(slow buildup music)
- [Narrator] Back in high school in the early 2000's
I'd rush home to watch the Holy Grail
of daytime television, Maury.
- Freddy said the baby was too big to be his.
- [Narrator] Maury of course is the talk show
hosted by Maury Povich that premiered in 1991
and still airs today.
My favorite of all the Maury segments
were the paternity test narratives.
The bread and butter of the show.
The most basic version of the storyline
goes something like this,
a woman with a young child
believes a man to be the father of that child,
that man denies the claim,
they then confront one and other shouting in suits.
(screaming and shouting)
At this point there's a ritual of identification.
The producers project the potential father's face
on a television screen right next to the child's face
and everyone does a kind of facial recognition analysis.
Comparing the nose of the child to the nose of the man,
the ears, the skin tone,
sometimes to an almost phrenological degree.
- Let's look at the nets, my nets start from the top.
- [Narrator] Then a chyron flashes, the results are in!
Maury reads the results of the paternity test
and he was a real expert at this.
Just listen to the way he inflects the word 'not'.
- When it comes to three year old Kimmy,
James you are not the father.
You are not the father.
- [Narrator] Just masterful.
This was then usually followed by more shouting
and sometimes triumphant I told you so's
to the shocked mother or the newly confirmed father.
Maury would then try and wrap it up
with a promise from the new father that he'd do what's right
and take care of the child
or continue helping the mother
test more men on future episodes.
- I'll get out of yours
but I'll be damned if I get out of my kid's life.
- Good!
Thank you. (applause)
- [Narrator] Then the audience would applaud
and Maury would depart with his end of show catch phrase,
- Until next time, America, thank you!
- [Narrator] I loved these segments as a teenager
and I think the reason why is because there is something
structurally perfect about them.
- It's all next, on The Maury Povich Show.
- [Narrator] Most conflicts in real life are messy.
They're shrouded with by the unknowable intentions of
one party or another but the paternity test is special
because it not only makes a messy conflict digestible,
it gives a messy human conflict
a binary scientific solution.
Either you are the father or you are not the father.
In all of human conflict
there's almost nothing that resolves
so neatly as a paternity test.
- You are the father!
You are the father!
- [Narrator] But this perfect narrative,
it's also deeply and plainly fucked up.
As a teenager this did not occur to me.
But now not having watched the show in almost a decade,
the seductive appeal of these segments,
makes my stomach churn.
- You are the father!
- Wow.
- Told you!
I told you!
- [Narrator] To start, the racial dynamics that play
are horrifying.
A significant number if not a majority of the guests
on these segments are black.
Contributing to long standing stereotypes
about black fathers and families.
- [Woman] Take care of the baby.
- What do ya mean?
- Take care of the baby, 'cause that's your baby.
- [Narrator] The way the show encourages the guests
to perform their conflicts is even more awful
when you think about the racial dynamics
the show's producers are feeding on
and selling ads against.
Now when I see this show I don't see it as a window
in to other peoples lives
as I think this show wants us to think it is.
It isn't a window so much as it is a mirror.
A mirror that reflects our own prejudices back at us.
To bask in self satisfaction at people
we think are irresponsible, bad parents, not like us at all.
- (screaming) You're an unfit mother.
- [Narrator] But of course they are like us.
We're just not doing it on television
and their trademark hug it out resolutions,
they're maybe the most dangerous part.
Maury tries to put a respectable face,
with an oxford shirt,
clean pressed slacks,
on a kind of gross exploitation.
But then as now, we still eat it up.
- Joni, what do you think of her?
- She a hoe, she nothing.
(audience cheers)
- [Narrator] The show's been renewed through the 2020
television season.
Until next time, America.
(upbeat music)