The final word on the new edition of "Survivor"

Okay. By now everyone should know about all the controversy surrounding the newest edition of CBS' "Survivor." Starting tomorrow at its regular 8 p.m. spot, the new season, subtitled "Cook Islands," will make some television history by splitting the four tribes up into races: African-American, Caucasian, Latino/Chicano and Asian-American. The outcry has been extraordinarily harsh, and the season has taken on a new moniker of "Survivor: Race Wars."

"How can they possibly do this? CBS and Mark Burnett are racist bigots! It'll take America back 50 years! What are they trying to prove?"

Honestly, worrywarts, I don't give a shit. "Survivor" has always prided itself on being a social experiment, which is just a fancy way of saying they like to mix things up. This is not going to be inflammatory. This is not going to bring out insensitivity in this country more than any other regular television show. All it's going to do is get fantastic ratings, its best in years, and it's all because most of you are flipping your shit for a darn reality show. Executive producer Burnett did something amazing in his promotion of this season. Recently, the show has fallen to the second half of the top 10 in the Neilsen ratings, despite frequently vying with "Friends" and "ER" back in the day for the number one spot. He wisely kept this big new season secret for longer than what is even believable in the day of The Smoking Gun, TMZ and other gossip sites. He dropped the bomb mere weeks ago, just in time for CBS' fall season to start. Everyone is going to be watching, and this brilliant man played you all.

But this denies the true problem with the concept, you say. We are actually morally outraged about this and damn the boost in ratings. The world must know!

*sigh* Let me break it down for you. As an avid viewer of all 12 seasons so far, through its up and its downs, I can assure you that it won't be any kind of a problem after the first two episodes. In the few recent seasons that start off with four teams (or even three), it will last, at most, three episodes. Things may change this season, but I doubt it. It's hard to keep track of four teams and four camps, even by "Survivor" standards, and so the remaining members of the four teams will very likely be mixed into three, thus lightly combining races. After a small handful of more episodes, either a losing team will be dissolved into two by way of schoolyard selection (which could eliminate the last one or two members) or the dreaded Jeff Probst "It's time to fuck with y'all" mix-up, where they'll each have a bag with one of two flags and the teams will then become completely random and mixed to the gills. After around half of the entire cast is gone, the two tribes will merge into one, and then they'll all break out into a rendition of "We Are the World."

The implications of the last two steps actually seems to me to be a great lesson in race relations, a direct argument to what many people are dissing about this edition. For once, a great deal of America can see what a society would be like with a mixed race--although the one problem lies in the fact that, with great odds, one or two races might outrank the others near the end, more for their "outlasting" than their "outwitting" or "outplaying." But now the Midwest can look at what, say, the San Francisco Bay Area, NYC or other metropolitan areas feel like when there is a good mixture of different colors. I've grown up around this, but I know that a great deal of people have not. If anything, this is a great opportunity to bring theme to a show that really only allows us a few stories about the natives and whatnot.

but what the hell do I know? Here's the first story Yahoo! published about the season. Notice that the press release was done by Mr. Probst as opposed to Mr. Burnett so as to get the maximum publicity.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/eo/20060823/en_tv_eo/19833

Immediately, the story brings up the greatest point that allows me to embrace the new season--"Survivor" has never been ethnic. I can recall only one Asian-American off the top of my head (Shi-Ann) who was their go-to in not one but two seasons (don't forget about the All-Star edition). No African-American has ever won the game (Ethan Zohn's fro comes from Judaism) outside of the bland as bathwater Vecepia from season 4 (which occured in that run where the show was really meaningless. I mean, who remembers season 5 winner Brian outside of the fact that he does soft-core porn and accidentally shot a dog last year with an arrow?). Hell, outside of her win, no black person even made it to the Final 2. The only Latina/Chicana to ever win was season 7's Sandra, and really it didn't matter who won that year as long as it wasn't Johnny Fairplay (who made it to third place, mind you). This does raise the question of what ethnicity Jenna Morasca is, but judging from the way she acted during "Kill Reality" and her Playboy pictorial, I think she's happy being known more as of a "mixed race." This has always been a white person's game so far, and this is a way to rectify that.

Looking at the line-up of new contestants, I will bring up my gripe about how certain people of mixed race are characterized as. Just as I have an issue with Halle Berry's Oscar speech focusing primarily on her black roots (even though her mother--which they showed during the broadcast--is a blonde German white woman), some of these contestants, most noticeably the African-Americans, are both African-American and Caucasian. In more vulgar terms, they are Mulatto. I understand the pride one has in a certain aspect of their race, and I frankly don't want to get too much into this lest a few people get mad at my apparent racial insensitivity (yeah, that's so like me), but it does stand for the one major problem I have with the season.

