Surviving the Crisis: Diversity and Multiculturalism in Survivor ’s New Era

Abstract

As one of the longest running reality television programs in America, Survivor offers a unique opportunity to explore how reality television meets the needs of “real life,” particularly in a conjunctural moment marked by racial reckoning. In this essay, we analyze two pivotal moments from Season 41 and 42 of Survivor, colloquially referred to as the show’s “new era” following a network-wide diversity mandate. By performing a textual analysis of two tribal council scenes, we explore how racial politics complicate the stories Survivor tells about itself–and, in turn, how Survivor frames these scenes to collapse racial discourse into discourse about gameplay. We argue that Survivor attempts to meet the exigencies of the moment by presenting feel-good, or “happy” multiculturalism as central to Survivor’s mythologies, and using these mythologies to justify “unhappy” multiculturalism, thereby preserving the whiteness inherent to the game itself.

“A New Era”

Survivor kicked off its 41st season on September 22nd, 2021 with an episode appropriately titled “A New Era.” After Season 40, the all-winners season, had aired, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Season 41 production to a halt. The 498-day gap between the Season 40 finale and the Season 41 premiere was the longest stretch of time between episodes in Survivor history (McAtee 2021). On this episode, host Jeff Probst explains to players that this season would be different. Season 41 involved less time on the island due to quarantine procedures, necessitating faster gameplay, introducing riskier advantages, and providing contestants with meager supplies at camp to keep the game challenging. Following this unintentional hiatus and featuring the most elaborate update in Survivor’s twenty-year run, the “new era” is rhetorically configured as a new chapter in the history of the beloved reality show.

However, the “new era” entails more than changes to Survivor gameplay. During the summer of 2020, amidst global uprisings in response to police violence against Black Americans, CBS announced a partnership with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a commitment to diversifying the network’s writers, staff, and reality television casts (Ramos 2020; Walker 2023). George Cheeks, president and CEO of CBS, explained this decision: “The reality TV genre is an area that’s especially underrepresented, and needs to be more inclusive across development, casting, production and all phases of storytelling” (Hibberd 2020). This commitment required CBS reality television shows like Survivor, Big Brother, and Love Island to feature at least 50 percent people of color in their casts. Black Survivor alumni groups, like Soul Survivors and the Black Survivor Alliance, had played a significant role in advocating for Survivor to “commit to featuring Black, Indigenous, People of Color (“BIPOC”) in their full breadth and depth” (Hart 2020). Seasons 41 and 42 were the first to reflect these changes. Filmed in succession, meaning Season 41 had not yet aired when Season 42 began filming, these seasons both ushered in the “new era”–post-Winners at War and post-2020—and looked excitedly ahead to the show’s future.

Survivor’s “new era” provides an opportunity to explore the intersection of reality television and “real life,” particularly in a conjunctural moment marked by widespread racial reckoning. While it was coincidental that the climactic all-winners season was followed by a pandemic-induced hiatus, the turning point in the game’s history nonetheless coincides with a turning point in American popular and mediated culture. In this essay, we analyze two pivotal tribal councils from Season 41 and 42 to explore how racial politics interact with, challenge, and bolster the mythologies Survivor tells about itself in its “new era”–and, in turn, how Survivor collapses nuanced racial discourse into discourse about gameplay. Our decision to focus on these scenes is strategic and intentional. Drew (2011) and Wright (2006) assert that tribal council is significant for building an episode’s and season’s narrative arc, especially with regard to race. For example, Drew (2011, 338) writes that, in Survivor: Cook Islands, a season in which tribes were organized into racial categories, “tribal council became the site for Survivor’s testament to the color-blind ideology that guided life on the island and in society in general.” On Seasons 41 and 42, which featured the two most racially diverse casts to date, these two tribal councils serve a similar function, offering the most sustained discussion of race in each season and allowing players to negotiate and narrativize the relationship between race and gameplay.

