Oprah, the Leavisite: A Caveat for Feminism and Women's Studies in South Africa

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Notes

1. Rita Barnard provides details of each of these. Oprah ‘attributes the enormous success of her show in 2003, when ratings went up by 14%’, to the content reflecting her South African experiences (Barnard 2004:97). Reciprocally, quite apart from the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, her philanthropic work includes ‘the donation of $1 million for a student residence at Cida City campus in Johannesburg, an endowment of $2.5 million to New York University to fund graduate fellowships for African women… and the financial, if not yet legal adoption of five AIDS orphans’ (Barnard 2004:96).

2. As this article goes to print, the school is embroiled in controversy following the arrest of one of the dormitory matrons on charges of assault, indecent assault, crimen injuria and soliciting pupils to perform indecent acts. Prior to these revelations, the popularity of the project in poor communities – most obviously amongst those families whose daughters were selected – seemed to be high (Cembi 2006:3). On the other hand, many parents who only marginally fail to meet the low-income criterion have expressed their frustration with the school's selection policy, and tensions over the ‘elitism’ of the school may in fact deepen class divides (Makgalemele 2006:4). The school opened its doors in January 2007 to 150 pupils and will grow to 450 girls by 2011. The education is ‘valued at R105,000 a year’, with ‘a boarding facility beyond what most expensive private schools offer in South Africa – it could easily be mistaken for a five-star hotel’ (Makgalemele 2006:4). The school is, however, separate from the community: it boasts ‘a sophisticated, state-of-the-art security system, including an underground sensor that detects movement in a five-metre area around the entire perimeter fence’ (Makgalemele 2006:4). The costs involved in building the school were extravagant (approximately $40,000,000); it remains a moot point whether the money could have been better spent on widespread development, rather than on an elite institution.

3. Oprah has been a point of reference for South Africa-United States relations over the concomitant period. See, for instance, William Martin (1998) for an indication of Oprah's status as a symbol of international (specifically, US) involvement or investment in South Africa.

4. Oprah was broadcast on pay channel M-Net until 2004; it subsequently moved to the SABC and, in re-broadcast form, eTV. Recent TAMS (Television Audience Measurement Survey) figures place the Oprah SABC viewership at similar levels to the number of M-Net Oprah viewers – between approximately 900,000 and 1,000,000 per show – prior to 2004,<http://www.tvsa.co.za/archives>, accessed 6 November 2007. This suggests a transfer of the same demographic (M-Net's viewers are higher-income) across channels. See also Motloung (2007) quoting Jyoti Mistry and Paul Street's affirmations that Oprah's popularity ‘among white middle-class women’ rests on the fact that she is ‘not intimidating’ even though she is a black woman – an argument applied by them equally to South Africa and the US.

5. In the discussion that follows, it is worth remembering that Cry, the Beloved Country has had a relatively high profile in the US since it was first published; Oprah's promotion of it is only the latest episode in the history of the book's reception in the US. Lesley Cowling provides some useful background to this ‘recent resurgence of interest’ (Cowling 2005:91).

6. Nudelman concurs: ‘As other talk shows have become increasingly confrontational, Winfrey has made the decision to move away from sensational topics’, with a ‘new format’ that ‘stresses uplift and play’ (Nudelman 1997:304).

7. Decker notes how ‘Oprah claims that her entrepreneurial acumen has a “deep spiritual” meaning: “It's symbolic of what I am supposed to do in my life.” Her beliefs are expressed in terms commonly associated with New Age religion, specifically its concept of “prosperity consciousness”. This philosophy explains her rise from poverty to prosperity as a sign of a higher calling’ (Decker 1997:118).

8. The term ‘infra-politics’ is borrowed from Illouz (2003:288).

9. Feminist scholars may be equally if not more interested in the life and work of Leavis' wife, QD (Queenie) Leavis. She was a substantial critic in her own right, collaborated with FR on numerous projects and was joint-editor of the seminal literary journal Scrutiny – yet her reputation, at least in terms of scholarly ‘recognition’, does not match that of her husband.

10. The Book Club, after moving away from current fiction and non-fiction to ‘classic’ novels, has now returned its attention to contemporary works after a group of authors and publishers lobbied for Oprah's renewed support, claiming that the industry had experienced a slump when she ceased promoting recently published books.

11. See Gross (1991) for further detail on the tenuous status of ‘English’ as an academic discipline at the beginning of the twentieth century.

12. Roberts (1995) provides a more sympathetic portrait of ‘Leavisite’ Cambridge.

13. See Nudelman (1997:306) for commentary on Oprah's decision, in 1993, to cancel the publication of her autobiography. Over a decade later, the content of the book remains unknown.

