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Survivor Returns: Now With Added Stereotypes

Written by Cloud9 from the blog Tribal Talk on 15 Aug 2007
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Note: This article contains various stereotype jokes which may be offensive. Mostly because they’re so bad.

First off, I am going to show my appreciation for the return of Survivor by sharing a poem.

Survivor Survivor
I love you, I miss you
I just want to kiss you
Even when I diss you

Good, no? You totally can’t tell it was composed in two minutes. I just had to share my joy that the show is back after all this time. And what a premiere it was. It had everything: Stupid people! Chickens! Thievery! Stereotypes! People talking about breaking stereotypes! People talking about stereotypes and subsequently falling into those same stereotypes! And even more stupid people!

We kicked off the season with Jeff posing on a boat, twenty people of various ethnicities sitting in front of him. He announced that they’d better take all the crap from the boat that they could because that was all they were getting. Oh, and the biggie: that they were going to be divided by race. Everyone gasped and was shocked, even as they jumped off the boat. Shocking, shocking I tell you! And the cast being perfectly divided into five people of each ethnicity didn’t tip anyone off to this twist at all!

Reactions were varied. Some were surprised but happy to be taking part in a “social experiment”. People still think this show’s a social experiment? How quaint. Yul was worried about stereotypes and caricatures. On this show? With Mark “Racial sensitivity” Burnett in charge? Neeeever.

1.1
First we had killer pelicans, now killer chickens

Resident ditz Parvati wondered if dividing people by race was “kosher”. Oooh, that could totally be the theme for next season. We can have the teams split by religion. It’ll be awesome. The Christians will keep trying to convert all the other teams, The Muslims will complain that the Immunity Idol is clearly meant to disrespect the Prophet, the Atheists will act smugly superior to everyone else, and the Rastas won’t give a *bleep!* and just smoke the local herb instead of going to challenges.

(Wow, I’ve really earned a lot of hatemail with that one, didn’t I?)

Back to the tribal divisions. Would the Asian tribe be diligent and hard-working? Would the Hispanics be spicy and sultry? Would the African-Americans have rhythm? Would the Caucasians be obnoxious asses who exploit all the other tribes?

Here’s how the tribal divisions went:

Hispanic tribe = Aita (as in “I aita bad burrito”)
Asian tribe = Puka (as in “that kung-fu kick to the stomach made me puka lot”)
African American = Hiki (as in “I got a Hiki from my boo”)
Caucasian = Raro (as in “I’d like-o my steak-o raro, you dirty foreigner”)

The first team we got to glimpse into was Aita. Everyone was all “Yay, Hispanic pride! We’re awesome!” Billy, wearing a big skull T-shirt to represent his hardcore nature, told us how good his tribe was obviously going to be because of the Hispanic experience in working the land and coming from nature. Bitch, please. You come from New York. The only nature you’ve ever experienced was a pigeon crapping on a statue.

Billy then tried to put his inherent Latino knowledge of the land to the test by chopping up a bamboo stalk. He wielded the machete about as efficiently as you’d expect a chubby city clicker would. Ozzy decided to take over and easily got them food and supervised the building of the shelter, all thanks to his inherent Hispanic love of the land. And his extensive camping and wilderness experience.

At Puka, everyone was all “Yay, Asian pride! We rock!” The Asians quickly set to work building a shelter like the hard-working drones they are. Dammit, Asians, you’re supposed to be breaking stereotypes. Be lazy! Yul was initially a bit perturbed by Cao Boi because Cao Boi talks a lot of crap all the time. Cao Boi interviewed that he was worried about being accepted into the team because of the generation gap, looking like a hippie and not fitting the Asian stereotype. Well yeah, that and you’re a kook. Pretty sure you’d be a kook whatever tribe you’re on, Asian or not.

Just because Cao Boi’s a kook doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he’s doing. When Brad got a headache, Cao Boi did some mystical head thing and squeezed the headache out of him. Literally. The headache was gone a short while later and only a red mark remained. Damn, that’s cool. I want to know how to do that. Cao Boi interviewed about people having lost touch with the mysticism of Asian culture. So much for not fitting into stereotypes, wise Asian old mystic.

1.5
"Dude, I didn't even know Vietnamese people did Indian head massages."

1.6
"Yeah, well, we do, Brad. But there are some side effects..."

