FIXING FAMILIES THROUGH TELEVISION?

Abstract

Television has played a central role as a tool through which to imagine and re-imagine the South African nation, family and selfhood, and to ‘fix’ these same categories. From the apartheid state's blacking out of healthy everyday life images of black families, through the efforts of founding a ‘new’ nation using the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to modern day therapeutic talk shows, television has progressively placed less salience on the ‘nation’ and more on family and interpersonal relationships within this social unit. Self-disclosure on television, especially through a talk show significantly called Relate, ironically reveals and occludes legacies of class and racial differentiations with their attendant socio-economic imbalances. Talking about personal affect to ‘fix’ one's problems on national television emerges as an instrumental undertaking that appears to benefit guests to the show but perhaps not as much as it does the production company and South African Broadcasting Corporation, suggesting that the participants are being exploited. Be that as it may, Relate emerges as an exercise in the interiorization of control, as well as an invitation to undertake serious dialogue about interpersonal intimacy.

Keywords:

• television talk show
• political democracy
• family
• truth and reconciliation commission
• selfhood
• emotional work