We argue that these scenes reflect two different attempts by Survivor production to “handle” race and adapt to exigencies of the moment; in both cases, these adaptations are made without compromising Survivor’s formulas for in-game success but unfold differently, reflecting the show’s continued investments in whiteness. Thus, we suggest that in-game strategy, editing choices, and superficial commitments to diversity enable reality television programs like Survivor to absorb protest into its own mythology and offer a finished product that preserves the feel-good, or “happy,” fantasy of multiculturalism. Throughout Season 41 and 42, Survivor’s “new era” is celebrated as a multicultural project. For example, Season 41′s Shan says, “I think Season 41 has been the most diverse and most inclusive and representative of America” (Survivor 2021a). Reflecting on his relationship with his Muslim tribemate Omar, Season 42′s Jonathan offers: “Me and Omar, we’re so different in every way, but being different can help you in this game. We got each other’s back” (Survivor 2022a). These comments, and others like them, reflect Survivor’s investment in difference and multicultural diversity in its “new era.” However, as Ahmed (2010, 9) writes, “the smile of diversity is a way of not allowing racism to surface; it is a form of political recession.” Through a close reading of both tribal council scenes, we demonstrate Survivor’s limited capacity to fulfill its commitment to diversity by relying on tropes of white allyship and “feel-good” multicultural moments, which collapse when the critical eye is directed at the histories and patterns within the game itself. We argue that Black players then become legible as killjoys in order to preserve the game’s integrity and happy multicultural fantasy, while demonstrating the resistive potential that lies within willful practices of racial solidarity.

In what follows, we outline Survivor’s basic structure, focusing on the narrative importance of tribal council. Next, we review literature exploring the racial politics of representation on reality television in general and Survivor in particular. This framework allows us to analyze two tribal councils from Season 41 and Season 42 that feature Black players openly and critically reflecting on the way race and racism shapes their experience of the game. In the wake of CBS’ diversity mandate and the sociopolitical context of post-2020 racial reckoning, the conversations held at these tribal councils provide a unique aperture into how Survivor and its players negotiate the boundaries between the game and “real life.” After close textual analysis of these moments, we argue that Survivor is willing to engage with race insofar as it bolsters its own mythologies and with racism insofar as it exists “outside of the game.” We conclude by considering the failures and possible futures for Survivor’s “new era” and for reality television in a post-2020 media landscape.

Survivor Gameplay

In May 2000, Survivor’s first season aired on CBS to staggering ratings (Wright 2006). Executive Producer Mark Burnett envisioned a high-production value reality television show that would feature ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. In the first half of the competition, distinct “tribes” of contestants live together in separate camps, work together to find food and shelter, and compete in challenges to win rewards (food or supplies) or immunity (protection from elimination). Losing tribes go to tribal council, where they vote out one of their tribemates; in anticipation of tribal council, players form alliances with one another and seek out additional advantages (“immunity idols”) hidden around the island. During the latter half of the competition, the tribes are merged into one, at which point players compete as individuals, strategizing in order to “outwit, outplay, and outlast” their competitors. Eliminated contestants then become part of a jury, who vote to determine the winner at the end of the game.

Tribal council, “Survivor’s crown jewel” and the climax of each episode, serves as the place where the game’s complex social dynamics unfold (Wright 2006, 172). The ritual of tribal council is one of Survivor’s many “processes of self-justification” that lends credence to the show’s mythology; Jeff often claims surprise betrayals, unpredictable decisions, risky gameplay, and twists are what Survivor is all about (Kessler 2024, 574). Former contestant Malcolm Freberg described the painstaking efforts production takes to execute tribal council: assigning seats, forcing players to remain silent when cameras are off, and compelling players to engage Jeff’s often-leading questions. Tribal council is crucial to Survivor’s entertainment value and narrative-building: “Survivor is first and foremost a television show. And Survivor players are first and foremost storytellers” (Freberg 2022).

Because tribal council is fodder for building the narrative arc for an episode or season, the conversations are edited in ways that contribute to this narrative. For example, on Season 34, a contestant tried to deflect against an impending elimination at tribal council by outing a fellow castmate and two-time player, Zeke Smith, as transgender, claiming Smith had been deceiving his tribemates (Framke 2017). After this infamous and violating interaction, Jeff reflected on how it impacted Smith’s overall game: “Nobody will say it out loud, but Zeke’s story is a tough ‘story’ to beat at the final three. As a result, Zeke became even more of a threat” (Ross 2017). Smith had not planned on outing himself on television, but Jeff distils the fraught relationship between gameplay and systems of power into Survivor’s essential creed: “That’s Survivor. There are no rules for protection on any level other than the morality decided on by the society” (Ross 2017).

