The Amazing Race Experiment

The contestants of Survivor: Cook Islands. (Global TV)

There was no rioting in the streets last Friday. No storming of CBS headquarters. No calls for the head of reality TV super-producer Mark Burnett to be served on a platter. Despite almost-uniform critical condemnation of the latest instalment of Burnett’s series Survivor — and the cancellation of several of its advertisers — the show’s season debut turned out to be, well, not the radical “social experiment” that host Jeff Probst hyped it to be, but largely inoffensive, fairly entertaining and even — dare I say it? — kind of thought-provoking.

The controversy centred on the show’s decision to group contestants according to race: African-American, Asian, Caucasian and Latino. (There was no explanation why the show’s “tribes” were limited to those four groups, or why, say, no Arabs, Native Americans and South Asians were cast.) When news of this ethnic twist was released a few weeks ago, the inevitable questions arose: Was it a questionable ploy to boost the show’s slipping ratings? Was it a tasteless publicity stunt?

In its conception, Survivor: Cook Islands was probably a little of both. Burnett’s franchise has been guilty of race appropriation since its 2000 debut, with its Trader Vic’s meets Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise esthetic, tribes with aboriginal-sounding names (Mogo Mogo, Koror, Xhakum, etc.) and immunity idols that look like they’ve come straight from the props department of the Brady-Bunch-goes-to-Hawaii special. Survivor, though, is hardly the first reality TV show to exploit ethnic tensions to grab attention. From its first instalment in 1992, MTV’s The Real World has thrown together attractive twentysomethings and had them drink, flirt and offend each other — debating and sometimes coming to near blows over the politics of interracial dating, the use of the term “coloured people” and the appropriateness of wearing a T-shirt with a swastika on it. (Thanks for the memories, Puck!)

Burnett and Probst have said that this race-based edition of Survivor came about partly in response to criticism about the show’s predominantly homogeneous (i.e., mostly white) casting. For the Cook Islands series, people of colour were aggressively recruited to apply for spots. The aim was to create the most ethnically diverse cast in the history of TV. As Burnett explained to Entertainment Weekly, “To the less-than-open-minded person, it is very easy to trash us. ... But we’re smart enough to not make it negative. ... We’re smart enough to have gotten rid of every racist person in casting.”

Performance artist/rollergirl Jessica, a member of Survivor: Cook Islands's Caucasian tribe. (Global TV)

It’s true that so far none of the Caucasians appear to be bigots. When the tribe landed on its island and was congratulating itself on its excellent haul of supplies — including an extra chicken stolen from the Asian tribe — one member said, awkwardly, “Go, er,
Whiteys ...!” A teammate tactfully advised her, “I would have said ‘Raro’ instead,” referring to the tribe’s name. Given all the reality-TV clichés — the backstabbing, the shifting allegiances, the in-it-to-win-it braggadocio — this, at last, was something new: watching a group of white people nervously realize that they had been grouped and stereotyped by race, perhaps for the first time in their lives, and would now be forced to reckon with their words and actions being scrutinized.

Tribes on Survivor always brag about their superiority. How’s that going to sound when the Caucasian team does it? What’s also notable is that Jessica, the person who made the “Whiteys” comment, sports “tribal” tattoos and dreadlocks. In other words, she looks exactly like the kind of white person who’s apt to say things like, “I really relate to African culture” or, “I think we’re all one people.” If she survives long enough, it’ll be interesting to see how she mixes with the other teams and what they make of her. And what about the Cook Islands viewer’s experience? Just 10 minutes into the first episode, the show has already put you on the spot, obliging you to speculate on why you relate to certain tribes and players. Will you root for the fittest and most skilled team? (That would be the Asian tribe.) Or the tribe that seems the most personable and cohesive? (So far, the Latino tribe.) Or will you root for the team that looks like you? And if so, why?

In the opening episode, the tensions that did burble up existed within the groups, not between them. For now, at least, jokes and generalizations were aired among tribes themselves. Making his way to the Latino team’s designated location on a rickety boat, Billy, a heavy metal musician, cracked that it felt “ass backward, like our parents got on a raft — at least, my parents did — and paddled away from an island just so I could have a good life, and here I am paddling back to an island.” Later, while the African-American team was debating the best way to set up a shelter, Nate opined, “Black people don’t like to be told what to do.” And Cao Boi, an older, hippie refugee from Vietnam, was told by his teammates to cool it with the Asian jokes.

Prelate Cao Boi, a member of Survivor: Cook Islands's Asian tribe. (Global TV)

Several contestants fretted about having to represent their community. Rebecca, a member of the African-American team, said, “It makes me feel like because we are divided by race, now we have to step up to the plate and show that, yes, black people do swim … we don’t just run track.” And almost all the members of the Asian team noted that as a mix of Korean, Filipino, Hawaiian and Vietnamese, the tribe has very little ethnicity in common. Others, like Sundra, another member of African-American group, dismissed the racial angle altogether: “With our group, it has nothing to do with race. We’re just city slickers thrown into the bareness of life.”

Again, here was something novel for reality TV: a diverse group of people airing a variety of thoughtful views on how people are categorized by race and the impact that it has on them. Not to overstate the situation — it is Survivor after all, and the ultimate goal for the network remains ratings and for the contestants, a million dollars — but the comments felt unrehearsed and revealing. Compared to The Apprentice’s Omarosa, an offensive caricature of a supreme black bitch created through crude casting, crafty editing and her own enormous ego, it seems unlikely that any of the Cook Islands cast could be easily simplified to a racial stereotype.

Which isn’t to say the racial angle of Survivor: Cook Islands is not distasteful. It appears that none of the cast knew of the premise when they signed on — that’s a cheap trick even by reality TV standards. Still, at a time when California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggests that a colleague has fiery Latin blood, or when Virginia Senator George Allen calls a U.S.-born South Asian political assistant “Macaca” and welcomes him to America, perhaps the couch potato constituency could stand to hear a little more frank discussion about race — even if the source is reality-TV.

In his defense of the show, Burnett has said, “I’ve learned that the social time you spend is predominantly in your own ethnic group. And that very much reminded me of Survivor, because you’re in a tribe, and yet that tribe is going to change, maybe multiple times.” What happens when those people come together, as an integrated rather than segregated group, and how the show handles those encounters, will be the most telling moments of the season.

Survivor: Cook Islands airs Thursdays on CBS.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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