Survivor

http://www.realitytvworld.com/news/cbs-reveals-survivor-cook-islands-cast-confirms-racial-tribe-division-4307.php

The media I decided to do this post on is the popular long running reality television show Survivor. From the start of the show’s run on CBS many have criticized it for the lack in minorities that are contestants on the show; producers have claimed that it is because of a lack of minority interest but in the latest season of survivor the producers took the search to add minorities too far. In a controversial move the producers decided to split the group of contestants into four racially segregated tribes.

This season is now less about who is backstabbing who and more about which race will dominate the others. The four tribes of this season are the Caucasian, Asian-American, African-American, and Hispanic Tribes. As a former fan of Survivor I know that the show use to be about trying to form alliances with other tribe members at the same time as trying to beat them for the shot at a million dollars. This season however seems to be beat the other races to show that you are superior.

This relates to both Takaki’s chapter 3 (The Giddy Multitude) and Zinn’s chapter 2 (Drawing the Color Line). In these chapters both authors explain that lines between ethnic groups were created. In previous seasons of Survivor the tribes were racially mixed and even though they were predominantly white the members of the groups had to work together to win challenges. In this season the point is to smash the rival tribes same as it has been for all other Survivor seasons but this time it is also crushing a rival race.

I think that this was a horrible idea for the show to do. When I use to watch the show I always thought it was interesting to see how people interacted with the other contestants of different races, and it was always exciting to see if one team member’s racist feeling toward another member would cause group conflict. This season the tension and racist feeling are in the open and there is no reason to “watch to see what happens. No matter what tribe wins someone will claim superiority over the other ethnic groups.