For Black players in particular, this lack of protection has manifested in microaggressions, racist stereotyping, and unfavorable edits. In 2020, former Black Survivor players gave voice to production’s inattention to issues of race and racial injustice on The Black Voices of Survivor Roundtable. Over a dozen contestants discussed the challenges they faced during their time on the show. Earl Cole, winner of Season 14, stated, “We actually stood up at tribal council and said ‘We do not feel protected. Everyone in our tribe makes us feel invisible.’ This actually happened. And it all got cut out” (Rob Has a Podcast 2020). Participants in the roundtable urged Survivor executives to listen and implement changes before filming another season. In summer 2020, CBS announced its diversity mandate, and in September 2021, Season 41 of Survivor aired and the “new era” began. ¹ In the section that follows, we examine scholarship outlining the relationship between race, representation, and reality television to provide context and framing for our analysis of Survivor’s “new era.”

The Racial Politics of Survivor

Scholars have studied how racial identification shapes the representations of and interactions between reality television contestants (Bell-Jordan 2008; Dubrofsky and Hardy 2008; Dubrofsky and Ryalls 2014). As one of the longest-running reality shows in the US, Survivor is a generative site for understanding how media texts “purposely, critically, and unapologetically confront race in the US” and how these confrontations shift over time (Bell-Jordan 2008, 378). Over the last decade in particular, the United States has been forced again and again to reckon with the nation’s violently racist histories unfurling into the contemporary media landscape (Bell 2019; Schaefer 2020; Squires 2008).

Despite claims that the Survivor island is a “microcosm of society,” contestants have been largely disproportionately white, heterosexual, and cisgender (Hentges 2008). Women, non-white contestants, and older contestants are more likely to be voted out of Survivor first (Dilks et al. 2010). This pattern in Survivor is representative of a larger trend on reality television and popular culture more broadly: scholars have found Black women are under-represented on reality television, and when they are represented, they are subjected to gendered and racial stereotyping in gameplay and in their portrayal (Collins 2000; Drew 2011; Dubrofsky and Hardy 2008; Glascock and Preston-Schreck 2018).

Thus, Survivor has historically paid little in-game attention to nuanced dynamics of racial perception and communication (Bell-Jordan 2008; Drew 2011). Survivor: Cook Islands is a notable exception; yet, despite the season’s emphasis on racial difference, Drew (2011, 338) argues that Cook Islands’ overarching narrative asserted the irrelevance of race to life on and off the island; according to one player, “it’s not about race, it’s about survival.” This season, colloquially referred to as “race wars,” relies on Obama-era colorblind postracial narratives that assure viewers that race no longer matters, while “simultaneously perpetuating the familiar representations that reproduce racial ideology” (Drew 2011, 327). By “distancing racial identity from the facts of racism,” postracial discourses hide ongoing subjugation from view while claiming to have leveled the racial playing field (Squires 2013, 267; King Watts 2017).

In recent years, Survivor’s racial politics have graduated from the postracial to the multicultural, paralleling a shift in the larger political and cultural landscape. In the wake of “fantasy-shattering events” like the murder of George Floyd and the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings, the colorblind postracialism of yore is no longer a viable racial paradigm (Sandras 2024, 4). Instead, multicultural incorporation has frequently become the racial discourse of choice; CBS’ diversity mandate, which requires 50 percent BIPOC representation for all CBS programing, embodies this new multicultural commitment. Multiculturalism operates as a racial regime that “celebrates diverse people in a hodgepodge of happy plurality without meaningfully dismantling their oppression” (Sugino 2020, 197). Under this regime, institutions claim antiracism as a core value while concealing inequalities and structural disadvantages for minoritized groups (Melamed 2006). However, Lowe (1996, 86) reminds us that “aesthetic representation is not an analogue for the material positions, means, or resources of those populations,” and often enables violence to persist under the veneer of inclusion. As our analysis demonstrates, multicultural discourses provide a different, but no less insidious, avenue for the reification of whiteness in Survivor’s new era (Melamed 2006; Sugino 2020).

