Black Collegian News & Views

Did Protests Cut "BET Uncut?"

By Shauntel Lowe
Black College Wire

Photo credit: Jermainedupri.com Jermaine Dupri, producer and stripper enthusiast, sent off "BET Uncut."

The butt-jiggling, thong-tossing, pole-sliding late-night music video compilation show known as "BET Uncut" has been canceled, and one of the women who protested such fare while at Spelman College believes complaints to the network had something to do with it.

"I think it is somehow connected to what we've done," said Moya Bailey, one of those who confronted rapper Nelly over the portrayal of women in his videos in 2004.

"Uncut," which sparked protests from those who called it misogynistic and borderline pornographic, ended its nearly six-year run on July 8 with a send-off from hip-hop producer and stripper-enthusiast Jermaine Dupri.

Known for everything from lesbian hot-tub scenes to the infamous sliding of a credit card down a woman's behind in Nelly's "Tip Drill" video, the hour-long show was entertainment to some but confirmation to others that hip-hop has no respect for women. It started at 3 a.m. on the east and west coasts.

R&B artist Jill Scott spoke out against the "degrading" portrayal of women in music videos at a panel at the Essence Music Festival in Houston over the July 4th weekend, saying, according to news reports, "It is dirty, inappropriate, inadequate, unhealthy and polluted. We can demand more."

The panel was part of Essence magazine's "Take Back the Music" campaign launched in January 2005 to raise awareness about media degradation and negative portrayal of women, particularly in urban music and videos.

Asked about the cancellation, Cori Murray, Essence's arts and entertainment editor, said she did not know whether the campaign directly influenced BET's decision, but said she believed it had a "roundabout influence.

"I just see it as a change . . . as revamping the lineup, positive or negative," she said.

By taking "Uncut" off, "they allowed themselves to have more balance in their depiction of women." It "just takes that one person or that one voice" to spark discussion about such issues, and that can initiate change, she said.

What concerned others about "Uncut" was the younger audience of preteens and teens who were able to —- and often did —- watch the sexually explicit music videos.

Michael Lewellen, BET's senior vice president of corporate communication, said the network cannot control who watches its adult-oriented shows.

"'Uncut' was a mature-audience program," he said. "It had all the appropriate advisories and warnings attached. If someone exercised their constitutionally protected right and chose to watch the show anyway, the decision is theirs.

"That's a show that comes on at 3 a.m. My question is, what are youngsters . . . doing watching any TV at 3 a.m.?"

Lewellen said the show's cancellation had nothing to do with the complaints and protests.

"It wasn't a controversy for us," he said, adding there was "only one reason" the show was taken off the air, and that was to make room for new programming.

Bailey, now an Emory University graduate student, did not buy that.

In 2004, students at Spelman, the historically black women's school in Atlanta, opposed a visit by Nelly to the school for a bone marrow drive after he refused to answer questions about the "Tip Drill" video.

Bailey was president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance at Spelman. In a decision that received national attention, the FMLA spearheaded the move to confront Nelly about the video, and Nelly decided not to come.

"It didn't make sense for him to come on our campus and for us to be silent," Bailey said.

Even before the FMLA heard about Nelly's request to appear, group members had discussed having a forum about "Tip Drill" and the portrayal of women in music videos and the media, she said.

The depictions have a global impact, Bailey said.

"These videos don't stay in the U.S. They become the perception of black women worldwide." She said she did not believe BET's programming changes to be unrelated to the complaints, saying that the network timed the changes so that they seem disassociated from the protests and media coverage of a couple of years ago.

Students at Howard University also attacked the misogyny they perceived in hip-hop with a "Cut ‘Uncut'" campaign.

Lewellen said show cancellations and programming changes are common for all networks and "Uncut's" cancellation should not be "blown out of proportion."

He said it was a regular decision by the network that wasn't "agonized" over and was done for the primary purpose of any programming change: to attract new viewers. The show "served its purpose for five years," he said.

"It had more latitude creatively, gave the record labels and artists a window of expression and an opportunity to push music video art form to different levels."

Now, "we're looking at different and new things," he said.

Among those new things is not the Web site BetUncut.net, which presents itself as an online version of the BET show.

"We're investigating the presence of that Web site," Lewellen said.

"It may very well be trademark infringement. We are in no way, shape or form affiliated" with the site.

An online petition also has surfaced, addressed to BET, simply stating, "This petition is to keep Uncut on BET." It had nearly 400 signatures by the evening of July 12, a day after BET's announcement of the cancellation. 

Shauntel Lowe is a student at the University of California, Los Angeles and an intern for the Black College Wire. She can be reached at shauntel.lowe@gmail.com.

Posted July 13, 2006