–Season 41 spoilers ahead.
In a crazy yet classic finale, “Survivor” Season 41 concluded last week, turning castaway Erika Casupanan into a victor and recipient of the $1 million prize. Erika may have won by outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting her fellow competitors, but viewers lost a lot this season.
For decades, “Survivor,” one of the longest-running reality TV shows of all time, has captured the attention of viewers worldwide with daring physical challenges, mind-boggling puzzles, and deliciously dramatic twists. Unfortunately, the latest season is plagued with virtue signaling that is turning off viewers including me, who are asking Santa for an un-woke season 42 coming in 2022.
What producers bragged would be the most diverse cast in the show’s history, due to literal race requirements implemented by the network, turned into a season peppered with quotas and grandstanding that heavily focused on themes present in the race-based ideologies being taught in schools, corporate workplaces, and universities.
Survivor has tons of fans just like me who, after giving the show a random chance one day, got hooked on the challenges, tribal councils, and theater. But what started as an addictive, escapism TV show that gave players of all shapes and sizes a shot at becoming the winner of a million dollars and the fame that comes with it quickly morphed into a woke performance. The dramatic “social experiment” that captured viewers’ attention for years has slowly but surely pivoted to cater to the woke crowd.
And while host and producer Jeff Probst often brags that what happens on the island is a reflection of the outside world to some degree, the show’s producers and even Probst himself are involving themselves to move the leftist culture agenda in the show forward. In the first episode of Season 41, Probst’s iconic catchphrase, “Come on in, guys,” was questioned by the host himself, who asked competitors if he should change it to fit the radical gender ideology that many institutions have accepted.
One of the castaways, Evvie Jagoda, a self-proclaimed “queer woman,” said she didn’t have any problems with the phrase. But later, contestant Ricard Foyé, who has a “transgender, pregnant husband,” said he thought the phrase should be modified to be more accepting.
“I’m with you. I want to change it. I’m glad that was the last time I will ever say it,” Probst gladly agreed before encouraging viewers who disliked the change to “@” him on Twitter.
Unfortunately, Probst’s catchphrase wasn’t the only virtue signaling on the show. Later in the season, after four of the show’s black contestants formed an “all-black alliance,” the black castaways reflected on the tension they feel between voting out their alliance members, thus cutting down the chances of having a black winner, and playing the game strategically based on the show’s goals to outwit, outplay, and outlast other contestants, which has nothing to do with race and everything to do with physical, mental, and social skills.
“Everywhere I go as a black woman, I’m a black woman first… There’s no question that we’re coming out of a year like 2020 where people are just now becoming conscious of the fact that being black actually means something. It has this currency that can kill you… literally kill you. Coming here to play this is about uplifting other black people and giving black people something to root for, [aside from] everything else that’s out there that’s killing us,” castaway Liana Wallace said, invoking the familiar critical race theory that says life should be viewed through a race-based lens.
She also commented. “how beautiful that we are starting out with a cast that is 50 percent POC [people of color, meaning people who aren’t white].”
Wallace’s black tribemates eventually voted her out of the game and onto the jury, after which she posted how proud she was to be “the catalyst for having important discourse in white households across America.”
“I formed a black alliance because I am a black woman, and Survivor, being a microcosm of the real world, would not let me forget that. I formed a black alliance in solidarity. I formed a black alliance because it meant George Floyd, Emmett Till, and that little black girl with a dream who might be watching knew that I saw them and that I would not forget them, not even for $1 million,” Wallace wrote on Instagram.
DeShawn Radden, another black castaway who made it to the final round of the game, also commented on how his race reportedly affected his gameplay.
“The gameplay and morals intersected, and it was so hard,” he said on the brink of tears. “This is the game I love, and I came here to play it, but people don’t understand that extra baggage you bring into this game. It’s a blessing to have such a diverse cast, but I didn’t think this decision, this moment, would be so hard.”
The speeches guilted Xander Hastings, a white male who made it to the final tribal council, into admitting some form of white privilege for not considering how race might change the way players approach the game in the reality tv show.
Viewings for the show were already dropping below the six million threshold usually required to stay on air prior to this woke theater, partially due to increases in streaming the show through the Paramount Plus app, but multiple people on Twitter testified that they halted their viewership following the show’s virtue signaling. They were quickly branded as racist for opposing the show’s shift to the left.
CBS can you let me know when the trend of replacing white racism with black racism ends, so I can go back to enjoying the regular version of the shows?#Survivor @CBS https://t.co/mptAmnmLFV
I’m done #Survivor . The moment you allow racism on your show, you should be cancelled immediately. Shame on you #cbs
Another CBS show with this blatant racism. This show is done. This woke nonsense is unwatchable. The producers and the network set this all up just like they did on BB. Time to move on. R.I.P. #Survivor
Several former “Survivor” cast members and victors also spoke out against the wokeness, noting their disappointment with the show.
“It’s a big deal when you take tradition out of things. That’s a huge deal,” Russell Hantz, who was branded as one of the show’s “most memorable villains,” said in a video posted to his YouTube channel.
“We created this game. We did this. We have passion towards the game. And when you take away iconic sayings in the game, when you take away that from us, it feels like a slap in the face,” he added.
Victor Parvati Shallow from “Survivor: Micronesia Fans vs. Favorites” also said she disagrees with Probst’s decision even though she admires him as a person.
“I think Jeff might be having a bit of an identity crisis,” she said on “Rob Has A Podcast.” “I think he’s just coming in and he’s like, ‘I got to be super woke. I got to say all the right things to make sure all the different groups of people are feeling heard and seen.'”
When previewing Season 41, Probst claimed the show was getting back to its beginnings but also promised that the show’s woke campaign would continue.
“For right now, where ‘Survivor’ needs to go is with fresh faces, fresh voices, players who are of the moment, players who can let us watch them and learn,” he said.
Viewers don’t want woke theater. They want the old “Survivor” that gave young, old, black, white, American, Canadian, Republican, and Democrat contestants a shot to outwit, outplay, and outlast their competitors for a shot at a million dollars. The new version of “Survivor” isn’t cutting it, and if wokeness continues to plague the show, nobody wins.