While Season 41 and 42 of Survivor feature two of the most diverse casts in the show’s history, these seasons require scrutiny in order to understand how the show grapples with the “new era’s” new multicultural project. Specifically, our analysis investigates how, in Survivor’s “new era,” whiteness maintains its hegemony. In our analysis of these two tribal council scenes, we remain aware that, like all reality television, Survivor’s production team strategically edits conversations and presents them as “real” (Kilborn 2003). Moreover, reality television producers often know who won the season “before they begin editing the first episode, which gives them the benefit of retroactive sense-making” (Fox 2013, 191). For this reason, it is important to underscore that what Survivor audiences see is the product of editing and storytelling, reflecting only a sliver of what “actually” took place.

While previous seasons edited out or ignored discussions of race, Survivor’s “new era,” features overt conversations negotiating race and Survivor gameplay (Rob Has a Podcast 2020). Each author independently viewed Season 41 and 42 of Survivor, totaling 26 episodes, and took detailed notes; we found that players made occasional references to race in one-on-one conversations or in talking head interviews. The tribal councils we spotlight in this essay emerged as the richest and most salient scenes for three key reasons. First, these scenes feature the most sustained discussion of race, in general and as it relates to Survivor gameplay, between Black players and non-Black players across both seasons, totaling thirty minutes. Second, as established, the tribal council context invests these conversations with consequence and spectacle within the arc of each episode. Jeff’s involvement in these conversations also represents Survivor production’s role in facilitating and moderating what is said and how it is portrayed. Finally, these scenes resonated in popular press and social media as sites of deliberation over the relevance of race to Survivor; some viewers found it refreshing to see Survivor adapt to a post-2020 media landscape, while others bristled at these scenes, chiding both seasons’ Black players for “playing the race card” (Contreras 2022). In a study of social media discourse surrounding Season 41, Walker (2023, 416–417) found that responses were largely critical, suggesting “diversity initiatives and race relations should be separate from the game.”

For these reasons, these two tribal council scenes offer unique insight into how Survivor narrativizes the relationship between race, the game, and “real life” in its new multicultural era. In what follows, we perform close textual analyses of these scenes. Doing so allows us to place both tribal councils alongside one another on a timeline of the “new era,” drawing comparisons and contrasts in how these moments are produced and “sold” to viewers in order to understand the story Survivor aims to tell about racial difference and Survivor gameplay. We argue that these scenes reflect how Survivor maintains its investments in happy multiculturalism, evidencing the inadequacy of CBS’ diversity mandate to rectify a long-standing naturalization of whiteness.

Season 41: “We’re Learning, We’re Growing”

In Season 41, Episode 11, titled “Do or Die,” Jeff asks the players at tribal council to reflect on last week’s vote. DeShawn, a Black player, says he is feeling overwhelmed; he explains that he voted out Shan, a Black woman with whom he was previously allied, because he heard she was about to betray him. DeShawn describes how difficult it was to vote out another Black player. He says: “A lot of minority players put in a lot of work to diversify this cast. And when I came into it, I wanted to make sure that I represented, like, the Black community as well as possible. . .” (Survivor 2021b). DeShawn covers his eyes. He takes a few ragged breaths as the camera pans to Danny, a Black man, whose eyes are also glossy with tears. In between sobs, DeShawn continues: “It just hurt to even have to write [Shan’s] name down ‘cause that really is my sister but, like, the gameplay and morals intersected, and it was so hard” (Survivor 2021b). DeShawn laments the “extra baggage” Black players carry in the game to balance the dynamics of their social strategy and making their community proud; he says it’s a “blessing to have such a diverse cast,” but compromising his alliance in order to protect himself “was the toughest thing [he] ever had to do” (Survivor 2021b).

DeShawn’s statement represents what Mercer (1990) terms the burden of representation. When Black people are represented in media, they “are burdened with the impossible role of speaking as ‘representatives’ in the sense that they are expected to ‘speak for’ the black communities from which they come” (Mercer 1990, 62). Jeff asks Liana if she also feels that her alliance with the other Black players has “less to do with the game” and instead “reflects where we are in the culture” (Survivor 2021b). Liana agrees: “We’re coming out of a year like 2020 where people are just now becoming conscious of the fact that being Black. . .has this kind of currency that can kill you” (Survivor 2021b). The camera pans to DeShawn, nodding, and the music switches from suspenseful tribal council music to a spirited orchestral swell. Liana continues:

“Coming here to play this is about uplifting other Black people and giving Black people something to root for besides everything else out there that’s killing us . . . and how beautiful is it that we’re starting out with a cast that’s 50% POC, right? [. . .] And to DeShawn’s point, we love this game too. We don’t just want to have this all-Black alliance and throw strategy out the window.” (Survivor 2021b)

The music builds throughout Liana’s speech. Jeff affirms: “It’s a huge responsibility inside a game that is already impossible to play” (Survivor 2021b). Jeff performs an interesting rhetorical maneuver: he validates Liana’s concern by distinguishing the burden of representation from the demands of Survivor gameplay, even though the “new era” requires this burden.

