just married to athletes, divorcing/suing them, or having affairs with a married guy who was keeping them? I mean geez - it was like an episode of Good Times meets Diaries from the Trailer Park.
And yes, there will be a season TWO according to the ladies at work. Yippie. I'm off to buy a shredder that can shred DVD disks to have an "accident" with theirs.
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