Reality television is supposed to depict something real, with real people and real situations. However, anyone who has seen an episode of MTV's "Next" knows producers have strayed from this credo.
This season of "Survivor" divides teams up by race. As unsettling as this premise may seem, segregation - deliberate or otherwise - reflects much of the scripted programming on television.
Fifty-two years after Brown v. Board of Education, the official end of segregation in public schools, three sitcoms on the current CBS fall lineup feature all-white casts.
With their Comedy Central shows, Dave Chappelle and Carlos Mencia mock stereotypes of all races - including their own - by presenting these stereotypes in exaggerated forms.
But is America getting the joke?
Even segregation schtick can't guarantee series' 'Survival'. The controversy surrounding "Survivor: Cook Islands" is probably exactly what the show's creator and producer Mark Burnett had in mind when he decided to divide this season's tribes by race.
"Survivor: Cook Islands" features 20 contestants divided into four teams: Hiki, Puka, Aitu, Raro or African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic and Caucasian, respectively.
With markedly lower ratings for the show's 12th season, Burnett seized an opportunity to change things up and cash in on a consistently contentious topic to mark the 13th chapter of the series.
Interestingly, Burnett's idea may have had the opposite effect. Instead of luring new viewers, he may have alienated existing audiences. Despite all the hype, "Survivor: Cook Islands" has not been doing particularly well as far as ratings are concerned, with an average of 17.7 million viewers tuning into the "Cook Islands" premiere, compared to the Season 2's approximately 45 million viewers.
"Survivor," the first reality show to find real success on network primetime, is simply past its prime, even with this new twist.
Apurvi Mehta, a senior and member of the Asian American Center, is among the Americans who won't be watching this season. "I refuse to watch the new season of 'Survivor' solely on the fact that the teams are divided by race ... The message that this season is portraying is one of racial segregation, which I personally do not accept as a South Asian-American," said Mehta.
The fact remains that the very idea for this season is scandalous.It's not nice to discuss race at the primetime dinner table
But why? What is the harm in dividing teams up by race? Are we so programmed to be politically correct that the very discussion of race incites a visceral reaction of discomfort, or is this premise legitimately offensive?
In an interview on CBS's "The Early Show," "Survivor" host Jeff Probst defended the new idea for Season 13.
"I think, at first glance, when you just hear the idea, it could sound like a stunt ... The idea for this actually came from the criticism that 'Survivor' was not ethnically diverse enough, because, for whatever reason, we've always had a low number of minority applicants apply to the show. So we set out and said, 'Let's turn this criticism into creativity for the show.'"
While Probst clung dearly to his job, producer Burnett did damage control during promotion for this season. "I look at [racism] as truly an American malady," said Burnett. He went on to mention that, where he grew up (England during the 1960s), "nobody really cared about these sorts of things."
However wholly untrue his statements are, Burnett does bring up a legitimate point. American race relations have a particularly violent, tense history. Is it actually possible that the televised division of races pitted against each other could really help Americans see the error of their racist ways, as Burnett seems to claim?
When stereotypes 'Survive,' who wins?
Don't hold your breath. In fact, many claim a concept like this will only reinforce negative stereotypes. It is unfair at best to ask five people to represent an entire race.
Within the first half hour of the premiere episode of "Cook Islands" a member of the African American team is criticized for napping too much when he should be working, a member of the Caucasian team whines about being too cold as if no one else is suffering quite like she is, and after diagnosing his teammate with "bad wind" an elderly member of the Asian American team performs an unorthodox, ancient healing technique to ease the pain.
It is clear that stereotypes are not going to be subverted here. Already we have a lazy black guy, a white princess and an Asian, Confucius-esque wise man.
Call them Hiki or Puka or some other name that sounds like two random syllables put together, but what viewers actually see here is a team of black people, a team of white people, a team of Asian people and a team of Latino people.
When Jonathan, a member of Raro, the Caucasian tribe, was chosen to be sent off to an isolated island, he said, "It's because I took the Asian guy's chicken that the African-American guys chose me."
A show of this nature fosters an environment in which it is acceptable to refer to others not by their actual names, but by the names of their races.
When one of these teams loses a challenge, a certain amount of judgment is going to be cast upon them. In previous seasons, a team could lose, and it would mean that that team is bad at logic games or physical challenges. Here, depending on who wins or loses, the message becomes that Latinos are bad at logic games or whites are bad at physical challenges.
At a recent press conference in New York City, the founder of the nonprofit organization Hispanics Across America, Fernando Mateo, echoed this sentiment: "What will it mean for a team - a race - to fail in a battle of wits and strength against another race?"
Indeed, the effects of "Survivior: Cook Islands" could prove lasting and powerful, especially on viewers who do not have regular interactions with races outside of their own.
But even to these isolated reality television fans, the reliance on stereotypes on "Cook Islands" should be obvious.
It is the regular television programming where racism is latent - the sitcoms where African Americans are featured only in the background or the shows that play up every known stereotype for laughs - that could prove more damaging.
Shows featuring minorities are separate, not equal
Popular sitcoms have a long-standing history of excluding certain races. For years, shows like "Friends," "Seinfeld," "Mad About You" and a slew of others focused on affluent, young, urban white people. Though these shows in particular were set in New York City, a city famous for its diversity, somehow an Asian person was never to be seen unless he worked in a Chinese restaurant.
All the main characters on "Friends" were white. Almost everyone the main characters dated was white. They all drank coffee out of big mugs with people who were white. The show received criticism for this obvious exclusion of other races, and, miraculously, an African-American love interest turned up in the form of Aisha Tyler in the show's second-to-last season.
And while shows like "Friends" have been rebuked for lack of diversity, new sitcoms are sprouting up even this season with all-white casts as well. Look at "The Class," a new show on CBS that, out of eight main characters, does not feature one African-American, Asian or Latino character.
None of these shows are racist in a glaring way, like, say...the new season of "Survivor," but the omission of other ethnicities is important and affects us in less obvious ways.
For non-white viewers, there is a sense of unspoken exclusion. Of course, there are shows that focus entirely on minority characters as well. "The Cosby Show" famously portrayed a black nuclear family with well educated, successful parents and smart, responsible kids.
More recently, ABC's "George Lopez ," now in its fifth season, features a similar kind of healthy nuclear family, only they're Mexican-American.
But even these shows receive criticism. The families are sometimes considered too white, and critics argue that, though the image of the black and Latino families is a positive one, it lacks real substance, because characters are so "whitewashed."
Shows like "Chappelle's Show" and "Mind of Mencia" poke fun at nearly every race and ethnicity imaginable. As a way of calling out the inequities in our society, Chappelle and Mencia depict exaggerated images of common stereotypes. Both comedians ridicule aspects of their own race and ethnicity as well. The danger here is not just for people who may not get the joke; more importantly, it could potentially be destructive for members of a certain ethnic community who thereby learn to accept self-bashing as funny.
Rub?n Salinas-Stern, the director of the Latino Center at Tufts, sees such mockery as fairly harmless, but sees a greater problem: "As long as it [self-deprecating humor] is in context and it isn't the only topic that they focus on. The problem is that, most of the time, the only thing that we get to see about Latinos on TV is crime, immigration, affirmative action and drugs."
While the detrimental effects of "Survivor: Cook Islands," may be debatable, the rampant encouragement of segregation propagated through all aspects of entertainment television is undeniable. American television should understand that a diverse cast is not the goal, but rather the default.
