For beginners, we have a NETFLIX sensation called the “Young, Famous and African” reality show, which is intended to relay to us the entrails of the lives of our celebrities.
There is nothing wrong with this video-bio because study after study has indicated that fans love a peek at the lives of their celebrities. Out of those considerations, such bios have gained popularity and traction to the extent the entertainment industry has responded to sate this quest of learning from their idols.
Celebrity worshippers’ desires are what the entertainment factories are more than eager to gorge themselves with and generate serious cash for themselves. Celebrities get paid per episode for their troubles, and rates depend on various factors, including popularity, relevance, fanbase width, and depth of interest in those spectacles.
Reality shows, at the beginning, made all the sweat to be authentic and inspirational. Still, over time, something else has crept in that makes reality shows less accurate, puffed up with ridiculous controversy in an enthusiastic search of stimulating public demand, and adds more zeros behind the entertainment industry’s figures in the balance sheets.
So, the business urgency to provoke controversies more than often leads to scripted shows that defeat the objectives of a reality show that is anticipated to educate, surprise and entertain.
Scripted shows revolve around drama, movies and plays festooned with actors, small and breathtaking ones with extras capping those shows. Such entertainment may be original or an adaption from a play, a book or other forms of literary works like poetry.
In the scripted works, the outcome is known, the pieces of the jigsaw are not a secret, and viewers can reasonably guess the flow of the narratives, and there are few shocks and awe to ooze anybody’s appetite save for starters.
In particular, shows of “The Young, Famous and African“, a NETFLIX supposedly sizzling production, were pregnant or living up to the expectations. In the beginning, the star power that was brought in had adopted a sense of reality tending to be dull, humdrum and sleepy, with viewership tanking.
New big names in African entertainment were recruited in a forlorn hope of waxing the demand. Still, the reality shows took a dramatic twist, hurtling downstream of lies, deception and anything else but a reality show everybody expected to watch: real celebs confronting real problems.
For instance, a phoney romance was cooked from nowhere, and solemn vows were made, leading to marriage.
Our problem was such fake “romancing the stone” had no basis in reality, and viewers were left deeply shocked in trying to process whether two or more individuals who have never met would have any reason to jump into lifelong relationships, which in real life are not as simple as depicted in this show.
Of more trouble is when those shows are over, we see the individuals involved busier repairing their damaged relationships, which the viewers are well familiar with.
Then, the viewers are lost. If this megastar had eloped with another stranger, why was he returning to restore a past relationship that seemed to be going nowhere?
There is another side of whether lifetime commitment, such as marriage, can be a disposable relationship or whether the show intends to promote such scenarios.
With NETFLIX narratives disjointed and failing to reflect the reality we were expecting, viewers have every reason to feel cheated, forsaken and disrespected. Cheated because the organisers underestimated their ability to parse through the entertainment value dished upon them.
Forsaken, because the producers should have promised to provide their clients with a reality show rather than a third-degree movie.
Disrespected because viewers are coughing up the price of a reality show but ending up being overfed by lies, deception and truncated stories with almost no connection to the stars’ real lives!
At the moment, we must make a damning conclusion that the wheels of “Young, Famous and African” are off its rails, and the backlash is imminent, intrusive and nauseating.
