Reading Race in South African Television: Situation Comedies in the Post-Apartheid Period

From the venue:

Dr. Reed’s talk will focus on how can we read racial ideology and its intersections with capitalism in South African television shows
after apartheid? After the fall of the racist regime, a new wave of tv shows entered South African broadcasting. These shows reflected
the racial and socioeconomic anxieties and fantasies of this young democracy. In this article, I examine two sitcoms from this period,
Suburban Bliss and The Coconuts, to show how television at the end of Apartheid offers a window into racialization and class
formation at that particular moment. I demonstrate the evolving racial and class discourses in the country that can be seen through
television shows today as compared to the recent past. I argue that this demonstrates the evolving yet persistent nature of
racialization and racism in South Africa, but also shows how television in the years just after apartheid illuminated society’s hopes for
healing and racial transformation that is absent from later productions.