It is important to note here how DeShawn, Liana, and Jeff articulate a hypothetical “all-Black alliance” and strategy as mutually exclusive. Black players must choose between racial group solidarity and winning the game, which not only compounds the burden of representation but also undercuts possibilities for interrupting patterns of systemic racism on Survivor. Jeff then asks two white players, Xander and Heather, how they feel about what their Black castmates have expressed. Xander explains, “I’m out here playing a game, and then you take it out and you make it this real-world thing. . .I mean, I don’t represent a people” (Survivor 2021b). Xander reflects the archetypical Survivor player: he wins challenges and pulls off impressive strategic moves, unencumbered by “real world” baggage. However, in claiming that he “does not represent a people,” Xander upholds whiteness as the “default state of being” (Drew 2011, 342). Heather responds, and, voice quivering, she answers: “We’re growing, we’re learning. I had no idea that this was a conflict that was going on. And it breaks my heart to know that you are carrying this with you.” (Survivor 2021b). Heather expresses gratitude and regret that she was unaware of the racialized dimensions of her castmates’ Survivor experience. ² Danny, a Black man, reassures her that “we’re all learning and growing” (Survivor 2021b).

After Liana acknowledges that audiences might react negatively to their conversation about race at tribal council, Jeff suggests otherwise. He offers a “wrap-up” statement:

“Lots of people watch Survivor for lots of different reasons. To me, it’s about this. What happens when you put a group of people and force them to live together in a jungle . . . and rely on each other. It’s amazing, and there’s no doubt in my mind that this is a special group for all the reasons you’re talking about. It’s beautiful of you to share it, and I think it’s going to be powerful for a lot of people to hear it.” (Survivor 2021b)

From Jeff’s perspective, this conversation is what Survivor is all about: people living together, working together, learning from each other, and playing “an impossible game” (Survivor 2021b). Jeff enfolds this conversation about race within the show’s overarching narrative and frames it as a teachable moment– for white players who believe they “do not represent a people” and for audiences who might be moved by this conversation. This emotional through-line is reinforced by various editing choices: the music becomes an uplifting crescendo, the camera pans to members of the jury tearfully nodding, and each member of the tribe is given a moment of reflection. Jeff effectively transmutes this conversation about race and the burden of representation into a celebration of Survivor.

Thus, this tribal council ultimately becomes a “feel-good” multicultural moment. In this scene, Black players offer what Harbin (2023, 325) terms “narratives of racial duty,” or “feelings of racialized social obligations when playing the game,” and white players acknowledge these narratives and commit to learning and growing. This scene, though laborious and emotional for Black players, enacts the ideal of liberal multiculturalism by offering a cathartic resolution to the “race” problem on Survivor by celebrating the show’s commitment to diversity and opening a space for conversation about race, “incorporating oppressed people on the surface without radically altering society” (Sugino 2020, 192). In the section that follows, we turn to a similar tribal council from Season 42 in order to demonstrate how Survivor’s efforts to engage with race belie meaningful intervention and instead compound oppression for Black players. Though both scenes revolve around how race impacts Survivor gameplay, the Season 42 scene is darker and more volatile compared to Season 41; for this reason, we locate a fundamental incompatibility between the story Survivor tells about itself and the realities of structural racism.

Season 42: “So You’re Saying This Is Race-Related?”

