i hate you survivor

ok, that's not exactly true. but i do hate myself for watching the season premiere of race-based survivor season 13. (see my previous entries below).

so why exactly am i so angry??

not only did i intend to purposefully avoid the guaranteed ridiculousness of season 13, but, abandoning all good sense, i convinced myself that my academic interest in popular culture would warrant this viewing as "research."

the show was pretty predictable and followed the presumably familiar script for a competitive reality, however, what was also fairly predictable (or what the producers of the show were banking on) was my racialist response. even after all my fancy schoolin' and theorizing about racial categories, confronted with the african american team losing the first challenge, i turned into my paper bag testin' grandmother (the same woman who uses the word "niggerish.")

"my people, my people," i heard myself say. "why's it alwasy gotta be us?"

am i serious?

as i heard myself cheering the black team and then cringing at their failures, i was sucked into the only way you could watch a competitive show based on race...as well...a racist. ok, perhaps that's a bit strong, but admittedly i was anticipating team's successes and strategies based on overgeneralizations and hackneyed stereotypes. so no, i don't blame the producers of survivor, i blame myself as a supposedly informed viewer who still managed to give them what they wanted - an emotionally charged response framed by my own racialized investments in representation.

damn.