If you were flipping channels around 1 a.m. in the late ’90s, you most certainly recall the infomercials starring “Miss Cleo,” your favorite Black psychic friend. “Call me now,” she bellowed the clever catchphrase in a heavy Jamaican accent as a 1-800 number for viewers to dial would linger on screen.
“I would even throw in people’s comfort level with ‘Miss Cleo’ because it was an idea of how someone can align with the wisdom of Black women,” he continued. “And not just Black women, but Black Caribbean women.”
Sebro added: “When she’s talking to people, she’s making them feel like [she’s] one of their homegirls. It really became a point that that’s their Black friend. I always saw it to a point that it’s like people wanted to be invested in a culture or a space where they can believe that they’re part of something.”
The film features marginally interesting interviews with those who claim to have known her best, other psychic readers, Black peers from back when she was known as the actress Youree Dell Harris from California and celebrity commentators. But it ultimately sparks a shallow conversation around both her and her celebrity.
“Call Me Miss Cleo” barely confronts the complexities around the fact that she actively participated in a racist system that also exploited her — plus, most notably, how she continued to use a Jamaican accent throughout the rest of her life. Instead, it exclusively presents her as a victim, with little space for nuance.
The documentary also refuses to contend with the fact that those that Harris personally aligned herself with, at least the ones interviewed in the documentary, are exclusively white and fail to acknowledge the way their whiteness afforded them a right to be obtuse about an obvious gimmick.
And how much accountability should Harris, as a hired media personality, have had then? To her account detailed in the documentary, the Psychic Readers Network owners, unsurprisingly two white men in Florida who profited off her, also had something to do with affecting a heavier accent and leaning even more into a stereotype of an image she had already created.
Smith-Shomade adds that how audiences engaged with the idea of “Miss Cleo” and other infomercials like the Psychic Readers during the ’90s is not unlike how viewers contend with what they see on reality television today. There’s active participation in a hoax that has vague or no proximity to the truth.
Multiple truths in this story underscore how many things had to come together during this time in history to make a figure like “Miss Cleo” thrive for as long as she did. There’s the racism of it all, the exploitation and perpetuation, audiences’ growing inability to discern reality through televised images, as well as the increasing power of TV as a medium.
Infomercials, including previous psychic hotlines, had already been gaining popularity among viewers, many of whom felt alone and anxious during that time of night. This was long after former President Ronald Reagan had been a driving force in dismantling mental health care throughout the country, effectively perpetuating a stigma around it.
So, TV had taken on an uneasy role of providing people with a comfort that they might have been lacking in their own lives and during an hour when they felt most alone or vulnerable. The medium no longer had a specific time when content would turn into white noise or a blank screen. It was continuous and fit for frivolous entertainment like infomercials.
“It really was this idea of how to make people into citizens of a particular area because [of] the way media’s controlled by certain power forces; the news we see, etc.,” he said. “So with that being the case, they also control how people think.”
Part of that is taking advantage of the decidedly unscheduled hours of original TV programming and filling it with infomercials that perhaps tapped into the psyche of a person who was still awake. As Sebro recalled, that concept began with physical products like lotions and jewelry sold on infomercials and morphed into something like Psychic Readers Network and “Miss Cleo.”
“Really, this is the selling of a product in a sense as well,” Sebro said. “You’re selling maybe mental health or therapy, selling someone who can tell you about your future when you’re contemplating at 1 a.m. about anything.”
This shouldn’t sound like an unfamiliar concept. We saw and continue to see relevant examples of this on reality TV today and back when the medium progressed to tawdry talk shows like “The Jerry Springer Show,” which also had a very lucrative interactive component. Especially for people who were stuck with their thoughts, that was everything.
But, most crucially, it involves holding several aspects accountable for uncomfortable truths that, even today, are still avoided. We didn’t have the wherewithal to contend with these facts back in the ’90s. And even though we do now, we often still don’t.
This content was originally published here.