As soon as they got to their island, Hiki was all “Yay, black pride! We rock” with an added “represent” just to emphasise. Rebecca interviewed that they were going to show people that stereotypes like “black people can’t swim” and “black can’t paddle boats”. Ironically, Survivor is the show responsible for promoting those stereotypes along with “black people are scared of pelicans”. Thanks, Mark Burnett!

Sekou stepped up as leader. His first act of leadership was to start a fire. Except he kept taking breaks in the middle and going to lie on the beach. Why, it’s our old Survivor friend, the lazy black man stereotype. Except now LBMS has several other stereotypes to make friends with. Isn’t that nice?

1.8
Then have a damn Kit-Kat, you lazyass

Stephannie became uncomfortable when she saw how close Sundra and Rebecca were getting; as close as two ‘n’s in a Stephannie. She realised the dangers of having a twosome who will never vote for each other. Ah yes, the Rob and Amber lesson.

Hilariously, when Raros arrived at their beach, they stood around and looked vaguely uncomfortable while wondering whether to cheer or not. You could practically see the question written on their faces of whether showing some sort of team spirit would be racist or not. One of them half-heartedly was all “YaywhiteysI’mnotracist.” before they decided to go work on their shelter.


"I caught a chicken and it was this big."

In typical white male imperialist style, Jonathan had stolen some chickens which originally belonged to the green (Puka) tribe. Annoying white hippie chick Jessica aka Flica (whom I automatically called “Courtney” in my notes for the episode and who appears to have stolen Sally’s blue socks from the last time she was on Survivor) accidentally let them out a short while later. My god, she’s Courtney with extra stupid. That’s a lot of stupid.


"Man, this is almost as bad as Shane voting me out the last time I was here."

1.3
They can take our eggs but they can never take OUR FREEEEDOM!

The biggest surprise was that the feminine wiles girl stereotype was not the expected Parvati but Candice. She immediately latched on to horny whit lunkhead Adam and started cuddling with him at night.

Now the thing that is truly awesome about this season and redeems this stupid racial division thing is that the white team is full of ditzes and dumbasses. They get as much of the famous Burnettian stereotyping as all the other tribes. So everyone is fair game, not just the lone minority that ends up getting cast every season.

Immunity Challenge time! It was overly complicated as usual and involved building a boat out of puzzle pieces, lighting a torch, putting together another puzzle and climbing a tripod thingie. You know, the usual. Three tribes would win flint, one would win the shame of loserdom and a trip to Tribal Council.

Aita and Puka took the lead early on. Raro followed but their puzzle boat started falling apart as they were rowing it. Hiki was dead last but managed to catch up somewhat when Raro couldn’t figure out how to put together their last puzzle. Puka narrowly came first and Aita second. Finally Raro shuffled into third leaving Puka flintless and with an appointment to see Jeff at TC.

They did get to choose one person to go to Exile Island. Nate was all excited over this as if it made up for losing in any way. Without the input of the women of Hiki, Nate and Sekou (chauvinistic black guys!) chose chicken thief Jonathan. Jonathan was pissed. Typical entitled white guy, thinks he can get away with anything. Sorry, Jonny boy. Like Nate says, Karma’s a bizzle.

Back at camp, the women joined together and decided to vote off their fearless leader Sekou. Just because he’s a crap leader who can’t start a fire and led you to a challenge loss? Harsh, man. Sekou wanted to see Sundra out instead and approached Stephannie to sway her with his impenetrable logic.

His pitch started off well enough when he mentioned that should it get down to Sundra, Rebecca and Stephannie, the two former ladies would definitely stick together and vote for the latter. Which is true enough but I doubt these tribes will even be together long enough for it to some down to this. Remember last season’s four-way tribal division?

Then it all went a bit pear-shaped:

Sekou: I’m the only one who can make fire. You have to keep me on or you guys won’t have fire.
Stephannie: But…we don’t have fire anyway.
Sekou: And you won’t ever have fire because no-one else can make fire.
Stephannie: Except for you…
Sekou: Exactly.
Stephannie: Even though you haven’t been able to make fire.
Sekou: Yes. Without me, you won’t be able to keep the fire going.
Stephannie: So we should keep you on, even though you can’t make fire any better than the rest of us, because you are the only one who can keep our hypothetical fire which you have hypothetically made hypothetically burning.
Sekou: You’ve got it. If I go, the fire will go with me.
Stephannie: Riiiiiggghhht.

1.7
"So whaddya say, Steph? Am I right or am I right?"

1.9
"You used to skip all the logic parts on your IQ tests, didn't you?"

