the thirteenth installment of the 'reality' show pioneer begins tonight. unless you've been living on Mars, you've heard that producers have decided to segment contestants by race. while the media is largely responsible for making this decision 'news-worthy', i'm still trying to figure out why all the hype and criticism; claiming the decision was supporting segregation among various races and communities.
watch any cbs morning news program on sept 15th, and you're guaranteed to hear from the first contestant voted-off and from your local asian/african/latino support group on how cbs played the race card to expose their 'people.' i can only imagine that cbs executives are patiently waiting for one race to refer to another race (or to one another) as something other than the PC version..or referencing/suppporting certain stereotypes. i'm sure the producers will be able to bake up a controversial situation to help spurn some animosity...i'm sure the media can't wait.
let's be honest, the name of the game here is ratings...which equates to ad revenue. last season contestants were segmented by age (young / old) and gender...apparently this wasn't enough to gain/maintain the ratings that make producers happy.
what's next? i guess it would be more like what's left? how about gay tribe vs. straight tribe. convicts vs. lawyers. probably a matter of how far can they push the FCC.
in another few days, this whole hype surrounding the idea of segmenting contestants by 'race' will be long forgotten and the show will most likely see ratings that fade over the coming weeks...forcing producers to think of how they can draw out the 'live finally' with some other twist.
in a fast evolving media consuming society, i don't see how this decision was seen as so controversial. if producers tried this sort of segmentation back in season two or three, it never would have made it passed the brainstorm session. i'd like to think that the other real life 'reality' news bits (teacher raping student, student shooting spree, that thing happening in iraq) help put things in perspective.
how long before we're watching a real life execution similar to the Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man?
1 comment:
If you've been following the show, you may have already seen that the 'races' have been combined. Only a few shows deep and all the hype seems to be for naught.
Post a Comment