POISON SCOOTER

Survivor Race War

Wow. I can't believe how much press the new Survivor season is getting. On second thought, with our pathetic media in this country I absolutely can believe it. No one is ever satisfied. Let me state up front that I could care less about how Mark Burnett and CBS chose to cast the show this time around, I'd watch the show regardless since I'm a huge fan of the reality game show. I've often thought to myself "how can this show ever get passe and boring?" since it's concept is perfect. Strand people on a deserted island, make them mentally and physically battle each other for 40 days and give the winner a cool million bucks. But apparently even a slight dip in ratings will force even the best show to come up with a new angle. Hence all the hub bub.

This year the show is going to divide up 20 people into tribes by race. African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans and I guess just plain old Americans, or white folks if you prefer. When I first heard about this, I was shocked that a television show on prime time TV was actually going to feature 15 minorities, or 17 if you count women, out of a cast of only 20. That's 75% plus minorities! Outside of sitcoms on the network formerly know as UPN, where have you seen a show of any kind featuring this many minorities? It never occurred to me that people would be offended by the decision.

As a fan of reality TV, my personal knock against the genre has always been that they usually take the token approach, throwing in one person of color just to get some brownie points with the PC crowd. Real World does it religiously, often putting 1 person of color and 1 homosexual into mix, and usually the hope is that this will create drama when the house of whites can't handle the proximity to someone "different" than themselves. Most of the reality game shows do a similar thing, take Big Brother where Marcellas and Danielle are the only contestants out of 6 seasons worthy of All Star status; or don't even bother, like Rock Star this year. Okay, maybe someone from Iceland is a minority.

My point is that you can't win no matter what you do. You put a whole bunch of people in a position to have a 1 in 20 chance of winning a million dollars and perhaps do wonders to show that, despite what the media tells us about race relations, we can all get along and you come off like a racist. Embarrassing. How much you want to bet that this whole issue becomes a non-factor? If you watch the show Survivor, you know that you are in it by yourself. Sure you can form alliances, but ultimately you must double cross everyone to win. So I'm not sure that having tribes aligned by race will do anything to alter the way the game is played, making it a non-issue. I guess the only good news to come of this is that people are talking about the show again, and therefore people will watch. Perhaps this will ensure that I get another 10 years of Survivor on the air making me the ultimate winner.

posted by Scooter @ 1:43 PM