Would this brilliant turn of logic convince Stephannie? Let’s turn to TC, which is now being held in the coolest Tribal Council set ever, a big shipwreck. That even beats last season’s skull. Jeff started off by asking them if the ethnic divisions made any difference to the game. They basically replied by laughing in his face. Awesome. The ethnic divisions mean jack to the game, Jeff. It’s a ratings ploy and you know it.

He then asked them about their loss and Nate replied that they may not have won the flint but they still had a beautiful spirit. Yeah whatever. Beautiful spirits don’t boil the water and cook the rice. Sekou once again tried to impress upon his tribe the importance of his leadership and heretofore unseen fire-making skills. Somehow no-one rolled their eyes.

Voting time! Sekou and Nate both voted for Sundra (spelt wrong but that damn ‘u’ is sneaky so we’ll forgive them this time) while the other three voted for Sekou (also spelt wrong but you try spelling Sekou without seeing it). Sekou picked up his hypothetical fire and went on his merry way. Best of all, Jeff gave them flint immediately afterwards. Hee hee.

In his closing words, Sekou once again gave us a taste of Sekou-gic as he talked about how his leadership had been so great that it would inspire his team to win now that he had gone. Brilliant! This guy left way too early.

Next week: potentially less racial stereotyping from the show (we can hope) but dodgy, possibly racist jokes from Cao Boi.



8 Comments

six
15 Aug 2007 02:06

Awesome article!!  Hysterical!

Hispanic tribe = Aita (as in “I aita bad burrito”)
Asian tribe = Puka (as in “that kung-fu kick to the stomach made me puka lot”)
African American = Hiki (as in “I got a Hiki from my boo”)
Caucasian = Raro (as in “I’d like-o my steak-o raro, you dirty foreigner”)

Lmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sponono
15 Aug 2007 02:51

interesting article

I'll read it during lunch..it quite a lot....

PaulC
15 Aug 2007 03:22

That is the funniest article I've read i ages. Well done!

Lemon_Lite
15 Aug 2007 03:34

Hey Claudia... great article.

I had been waiting for Survivor ever since  Lake and Michelle were illuminated on the Amazing Race (they left with all the drama). at this point I don't know what to say about the whole racial split and whether stereotypes will be proven. The only thing that irritated me was when everyone would say "I'm doing this for my people - we are going to represent - for my people's pride".... I would cringe because yall are doing it for your own pockets. You want $1000 000, nothing else - Let the games begin and leave your "people and pride" out of it.
As for that dumb chick who let the chickens go... that was not accidental - I saw it coming.... immediatly when she went to the chickens... it was a done deal. "I wanted to see the chickens - WHAT...WHAT - she's going to be the first one from that tribe to go.

SupaWoman
15 Aug 2007 07:35

The last part of this reply contains a stereotype joke [fact] which may be offensive. No offense intended.

i think the whole concept of racial classification is shallow cos like the Puka girl said, their team has Asians from different backgrounds that dont know anything about each other's culture...so not sure how Mark Burnett 'logicalised' his concept...

but the black guys making the decision without team consultantion, it is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo typical. har har har!!
 

Lingo
15 Aug 2007 10:37

>>They can take our eggs but they can never take OUR FREEEEDOM!<<
OK, this almost made me bust out loud laughing, which would have been horrible because I'm at work and we have a guest sitting right across from me.  This blog is NSFW!!!  Hee hee.

>>Lake and Michelle were illuminated on the Amazing Race<<
Forgive me for teasing you Lemon, but this is almost as funny as Claudia's article!

Lingo
15 Aug 2007 10:39

BTW, if anyone is pissed off about all this racial nonsense, hang in there--it all but disappears very quickly (not only the tribes but also almost all mention of race).

Cloud9
15 Aug 2007 19:58

So true about the money, Lemon_Lite. This is a game show, not the freakin' United Nations. A couple of contestants said as much, I recall, so hopefully they won't all be politically correct and act all positive and all that rubbish.

SupaWoman, the arbitrariness of the whole racial division thing was the first thing I thought about when I heard about this twist. Especially in the case of the Asian and Hispanic tribe. Hell, even when I was looking at the bios for the first time, I had some trouble figuring which team certain contestants would end up on. Jenny could be on either the Hispanic or Asian team for example since Fillipinos have a strong Hispanic heritage.

Good to hear that the racial nonsense will be gone soon, Lingo. I'm running out of stupid stereotypes to make jokes about.


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