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« Doing My Part | Main | George Allen: Not Ready for Prime Time? » August 23, 2006Survivor to stir the race relations pot?Survivor host Jeff Probst announced this morning that the 20 contestants on the 13th edition of the competition will be divided into four tribes along racial lines. This is certainly a bold move in a society where race relations is still a very sensitive topic. And it's the sort of thing that's guaranteed to give people who live and breath political correctness a serious case of the willies: "If I had been a producer of this show, it is not an idea I would have come up with or given approval to," Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, told E! Online. "It's like a return back to segregated leagues in sports. The unseemly interest this will invite certainly is not worth the dramatic elements it's going to bring." I doubt the racial lines will play any role in the inter-tribe competition, but it may be interesting to see how intra-tribe relations differ among the groups. In any case, Dr. Thompson need not fear. Last time, the four tribes (divided along age and gender lines) were merged into two in the second episode! Posted by Eric Seymour at August 23, 2006 05:25 PM CommentsLucky for us all that Robert Thompson is director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University and not the producer of Survivor. Sorry, but this doesn't look anything like "a return back to segregated leagues in sports," just as the season where the teams were separated by gender didn't resemble a step back to Our lady of Perpetual Hope grade school circa 1952, and the season where teams were separated by age groups didn't reek of "if you're 30, you're through" as they screamed in the 1960s howler, Wild in the Streets. It's not gameshow redlining, it's just a hook for an audience that has grown up a lot since the days when Nat King Cole had to cancel his popular tv show because national advertisers refused to sponsor his show, fearing boycotts of their products. Incidently, the idea first appeared to surface last year for Donald Trump's show the Apprentice, another Mark Burnett franchise. Posted by: JohnS at August 24, 2006 11:13 AM | permalink Post a comment |
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