The newest season of CBS’s “reality” TV series Survivor, which premiered on Sept. 14, has sunk to the lowest depths of American “popular” culture.
For this season, the show’s 13th, 20 contestants are divided into competing “tribes” by “race.” The four groups are: African Americans, Asians, whites and Latinos. The “tribes” will face off to win a $1 million prize. This basic description alone elicits a visceral reaction among any anti-racist person.
We put quotation marks around the word “race” because “race” is a political and ideological construct created by a
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In the United States, human slavery and apartheid was premised on a highly-refined “race-based” system created by the slaveocracy. The system has been reinforced by bourgeois society from the end of the Civil War until the present. There are oppressed nationalities and peoples in this country who are victimized by institutional and individual racism.
Survivor is part of this system. Hype has surrounded the show since the simulated “race” war was announced last month. Many media pundits have attacked it, mostly from the right.
A Wall Street Journal editorial accused the show of “playing up identity-politics in a crude and potentially rancorous way.” In the Hollywood Reporter, Ray Richmond blasted Survivor for “tapping a raw segregationist nerve and exploiting America’s obsession with race for personal gain.”
These statements show a general uneasiness with the overt racism promoted by this season’s Survivor, while at the same time reinforcing ruling-class notions about racism.
Liberal columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, however, is not pessimistic at all. He has claimed that a segregated Survivor may actually bring people of different “races” closer together. In an opinion piece in the San Jose Mercury News, Hutchinson misguidedly blamed modern-day segregation on working-class people, calling it “self-segregation.” He opined, “If it takes segregation to get more [Black and Latino people] on [Survivor], then so be it.”
Other commentators have used Survivor premise to promote their racist agenda. Right-wing mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh weighed the probable success of the different teams based on bigoted stereotypes.
Limbaugh said that the “Hispanic tribe” would probably win as long as they don’t “start fighting for supremacy amongst themselves.” “Hispanics,” Limbaugh said, “have shown a remarkable ability to cross borders,” and they can go “without water for a long time, they don’t get apprehended and they will do things other people won’t do.”
Asians, per Limbaugh, are “the best at espionage, keeping secrets.” African Americans “lack buoyancy” and are “more likely to drown,” while the white team will be weighed down with “guilt over the fact that they run things.”
The glee with which Limbaugh spewed his racist bile reveals what kind of audience Survivor is targeting. The creators and producers clearly wanted to stir up buzz for their long-running show.
Reinforcing racist stereotypes
The obvious danger of this type of television programming is that it will reinforce and exploit existing racist stereotypes. A “reality” show set up this way cannot break down harmful stereotypes. It was set up by the capitalist creators to play into societal divisions, both real and perceived, and not to push for unity and understanding.
Nonetheless, some commentators, like Hutchinson, have justified the show’s premise by noting that the segregated “tribes” will be integrated later in the season.
Long before the integration occurs, however, the damage will be done. The show’s hook for the season is premised on segregation. The rest of Survivor’s plot is an afterthought and will be largely unimportant to the sought-after audience.
The show sets a dangerous precedent. Heavy buzz surrounding this season could give other television programs the green light to take things a step farther.
Before to Survivor’s premiere, some entertainment magazines and media watchdog groups noted how a similar idea of “raced-based” competition has been kicked around for another reality television show called the Apprentice.
The general social environment which would allow for such an idea to be contemplated, let alone implemented, speaks volumes about the state of racism in America.
Such a television program can only appeal to the most reactionary sections of the population. Others will greet it with cynicism, and many with much-deserved disdain. Whatever the net affect, it is another attempt to reinforce the “otherness” of different peoples and, ultimately, to erode multinational working-class solidarity.
Not affirmative action
Survivor’s creator, Mark Burnet, has touted this season as implementing a kind of warped affirmative action. Burnett has said that the show’s premise is a response to criticisms that there was too little diversity in previous casts. Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor, has proclaimed proudly that this is “the most ethnic-diverse cast in the history of TV, as far as I know.”
This is certainly not affirmative action.
Affirmative action has been mischaracterized and attacked by the racists for years. Opponents claim that the concept of affirmative action is “reverse racism” because it “promotes African American, Latino, Native people and Asians over white people.” But this notion views racism in a vacuum without an understanding of the historic oppression suffered by these peoples. Affirmative action offers necessary opportunities to oppressed peoples who have been denied them before due to institutionalized and individual racism.
For decades, people of color rarely appeared on TV. If they did, they mostly portrayed racist caricatures of real people to make it acceptable to the dominant white racist culture.
TV portrayals of people of color now vary, but, as demonstrated by Survivor, corporate owners are no less capable of creating racist propaganda for profit.
“If the folks at CBS want to use Survivor to talk about race, they should figure out how Black people manage to survive with inadequate health care, diminishing job opportunities, poor schools, and institutionalized racism,” noted Marc Lamont Hill on Blackprof.com.
The statement applies to other oppressed sectors of U.S. capitalist society as well. But, of course, Survivor’s producers don’t want to touch any of these issues. That would be far too much reality for them.