In Season 42, episode 9, titled “Game of Chicken,” tensions come to a head after an in-game twist; the merged tribe was divided into two smaller tribes for one tribal council, and the two smaller tribes each voted out one player. The first tribe blindsided Rocksroy, a Black man. He takes his seat at the jury, next to Chanelle, a Black woman eliminated in the previous episode. The second half of the tribe enters the tribal council area and, noting Rocksroy on the jury, the shock is apparent. Brows furrowed and mouths agape, Drea and Maryanne, two Black women, simultaneously mutter, “Whaaat?” and “Oh my gosh,” respectively (Survivor 2022b). The camera shows Maryanne staring at Chanelle and Rocksroy. Jeff begins the tribal council proceedings, notifying the players of Rocksroy’s elimination, but as he speaks, the camera lingers on Drea’s face, mouth still hanging open, eyes shifting back and forth. Jeff asks Drea if the vote was surprising, and she responds, “Yes, definitely.” When Jeff asks what this means for her game, she bluntly replies, “I don’t know” (Survivor 2022b). Perhaps sensing that Drea would not facilitate the expected tribal council “storytelling,” Jeff directs his next question about the unpredictability of gameplay to Lindsay, a white woman. As Lindsay answers, the camera returns to Drea, who scrunches her brows even more, and cuts to Maryanne’s knees bouncing nervously up and down. The sustained attention to Drea and Maryanne’s reactions ominously signals to the viewer that something is amiss.

Jeff returns to Drea and asks how she plans to adapt; Drea responds that she has to go “back to the drawing board to see where [she] fits in”; the camera pans to Maryanne nodding (Survivor 2022b). Jeff asks Tori, a white woman, to respond, and she seems excited about the prospect of alliances shifting in a smaller group; Lindsay and Jonathan, a white man, nod. After cutting to each of the white tribe members, the camera pans back to Drea, who is looking more annoyed. Jeff directs another question to Drea, trying to elicit something more than the curt answers she had been providing: “So, Drea, the Rocksroy vote could influence this vote.” She replies:

“Yeah, definitely. I was so proud because we had four Black players on Survivor. And then it always happens where there’s a point that the Black contestants get booted out . . . And then this is exactly what this is right now. So yeah, I’m pissed” (Survivor 2022b).

Drea identifies a well-established pattern in Survivor. Black contestants are almost always voted out first; even on a season with such a diverse cast, it disappoints her to see two Black players sent to the jury in succession (Dilks et al. 2010). Jeff asks, awkwardly, “So, Drea, do you think this is race-related?” She believes there is “subconsciously a little bit of that,” so she announces that she will play her immunity idol to break the pattern and ensure her safety in the game (Survivor 2022b).

We pause here to remark on a change in tone from our last example. Rather than dwelling on this pattern in Survivor history, comforting Drea, or asking for other players’ their perspectives on Drea’s comment, Jeff redirects the conversation back to gameplay and says, “Wow, Tori, this tribal is alive,” and Tori replies: “Yeah, I mean, I support Drea wanting to play her idol if she feels like she’s making a stand, I don’t think it’s necessary, but–” (Survivor 2022b). Tori flatly dismisses Drea’s “making a stand” as unnecessary. Jeff is also less willing to engage in the conversation about race, breezing past Drea’s claims to ask the white players about general game dynamics. Despite this ambivalence, the editing still foregrounds the reactions from Drea and Maryanne. As viewers, we see the stress etched into their faces, the nervous energy in their body language, and their eye contact with Chanelle and Rocksroy. This mismatch between this “business as usual” tribal council conversation and the focus on Drea and Maryane’s distress gives the impression that there are two distinct tribal councils taking place.

In Season 41, DeShawn and Liana articulate the burden of representation that pressures them to both play the game well and represent their community well. For them, playing the game well requires voting out Black players; Drea and Maryanne, however, refuse to do so. Maryanne addresses the group and tells them that if she or Drea goes home, “that’s three Black people in a row,” and she cannot be part of “a perpetuating problem” (Survivor 2022b). Maryanne notes that, “Survivor isn’t just about strategy. . . Survivor is also about bringing the social world, big, into a small thing” (Survivor 2022b). Drea agrees: “Fuck that. Let’s play” (Survivor 2022b). In defiance of the game that forces Black players to participate in racist patterns and systems in pursuit of exciting gameplay, Drea and Maryanne execute a powerful strategic move: they both play their immunity idols, protecting themselves and disrupting this pattern by ensuring a Black player would not be voted out.

