Advertisers Flee "Race War" Edition of "Survivor"

An e-mail alert from AdAge.com, the website of Advertising Age:

Few issues are more emotionally tripwired or have a more tortured adversarial history than that of racial relations in the Untied States. Thus, it was hardly surprising that recent reports that the next "Survivor" series on CBS would pit teams of different races against each other raised hackles and howls from coast to coast. General Motors, which has sponsored the show for 12 seasons, pulled out of the upcoming "Survivor: Cook Islands," along with Home Depot, Campbell Soup Co., Coca-Cola North America, Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. All either denied or avoided commenting about whether the idea of racial clash as paid public spectacle had repulsed them. Few veterans in marketing communications and the media believe this PR cover.

Says the L.A. Times:

[T]here's been plenty of comedy from watching PR people strain to make the case that the sponsorship decision was unrelated to the racial component of "Survivor: Cook Islands," which starts Sept. 14. "It is my understanding that we did not know what the new format was when the decision was made," a GM spokesperson told the New York Times last week. [ ... ]

The evident trick here is to distance the company from something unsettling and controversial without appearing to do so for fear of being exposed as, well, spineless and mealy mouthed. [ ... ]

If advertisers are indeed running away from the racial theme, their hypocrisy knows no bounds. Some critics complain that dividing the contestants into ethnic groups smacks of old-fashioned social Darwinism. But the truth is that "Survivor" has always nurtured a divisive, dystopian, "Lord of the Flies"-type view of human nature. In fact, that's the whole fun of it.

"Survivor," of course, badly needed a shot in the ratings arm. From a high of 29.8 million average viewers per episode in the second season, the show has sunk to 16.6 million this year.

It strikes me that the most interesting and revealing part of this stunt will be the intra-group competition and backstabbing and not the inter-ethnic rivalry. We might learn a little something about how universal human nastiness and group dynamics play out in the intimacy of different subcultures (though each "race" really lumps together many disparate subcultures -- to begin with the very concept of a "race" really only exists in, is created by, the eyes of ignorance-blinded outsiders). That's where the secrets are.

But even that is ho-hum compared to what Mark Burnett should have done, of course: pit a team of Democrats against a team of Republicans. Now that would be the "Survivor" worth watching, this election year.

But maybe we already are.

Comments

[Icepick]

"Okay, there's been a lot of talk about whether or not one race is truly superior to the others. So we're going to settle this once and for all, the only way we know how: with a reality-TV game show!"

[Icepick]

Better still will be the PR for the DVD box set after the show gets pulled from the air two episodes due to lack of advertising:

"Now, see for yourself the TV show they didn't want you to see!"

This will be especially funny if it so happens that some minority (read: non-white non-East Asian) wins the contest. Then the lack of advertising could billed as Whitey trying to keep people down. This stuff is funnier than Katherine Harris's Senate campaign!

[Pastor_Jeff]

Amba,

I like the idea of other ways to make "Survivor" more interesting -- maybe vegans versus meat-eaters, or "Survivor" champs versus "Fear Factor" winners.

I linked to your post here.

[Walrus]

It's so nice to have situations where you can exercise your Schadenfreude guilt-free.

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Alas, the Republicans would wipe the floor with the Democrats. As has already happened in the real-life version of "Survivor."

[karen]

I wonder how the contestents feel about playing in a ~race-charged~ atmosphere?

I don't think that they will be able to play the race card, anyway. They will have to sink or swim on their own merits w/in the skin they were born. That's not a bad thing in this day and age.