Playing the race card
There is something really remarkable about the fact that we get our reality on television now, isn't there? This was supposed to be a flash-in-the-pan - I think four or five years ago we were reading about declining ratings for the third or fourth season of "Survivor" and the second season of Joe Millionaire wasn't doing as well as the original, and we viewed these as signs that we had lost our appetite for reality tv.
The truth, of course, is much different: we will never lose our hunger for this. It's not a genre, like food programming or sports, but a style that trancends all of those genres: there are reality shows around food, and sports, and every other conceivable genre of television. We're fascinated by watching ourselves (or versions of ourselves, or people we consider to be much, much stupider than ourselves) in situations that heighten natural human reactions to reality - close quarters or competitions, for instance - and we like to see reality programming around our own niche interests, be they fashion, travel, music, or anything else.
But reality television rarely overtly creates an environment in which the goal is to confront the biggest problems of the real world: things like class relations and racism and sexual orientation are usually byproducts of these shows, rather than built into the structure of them. There are some exceptions here, of course, but more often than not the shows that are overtly about these issues fare poorly - Playing it Straight was pulled by Fox before it finished, and Welcome to the Neighbourhood got cut before it aired, allegedly becuase the suits at ABC wer concerned that it would "foster prejudice". I'm not certain that was the reason - it may have been the pressure ABC received before it aired, but I just think the show would have tanked. We don't want to be reminded that these are the issues, I think - or maybe it's that when so many of us are forced to deal with them every day, we don't buy it when complex societal probems are solved on camera in an hour.
But put 16 people in a pressure cooker and there will be, say, status issues, because that's the way that people are - it's not because contestants are divided into teams of rich and poor, it's because television reflects reality, and class (and race and gender and orientation and age) are big issues for us, and big issues for the people competing (or showing off, or prostituting themselves, or whatever you want to call it).
This is where Survivor - the mother of all reality TV shows, and still a something of a hit - has been able to do something (slowly, anyway), that the others have tried to do and failed. Survivor is, famously, constantly reminding us of ageism, and of gender inequality (if not of racial tensions and homophobia) - the very first contestant ever voted off was an older woman, and she got the boot entirely because of that. She was too old to compete well, and in the first ever tribal council she lost to another older contestant, who managed to avoid walking the planl because he was male and somewhat virile (even if he was a miserable sumbitch). Slowly, though, Survior has been embracing our natural differences - dividing what was once entirely mixed tribes into young and old, or male and female, at least at the beginning of each season.
Now, this - the latest installment of Survivor will separate the contestants into tribes based on their races. I'm not certain that this is the cure that the show needs in its 13th go-round: ratings were at an all-time low last time, but this seems to be antithetical to what we want out of our reality TV. That being said, I feel as if we may be ready for this. It may have less to do with any sea change in race relations since the start of the original Survivor, and more with our quest to see something new in reality television. Lastly, I think, there's something - I can't believe I am going ot say this - almost classy about Survivor. At the very least, it's less exploitative than The Littlest Groom (I should say significantly less exploitative - sweatshop labour is less exploitative than The Littlest Groom) and that might make it more palatable to us: if we're going ot see these things on TV, better that they are brought to us by CBS, and not Fox.
The truth, of course, is much different: we will never lose our hunger for this. It's not a genre, like food programming or sports, but a style that trancends all of those genres: there are reality shows around food, and sports, and every other conceivable genre of television. We're fascinated by watching ourselves (or versions of ourselves, or people we consider to be much, much stupider than ourselves) in situations that heighten natural human reactions to reality - close quarters or competitions, for instance - and we like to see reality programming around our own niche interests, be they fashion, travel, music, or anything else.
But reality television rarely overtly creates an environment in which the goal is to confront the biggest problems of the real world: things like class relations and racism and sexual orientation are usually byproducts of these shows, rather than built into the structure of them. There are some exceptions here, of course, but more often than not the shows that are overtly about these issues fare poorly - Playing it Straight was pulled by Fox before it finished, and Welcome to the Neighbourhood got cut before it aired, allegedly becuase the suits at ABC wer concerned that it would "foster prejudice". I'm not certain that was the reason - it may have been the pressure ABC received before it aired, but I just think the show would have tanked. We don't want to be reminded that these are the issues, I think - or maybe it's that when so many of us are forced to deal with them every day, we don't buy it when complex societal probems are solved on camera in an hour.
But put 16 people in a pressure cooker and there will be, say, status issues, because that's the way that people are - it's not because contestants are divided into teams of rich and poor, it's because television reflects reality, and class (and race and gender and orientation and age) are big issues for us, and big issues for the people competing (or showing off, or prostituting themselves, or whatever you want to call it).
This is where Survivor - the mother of all reality TV shows, and still a something of a hit - has been able to do something (slowly, anyway), that the others have tried to do and failed. Survivor is, famously, constantly reminding us of ageism, and of gender inequality (if not of racial tensions and homophobia) - the very first contestant ever voted off was an older woman, and she got the boot entirely because of that. She was too old to compete well, and in the first ever tribal council she lost to another older contestant, who managed to avoid walking the planl because he was male and somewhat virile (even if he was a miserable sumbitch). Slowly, though, Survior has been embracing our natural differences - dividing what was once entirely mixed tribes into young and old, or male and female, at least at the beginning of each season.
Now, this - the latest installment of Survivor will separate the contestants into tribes based on their races. I'm not certain that this is the cure that the show needs in its 13th go-round: ratings were at an all-time low last time, but this seems to be antithetical to what we want out of our reality TV. That being said, I feel as if we may be ready for this. It may have less to do with any sea change in race relations since the start of the original Survivor, and more with our quest to see something new in reality television. Lastly, I think, there's something - I can't believe I am going ot say this - almost classy about Survivor. At the very least, it's less exploitative than The Littlest Groom (I should say significantly less exploitative - sweatshop labour is less exploitative than The Littlest Groom) and that might make it more palatable to us: if we're going ot see these things on TV, better that they are brought to us by CBS, and not Fox.
