On the Largely White Casts of Survivor

While it would be hard to remember all of the casts of Survivor, all of them except two seem to have one thing in common: they are largely white. Most of the contestants on a season are white. This is not really a problem on its own. Indeed, at one point, 80% of the applicants of Survivor are white. This may not be the case anymore. But is that alone why the casts are largely white? And is this a bad thing?

Well, for one reason or another, the producers of Survivor are either caving to the racial awakening of today (see my occasional posts in my Madam Secretary blog) or decided that they want at least half of the cast to be non-white in the future for other reasons (see previous post of this blog) which could be a good thing, deciding that the previous way of doing things just wasn’t cutting it. This isn’t that bad of a thing potentially, but the last major decision that they made with casting, getting rid of their long time casting producer, Lynne Spillman, lead to the very first season cast without her, Island of the Idols, to have a contestant ejected from the game. Is it post hoc ergo propter hoc? Maybe.

Once Survivor is back and has some of these casts for the first time, we’ll find out whether or not these casts work. But I have to talk about something that I neglected to mention in the post on the new rule of casting of Survivor. That is the two seasons done thus far without a majority white cast.

The first of these was Cook Islands. A lot of fans, at least in the one group that I’m part of and see the most on facebook, do not like this season. I don’t hate it, but I don’t think that I have it ranked high either. I put it in the middle of the seasons in my current ranking of them. But I don’t think that the hatred of that season had to do with the casting of it so much as perceived injustices in a last minute twist before the merge that might not be worth getting into here. If people don’t like the season that didn’t have a largely white cast, then one would think that it wasn’t a good idea. But was casting alone the reason that people didn’t like it? I’d say no.

We then get to the very next season which I didn’t like much at all. Fiji was cast in a way to make sure (according to Jeff Probst at the time) to prove that the other season wasn’t just a onetime thing. Due to the last minute quit of a player before the game even started, there were only four white players versus five of every other race. Jeff didn’t like the season. I hated the twist that put one tribe at a disadvantage over the others. Plus, I think that the main reason why I feel that this cast was weak was due to it being largely recruits instead of applicants.

If those two seasons were anything, it only brought Survivor casting back to how some feel that it should be in the end. Now I don’t know for sure just how many benefits white players might have versus those that aren’t white other than a numbers advantage on the other players (that never seems to happen that much, if ever, on its own) or why things seem to go this way a lot. I mean, most casts of TV shows are white (as I discussed recently in my TV blog) so one wouldn’t think that there being any issues with that on its own.

Now one might wonder if a largely white cast of this or any other show is automatically racist. I’d argue that it isn’t. I don’t think that even someone like Philip Sheppard would say something that irrational. Would anyone think that Survivor or any other show for that matter is racist simply for having largely white casts? It seems so normal, for better or worse, that no one would make that argument.

I forget where I was going with this post, so I’m largely just going to end it here for today. I hope that I can write a lot more of this blog and hope that I can come up with quality largely not done like it should be lately. I will get to more Survivor seasons in the future as I will explain in future blog posts on older episodes of the show. I just hope that I can get it all done and come up with something good. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.