14. The phenomenon of ‘Reality TV’ – a phrase that is, if not a contradiction-in-terms, then at least a misnomer – presents a separate set of ethical questions regarding representation or mediation through the camera lens and the editing booth. I am here discussing Oprah, and talk-shows more generally, as forms of television that do not fit neatly into the genre of Reality TV (even though they deal with ‘real people’ and, perhaps, have been precursors to the current crop of ‘reality’ shows); at the very least, the studio setting of the audience-based talk-show indicates its theatrical nature, setting it apart from the claim to ‘reality’ made by Reality TV.

15. Illouz defends the ‘cacophonous style’ of the show, arguing that – precisely because it has always ‘offered a cacophony of moral dilemmas rather than a fixed and predictable set of moral messages’ and has provided ‘multiple points of view from which to examine [guests' stories]’ – The Oprah Winfrey Show is ‘a moral genre’: ‘the morality is generated by the conflicts of points of view staged by the show’ (Illouz 2003:51--53).

16. Nudelman's critique of Oprah draws on the work of Wendy Kaminer, which presents the talk show as one example of ‘mass culture's misappropriation of a feminist emphasis on the personal’ (Nudelman 1997:298), arguing that ‘when women testify on television talk shows they degrade a feminist tradition of consciousness-raising that encouraged women to speak out as a means of politicizing their private experience’ (Nudelman 1997:299). For Kaminer, whereas ‘consciousness-raising was conceptualized as a means to activism and institutional reform’, the valorisation of pop psychology on talk shows – despite the apparent goal of self-help or therapy – treats ‘self-revelation as an end in itself’ (Nudelman 1997:299). Nudelman contends that therapeutic and feminist discourses have more in common than Kaminer allows; she examines how ‘the talk show revises both feminist and therapeutic constructions of traumatized feminine speech’ (Nudelman 1997:299).

17. For Lawrence, the First World War and rampant industrialisation wreaked ‘destruction’ in both urban and rural areas, while the ‘cult of personality’ aggravated the ‘disintegration’ of society. One need hardly point out instances of destruction, environmental or military or otherwise, in current affairs; elements of mass media and popular culture (like competing talk shows) would be similar spurs to ‘disintegration’ in Oprah's view.

18. Brands, having discussed ‘early’ shows about sexual abuse, also records instances of bawdy humour, commenting: ‘The going wasn't quite so heavy on every program’ (Brands 1999:298).

19. For information on the shows referred to, see the archive on www.oprah.com containing video clips, stills, transcripts, episode summaries and links.

20. Oprah seems to subscribe to a binarist approach to gender relations (what might be called the Defending the Caveman / Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus principle) that is called into question even in undergraduate gender studies courses.

21. Even though Oprah was born into relative poverty and a community of conflict (after spending the first few years of her life on a farm, she was moved to Milwaukee, where she experienced corporal punishment at the hand of her grandmother and was sexually abused by some male relatives) we cannot equate her experience to that of South African women who live in absolute poverty amidst constant violence and abuse. As Brands indicates, Oprah's childhood presented numerous opportunities, educational and otherwise, that facilitated her early career (Brands 1999:293--294). Educational and entrepreneurial opportunities for women in South Africa are, by comparison, severely limited.

22. See Thurman, C. 2006. ‘The Trouble with Life Writing: A New “Cult of Personality”’. Scrutiny2 11(1):109--114.

23. Of course, based on my argument that Oprah is herself an ‘author’ – a life-writer, if you will, but one whose narratives require a measure of ‘fiction’ – one might question whether Oprah has the right to be so indignant that Frey ‘deceived’ her and her Book Club members into reading the book as non-fiction.

24. Nudelman notes that even the American National Rifle Association can complain of being ‘victimised’ by anti-gun legislation.

25. Collett's comments come from her editorial in a special edition of Kunapipi 24(1&2), which includes numerous articles of interest regarding women's narratives outside of the context of the TRC / confessional format. From apartheid-era non-fiction to post-apartheid fiction; from Kai Easton's discussion of Saartje Baartman and Krotoä-Eva in Zoë Wicomb's David's Story – like Barnard (2004), Easton problematises the ‘marketing’ (Easton 2002:246) of a South African novel for US audiences – to Margaret Hanzimanolis' analysis of paintings depicting contact between early travellers and indigenous peoples, in which the ‘sexual and generative nature’ of southern African women is embedded in ‘the master narrative of European exploration and conquest’ (Hanzimanolis 2002:263); these articles affirm the disjunctions rather than the affinities between the histories and present circumstances of South African women and those of ‘western’ women.

26. This is a common affirmation of Oprah's achievement. Decker describes the ‘Oprahfication’ (Decker 1997:117) of the talk show format as follows: ‘the audience identifies not merely with the program's guests… but with the host’. Just as ‘the distinction between guest and host disappears’, so distinctions between ‘inside (home) and outside (world), foreground (self) and background (scene)’ are collapsed, allowing viewers to ‘inhabit the space of audience and celebrity simultaneously’ (Decker 1997:117).

27. In this light, Oprah's claim that ‘I allow myself to be vulnerable… It's not something I consciously do’ (Brands 1999:298) seems dubious.