Essay 1006

Give CBS black eye for ‘Survivor’ segregation

By Stanley Crouch

Now CBS is retreating into that good old golden age of segregation, featuring teams divided by race on the upcoming season of its “Survivor” show.

There is a logic to this. Segregated groupings are always good in the world of business because they result in the reduction of all human fact to the profoundly simplistic arena of color. If people don’t get the point, literally put it in black and white, or don’t exclude: Give everybody a segregated shot. Put it in black, white, Latino and Asian. Then the gang’s all there.

The move is clearly being done in order to prop up profits by doing something so easily provocative that audiences will be asked to identify along the lines of skin tone.

Responding to protests from a multiethnic New York coalition of officials led by City Councilman John Liu (D-Queens), CBS Entertainment said in a statement that the show is doing no more than continuing a tradition of introducing fresh elements and casting that supposedly reflect cultural and social issues. This translates to organizing teams to compete against each other that are not simply based on a mix of age, gender and physical condition. That obviously does not speak to enough cultural and social issues.

Answering its critics, CBS Entertainment says, “CBS fully recognizes the controversial nature of this format but has full confidence in the producers and their ability to produce the program in a responsible manner. ‘Survivor’ is a program that is no stranger to controversy and has always answered its critics on the screen.”

That’s intellectual hog slop.

What it all adds up to is a sensationalism based on cheap enmities and trivial resentments. It may all come down to finding out whether or not white teams do well or exceed teams of minorities. There are your cultural and social issues.

In other words, do white men and women, young or old, in good, middling or bad shape, stand up well against those people who are usually depicted in mass media as mysterious, stupid, exotic, disordered or more akin to animals in their physicality?

There also is more than a hint of minstrelsy in the segregated concept that “Survivor” is trying to float. It is one that could easily have been inspired by the minstrelsy of rap videos or by hip-hop minstrel figures like Flavor Flav. His mush-mouthed and buffoonish episodes on VH1’s “Strange Love” with Brigitte Nielsen were so intrepidly stupid that they must have warmed the hearts of every member of the American Nazi Party.

Those episodes either intrigued or appalled enough people to lead to continuation of the sort that those programmers at CBS would surely be aware of, just as they must be aware of the multibillion-dollar hip-hop industry. The underlying ethos of that industry seems to be the demand to become wealthy by assuming the roles of apes in drop-down pants and freelance hookers intent on giving new meaning to “pressing the flesh.”

Well, just another day at the fount of exploitation. It would be wonderful to think that those responsible for the new formation of “Survivor” might burn in hell for these efforts at imposed ethnic division, but it is more important to let them know that this is a very tired game that fools no one.