Race for 'Survival'

'Survivor' opens season Thursday night with segregated ethnic tribes

Verne Gay | Off Camera

September 14, 2006

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When was the last time anyone talked about that granddaddy of reality TV/cultural bellwether/20th century artifact that once set prime time on fire and now merely keeps CBS' Thursday 8 p.m. time slot pleasantly warm, like a tea cozy?

Was it a couple years ago, or maybe back in the summer of 2000 when those indelible words - "The tribe has spoken" - thundered out of the tube and into our short-attention-span lives?

"Survivor" was supposed to change society (it did). "Survivor" was supposed to save CBS (it did). "Survivor" was supposed to overhaul all of prime time (oh, how it did).

But, ummm, was "Survivor" supposed to do this?

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In the "Cook Islands" edition beginning tonight, 20 contestants will be split into four teams based on race - African-Americans, Latinos, Caucasians and Asians. People are talking again, and for reasons that don't need to be spelled out here.

"Damn, I hope heads roll over this divisive stunt," wrote an outraged columnist for the online Huffington Post recently. Or this from John Liu, the outspoken and equally outraged city councilman from Flushing (20th District): "I found out about it," he said in a recent interview, "because my constituents got upset and I received several calls and e-mails. As with everything else, timing is the key and we're talking about a week after a couple of teens in Queens were beaten severely in a bias attack. So the idea that that it's some kind of social experiment [is] a sick and twisted view of reality. That the producers ...can segregate the teams on one sole basis of race? We don't accept that anywhere else in our society."

Liu organized a protest among several other council members who sent a letter to CBS, which apparently made it all the way to the round file; the show goes on tonight as scheduled.

Should you be outraged, too? Sure - go ahead - but you may wish to factor in additional perspective first. "Survivor" is a business enterprise designed to draw viewers by means of a game that works this way: Alliances are struck among contestants, and then broken, en route to a $1-million pot. Lies, deceit, subterfuge, strategy and physical stamina are esteemed above all else, while - to my recollection - racial division has never been a factor in the previous 12 editions.

But "Survivor" - still the best of the reality crop - has also been struck by a plodding predictability. Most contestants are white. Most are lean, hungry, savvy yuppie types who already know the game as well as checkers. "Survivor" needed a shake-up and it gets a big one tonight. (A preview tape was not made available to TV critics.)

In a recent phone interview from his home in Los Angeles, creator Mark Burnett vetted outrage, too - against critics like Liu who (he claims) have never (or rarely) watched. "I do realize in this country how incendiary [the topic of race is], but why let the status quo remain and avoid the topic at all costs - which is the way it was done in the past, largely by the networks which determined that, oh, on [TV shows] there needs to be two African-Americans, occasionally an Hispanic or Asian, which mirrors the population."

This "token representation," he scornfully says, "really got on my nerves."

In casting calls for "Cook Islands," Burnett and his team found a problem that's grown in recent years - mostly white "Survivor" wanna-bes who already knew the game intimately. This time they cast a net for those who rarely bothered to watch - minorities. The result's an edition that's heavily "integrated" and full of neophytes.

Burnett claims he landed on the idea of splitting teams by race because he says that's the way people in society divide themselves up: "Find someone who's been in Iraq recently and ask them how soldiers are grouped in mess halls; don't you think Latinos sit in one area and blacks in another area? It isn't because they hate each other - they watch each other's backs in action - but because they have a commonality. That's a fact."

The idea was to build teams that were bonded by "ethnic pride" - his words - and then test or fray those bonds after the teams were merged in a few weeks, which is the whole idea behind "Survivor."

Was the "race card" employed to boost controversy, ink and then viewers? Burnett denies it, but does admit that "I wanted something water-cooler worthy. I was disappointed in hearing people make public statements, [then say] 'I've never seen one episode.' It drives me crazy."

Of Liu, he says, "I hope that guy...is as loud in apologizing as he was in accusing."

The councilman, for his part, responded by saying, "I am starving for some explanation, any explanation they can offer for going ahead with this kind of format." He compared the show with "some episode of 'The Twilight Zone.'

"I will not watch the show, but I will hear the ire of my constituents."