But the important aspect, as aforementioned, is that this is just some kind of segregation. Burnett tries to calm our fears (and by "our fears," I mean "your fears") with this: "To the less-than-open minded person, it is very easy to trash us," Burnett explained to Entertainment Weekly. "But we're smart enough to not make it negative. We're smart enough to have gotten rid of every racist person in casting." This is probably pretty true, as while the country is still very segregated, I think racism exists only in little starts and fits around the land, and most people are more unaware of other cultures than they are spiteful toward them. There may be a few who try to bring it into play, but I don't see any hate crimes on Cook Islands.

Others are more just disappointed than enraged at the concept of the season. Take my fiancee Stevi, for example. What follows is excerpts from an AIM conversation from a few weeks past that is more of an ideological dissatisfaction with the easy moral lessons that can be gathered from the show.

For editing purposes, it now looks like play dialogue, sans bold type:

Marcus: Next season of "Survivor" they're splitting the four tribes up by race.
Stevi: What?
Marcus: What what?
Stevi: How can they do that?
Marcus: Because the show has always been accused of not being diverse enough. Usually it's one Asian, one Latina, 2-3 black people, the rest white. I mean, last year they did the four by age.
Stevi: well, that's like the population of America.
Marcus: Older Men, Younger Men, Older Women, Younger Women
Stevi: But isn't it more problematic to divide by race?
Marcus: Maybe.
Stevi: This is why people need to look to pop culture narratives, because some problematic shit is happening.
Marcus: I mean, 6 episodes in they'll merge anyway.
Stevi: And if we don't solve it, its going to continue to penetrate us with the most negative aspects of our culture. But then when that happens, the drama is gong to be race based.
Marcus: Well, maybe the white people will suck at being people.
Stevi: "You damn latina hos." Still, they're working of a model of cultural/racial/ethnic conflict grabbing ratings. Like "Crash." you don't want "Survivor" to be "Crash"; promoting racism by telling us its bad. We know that already.
Marcus: Indeed.
Stevi: Not that ethnic studies are my forte, but the gay body is so often conflated with the racial body that they may as well be one in the same. What would happen if they split the designers on "[Project] Runway" into gay and straight teams? What the fuck would that solve?
Marcus: There are straight people on "Runway"?

FIN

I suppose that it's fair enough to believe such things, but it may just be more that to my knowledge she has only watched about 2-3 episodes of "Survivor" in their entirety ever since the show started in the summer of 2000. Really, as the advertisements truthfully state, none of you complained when the game was divided by gender or, as with the last season, age. (Even less people noticed that there were two people who were 32, yet the 32-year-old male was thrust into the "young male" group while the 32-year-old female was labeled as "old female." You dropped the ball, feminists.)

I urge you to seek out articles about "Survivor: Cook Islands" and read the offended words of many different media-savvy people. They have every right to their opinion. I just consider myself pretty sensitive to issues of race, gender, sexuality, etc., and I see absolutely nothing wrong with a little light pizzazz in one of the mainstays of reality television.

I also urge you to watch the new season, as "Survivor" has had a great roll of excitement and daring strategy over the past four seasons. (Although you must admit Chris did not deserve to win over Twila. That there was a gyp.) It's going to be a very widely discussed season, and you don't want to be kept out of the loop, do you?

--MG

Note: As of last week, before the season has even started, Vegas oddsmakers have a Latino/Chicano member winning it all. Why? I have no clue. I can imagine a bookie in the middle of Nevada saying "All them Hispanics are wily!"

---

Update on the morn of airing:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-d8pH0dcoRKeB12yOcnUQp.9VCFos?p=11742

Two big items. Not only does the NAACP say they will reserve judgement of the show until after viewing, Mark Burnett decides to give a very long answer that may calm some more "fears."

Our rationale for dividing Survivor tribes by ethnicity was based upon our belief that racial differences were highly unlikely to matter when the modern world was removed.

Survivor takes place on an island where economics, ethnicity and social class count for nothing. What is important is your ability to build a fire and catch fish. On an island, the value system by which we judge others and even choose to associate or align with others is totally different from choices that may be made in the modern world. Add to this, the political nature of Survivor and the questions are “Do I like this person?” and “Can I convince this person to vote for me?”

Survivor is probably one of the greatest leadership and management tests you can witness. It’s almost like firing someone who works as your subordinate, then the next day, asking them to lobby “your boss” to give “you” a promotion. Survivor is the equivalent of this where the very people you play a part in getting rid of, are asked to turn around and reward you for it.

I believe that most people are inherently good and very few people are intentionally bigoted. It’s all about whether you actually get to know people and getting to know them in a totally fresh environment such as on a desert island further reduces any potential for bigotry.

Were we correct?? Time will tell. All I can say is that the series will pull no punches and will at the very least show that it’s impossible to stereotype people once you meet them and (even vicariously) live with them as they struggle to build a world together while still looking out for themselves.

I agree with the NAACP in that there is no escaping the reality that race is a complex and emotional issue in America -- one we are still reluctant to confront and address and I am happy that they have reserved judgment until they watch the series. I would encourage anyone to follow this lead and watch at least a few episodes to get a clear picture of how the dynamic will play out.