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Dividing Survivor: Racial tension or religious war?
09/05/06
by Clay

Color me shocked (as everyone knows, shocked is a cooling mix of saffron and magenta). That's because the 13th edition of the CBS reality show Survivor will feature 20 contestants divided equally into four ethnic groups (black, white, Hispanic and Asian).

I was shocked not because of Survivor's re-embrace of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" doctrine, but because like most 20-somethings, I had forgotten Survivor still existed. So congrats to them for being astoundingly provocative; nothing says 21st century better than embracing the dying vestiges of the 19th.

According to host Jeff Probst, this division of the teams by race is a "social experiment" in which the stranded contestants in the Cook Islands will compete to win a million dollars.

Oddly enough, the racial divisions are designed to increase diversity. Survivor has been criticized in the past for having -- at approximately 80 percent -- too many white contestants applying.

Producer Mark Burnett makes the argument that much of American society is already stratified by race. Telling the New York Times, "I really don't believe there are many people who hate each other because of their race. But even though people may work together, they do tend in their private lives to divide along social and ethnic lines."

So Survivor has decided to make money off this division by fostering further division. Brilliant.

Also, to be fair, at some point the four tribes will be consolidated and the winner will come from these mixed-ethnicity survivors. The contestants will not, therefore, be racially segregated for the whole show.

Personally, I'm looking down the road to see what might happen if this newly reconsidered show is a success.

Imagine if this racially segregated competition caught on and Survivor's Jeff Probst and Mark Burnett got even richer. Pretty soon these guys would be swollen with pride and suggesting new twists for the NFL like insisting NFC East teams only play whites while AFC South teams only play Samoans. Pity the poor saps in the AFC West who are going to have teams entirely made up of pygmies from Australia. I think their ability to stop the run would be in question.

But for me, the segregation of the races concept seems downright antediluvian and overly simplified. Because though the apparent color of an individual might be black, white, brown, or yellow, many of us are the product of a varied racial palette.

To steal a satirical skit from Dave Chappelle's show, did the Survivor people actually have a racial draft? How did they deal with thorny issues like those of a mixed race? Were these individuals automatically excluded based on DNA testing?

How would Survivor have handled Tiger Woods if he wanted to be a contestant? Chappelle had the black team draft Woods, but how would that make Asians feel in real life? Especially given Woods' ability to close out the competition, and the fact that Woods himself has described his ethnicity as "Cablinasian." (In Chappelle's skit, the Asians got their racial draft revenge by drafting the Wu Tang Clan).

Akin to testing for banned substances in sports, we can have DNA testing for banned races. Imagine the pain if the last remaining Hispanic turned out to be a regular white guy from Arizona with a tan.

My questions abound: Are people really going to sit in their houses and root for their race with fervent passion? Isn't this how we ended up with the Civil War?

I know I'd feel a little awkward standing and cheering in my private living room saying, "Go whitey go." Imagine if you stood and said this at an NBA arena every time Steve Nash or Dirk Nowitzki scored.

In fact, the entire show's concept seems likely to alienate white people, Survivor's core audience. Already it's almost impossible to get most white people to talk about race for fear of saying something dumb or insensitive.

Mention minorities to your average white person, and you can actually see their back stiffen with resistance and fear. Meet the new white response to race, courtesy of a random white person: "He's (insert minority here)? I didn't even notice." This will be followed by strained banter and a quick change of subject.

Next thing you know, white hero Gil Grissom's going to take a turn as a neo-Nazi on CSI and have white people flinging themselves off tall buildings.

So overcome with questions, I decided to call the only person I know who still watches Survivor, my dad, to gauge his reaction. My dad is one of the last Survivor diehards. During the show, he even refuses to speak.

He had not heard the news before I told him via phone. There was a long pause during which he presumably considered whether I was telling the truth. (I occasionally play tricks on my parents. For instance, I told my dad that people from Cornerstone Church had angrily arrived on my doorstep the day after my Churchtastic column ran.)

After deciding I spoke the truth, he said, "That's not very good at all."

However, I do feel bad about condemning the Survivor brain-trust for being willing to take a risk. God knows we need more risk-taking on television. Otherwise we'd end up with eight hours of police procedurals, crime scene shows and salacious news magazines a night.

So I came up with eight ways I would have preferred the teams be divided if embracing the vestiges of history is the way to grow the Survivor audience:

1. Each team gets infected with smallpox. The person who survives a month on the beach without medical attention, if any, is the winner.

2. Rats infected with the bubonic plague on one island. Club Med on the other island. Call this Third World vs. the First World.

3. One team of sharecroppers. Another team owns the land and the company store. Meet Southern Reconstruction.

4. Old World vs. the New World. One team must wear chain-mail, carry lances and be governed by a feudal lord. The other team must wear coonskin caps, carry powder horns and wear buckskin clothing.

5. Survivor: Titanic. Segregate the contestants based on wealth, then place them in first class, second class and steerage. Sink the ship and see who manages to make it to the life rafts.

6. North vs. South vs. East vs. West. You get all the benefits of geographical tension with all the fun of stereotypes not based on race. Put the most ridiculous individuals from each region you can find. A Southerner who believes the South won the Battle of Gettysburg, a Californian who grows medicinal marijuana out of a self-built greenhouse, an East Hamptons socialite who has never spoken to someone who isn't a millionaire and an auto worker from Michigan who eats bratwurst for every meal.

7. Christians vs. Jews vs. Muslims vs. Atheists. Yep, a religious war. After all, God/Yahweh/Allah or no being at all will pick the winner, right? Maybe we can settle this whole religious division once and for all.

8. Avowed racists of each race compete against one another. It will be like the best and worst of the old Jerry Springer Show reincarnated. Because then we would all watch and see how ridiculous people who make judgments based entirely upon physical appearance truly are. After all, one of the best things about reality television is sometimes it shows you exactly what you don't want to be.

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