Survivor should never glamorize its controversies like Big Brother

A month into Big Brother 20, CBS is hiding controversial statements by players from the taped show. Survivor has brought those moments to the forefront.

Within the past week, two players from Big Brother 20 engaged in a frustrating, misguided and honest conversations surrounding what offensive words are and are not allowed. JC, a Hispanic little person of the gay community, was explaining to Bayleigh, a black woman, how the m-word is used to demonize his height.

In his explanation, he spoke of the demeaning f-word to bring down gay people, as well as saying the how “n-word” (uncensored) is used to demean black people. Bayleigh immediately called him out for the use of that word, asked him never to say it out loud again before engaging in a long conversation with JC (in two separate locations) about his and her use of offensive words.

That conversation took up the penultimate television block on the latest episode of Big Brother 20. The following link shows the uncensored brief conversation before the live feeds were cut, and contains the offensive language used.

Why does this matter to Survivor fans? It highlights the discrepancy in which CBS promotes its controversies and the differences in taste Big Brother producers go for, and that no matter how bad the gameplay format and twists get, Survivor could always be marketed in such a worse light.

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Though we’ve brought it up time and time again on our website, it harkens back to the controversial moment in Survivor Game Changers. Leading up to Tribal Council, Jeff Varner insisted that he’s going to bring up something in front of the tribe that will exemplify Zeke Smith’s untrustworthiness. Instead of it being game related, Varner outted Zeke as transgender.

To production’s credit, everyone handled the situation as well as they possibly could. The tribe immediately called Varner out on his behavior, Jeff Probst delicately indicated how you can’t unring the bell of his injustice, the editors worked with Zeke and GLAAD to portray the darkness and light of the incident, and everyone left understanding what happened was wrong.

Most importantly, knowing how cynically reality shows promote their salaciousness, CBS did not market the Survivor Game Changers episode as a controversial moment ahead of time. No television commercials went out teasing the moment meant production wasn’t trying to hype up something that would make international headlines the following day.

Even the description went out of its way to avoid teasing the controversy. “Emotions run high when the game begins to take a toll on one tribe, and castaways try to pull their way to safety at a physical immunity challenge.” The emotions running high referred to Mana tribe’s tearful moment after losing the Reward Challenge.

Big Brother 20, however, is a different story. The show has been hit by TMZ reports trolling for any sort of slip-ups regarding houseguest misbehavior. So far, Kaitlyn has used the n-word in quoting a lyric from Drake’s song “0 to 100,” Angela and Rachel compared the sun tanning their skin darker as looking “ghetto” and changing ethnicities, and JC has been written up for inappropriate touching of female players long before this new problem.

Until last night, Big Brother pretended those moments didn’t happen. Television viewers would not understand these players are capable of making those comments because they weren’t shown on television. However, they could not avoid the lengthy conversation in the middle of a dead week, so it made it to air.

The reveal of this conversation didn’t happen naturally, though, as host Julie Chen did something disappointing at the end of last Thursday night’s episode. As the Head of Household competition was underway, Julie teased this upcoming controversy as something you should check out on Sunday’s episode, detailing it thusly:

"Earlier this his week, comments made by JC and bayleigh sparked an intense conversation in the house about cultural sensitivity. Tune into Sunday’s episode to see this conversation and what transpired after."

By doing so, producers helped stoke the flames of controversy by marketing a difficult conversation where two people of different cultural backgrounds took umbrage with the contextual use of the n-word as must-see television. Though the segment was edited as well as possible, the reveal this conversation (95% of which was cut from the live feeds) would make it to television became newsworthy.

Personally, it is disgusting for CBS to pretend to act as if they are holier than thou in their representation of the moment while also trying to draw viewers into the show by teasing it for promotional purposes. It speaks to the notion that they were seeking ratings more than the teachable moment they attempted to show on television.

Survivor has not been shy to address its controversial statements made by players and has recently been a lot better in the HD era in covering them fairly. Whether it’s Ben Browning’s demeaning of black castaways as “ghetto trash,” Colton Cumbie’s racially insensitive comments towards Ben or Phillip Sheppard dropping n-bombs in “calling out” supposed dog whistles from Steve Wright, the show fits it into the episode’s narrative appropriately (most of the time).

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Survivor should not market itself based on its players’ controversies. Thankfully, it has steered away from the salacious marketing route in recent years, but considering that Big Brother 20 is actively doing so in 2018, it should be a point of contention to bring it up again.

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