Matthew Krouse Down the tube
It would be dangerous to flippantly dismiss Felicia Mabuza-Suttle’s current attack on evil as a crowd-pulling attempt at sensationalism. But in the way she presents herself, Mabuza-Suttle gives one no choice.
The first part of her double show on child abuse, broadcast on SABC1 on May 24, was a case in point. An uncomfortable exercise in horror and sentimentalism, she managed to milk enough gruesome detail from young victims of the crime to keep the show at boiling point, all the way.
In staunch denial of her motives she said: “People say Felicia brings these children on television and sensationalises it [child abuse]. I don’t care what you say. Unless we expose the problem people won’t believe this is happening. If I just said this is happening people would say: `Felicia, you are making it up.'”
Not so. Everyone knows that children are sexually abused. Nobody needs Mabuza-Suttle to point it out. That said, it took strength and callousness to plough through the accounts without breaking down.
Oprah Winfrey would’ve. She would have shed buckets of tears for the young girls who have endured life’s ultimate humiliation. Felicia however maintained a firm face, rubbing their frail shoulders and embracing them, asking questions like: “Here’s the man on top of you – and then he ejaculates – how did you feel?”
At one stage she even glanced around for the camera, then lined her mug up for the shot before breaking into her most pitying countenance.
“I’m trying so hard to do programmes where we can laugh, but there’s so much pain in this country and we cannot hide away from it, folks – we’re gonna have to face it,” she said.
There’s a fuzzy line between social responsibility and pornography, and Mabuza- Suttle spends most of her working life sitting right on it. She’s lucky though because she’s dragged MTN into the show with her, giving her moment a look of glossy endorsement.
At regular intervals the cellphone network’s logo comes up, inviting God knows who to call in to answer the question: Is the law too lenient on child abusers?
I’m sure it’s very empowering to people to express themselves about the issues that Mabuza-Suttle takes on. But what happens to those statistics once they’ve reached MTN?
Generally, the trouble with the talk-show formula is this: the same topics keep coming up with the same sense of feigned concern. Every couple of months the talk show hosts, looking more like soap opera queens, hit the horror buttons – pretending that they’re out to change the world.
While open discussion about these things can’t be a bad thing, the victims look more pathetic when their tragedies get framed by ambitious celebrities with their eyes on the ratings.
The second part of the Felicia Mabuza- Suttle Show on child abuse will be broadcast on Monday May 31 at 9pm on SABC1