For Survivor fans, idol maneuvering is a thrilling and smart way to take control of the game. However, at this point, the tension beneath this tribal council bubbles over when Jonathan reacts: “I don’t feel like this is right, because y’all are coming at this like we’re racist. . .” (Survivor 2022b). Jonathan’s angry and confused response reflects Sandras’ (2024, 6) claim that, in post-2020 America, “the worst threat to a white person is to be deemed a racist,” a position which invests more in white comfort than meaningful allyship. Drea and Maryanne assure him that they are not accusing anyone of racism and instead are pointing out subconscious biases and systemic problems in the game. Jonathan tells Drea that she’s being aggressive, and the camera pans to Chanelle, her mouth wide in shock. Historically, tropes like “the angry Black women” work to discredit and further subjugate Black women who speak out against racism and injustice (Collins 2000). Here, Jonathan’s willingness to shamelessly deploy the “angry Black woman” trope visibly stuns Chanelle. Though Xander and Heather in Season 41 are presented as “good” allies, willing to listen and learn, Jonathan’s response shatters any illusion of white allyship and dismisses Drea and Maryanne’s argument. According to Ahmed (2010, 6), when the angry Black woman trope is mobilized, “reasonable, thoughtful arguments are dismissed as anger (which of course empties anger of its own reason), which makes you angry, such that your response becomes read as the confirmation of evidence that you are not only angry but also unreasonable.” Jonathan, Drea, and Maryanne continue to shout over one another and the conversation spirals out of control; the camera pans to Jeff, who does not interject. Drea is given the floor to speak:

“A lot of times, minorities get kicked off first in this game. I was hoping that it wouldn’t be the cycle and it is, unfortunately. You [Jonathan] are not that person. I love you, I adore you, we get along and stuff like that. This happens all the time where we speak, then we get shut down as if we’re calling everyone racist and I’m not” (Survivor 2022b).

Drea puts her head in her hands and begins to cry. Jeff asks Drea if she’s “stepping outside of the game” to “stand up for something that means something to [her],” and she agrees (Survivor 2022b). Lindsay reiterates her respect for Maryanne and Drea and “for this whole conversation,” and laments the fact that the Rocksroy vote brought “something outside of the game into this” (Survivor 2022b).

It is significant that both of these responses situate systemic racism and discrimination outside of the game. By identifying the patterns of racist bias that shape standard Survivor gameplay, Drea has brought racism into the game, necessitating this conversation. Jeff and Lindsay both adhere to a conception of white allyship as “limited to understanding racism as an individual matter, situated within ‘racist’ worlds and individuals” (Cramer 2020, 278). In other words, by framing racism as something that plagues the ambiguous “real world” and select bad individuals, whiteness can maintain its dominance within specific social structures, like Survivor, that ensure its continuance. This logic reflects what Hall (1981) terms “inferential racism,” which easily coexists with “the liberal consensus” by hiding from view the racist assumptions that organize institutions and media (36–37). The distancing logic that understands racial discrimination as a “real world” problem, outside of Survivor, also appears in Season 41, when Jeff asks if DeShawn’s concern for his alliance is less about gameplay and more about “where we are in the culture” (Survivor 2021b). However, in Season 41, Jeff acknowledges that the burden of representation complicates decision-making in the game (Survivor 2022b). In Season 42, there is no such validation of this burden; it is Drea’s and Maryanne’s to bear as they attempt to placate the white players’ anxieties.

The scene reaches its emotional climax when Maryanne speaks about the importance of standing up against injustice on the show. She concludes: “Yes, technically we all have a 1-in-18 shot for the million, but because we all come with our burdens, we all come with our privileges, that 1-in-18 might be bigger or smaller for some people, and that sucks” (Survivor 2022b). As she concludes, the music swells, like when Liana spoke at the Season 41 tribal council. However, Maryanne is not offering a resolution but a structural critique of the game; the musical cue feels unearned and awkward. Here, there is no synthesizing narrative about “what Survivor is all about,” as in Season 41. Jeff offers an anticlimactic response (“Wow. That was amazing.”) before asking Jonathan how he feels. Jonathan replies: “I’m glad that it’s cleared up that it’s not the tribe that has made them feel this way” (Survivor 2022b). Jeff’s attention to the antagonistic white player’s feelings reflect what Hartzell (2023, 290) terms racialized therapeutic rhetorics, which “reassure white people that they are good people who mean well but are stuck in a situation they cannot fully understand,” and absolve their guilt over inaction. Jonathan reminds Drea and Maryanne that he loves them, apparently ready to move forward in the conversation; Drea and Maryanne look exhausted, tears staining their cheeks. While the emotional pain of white players was assuaged, the conflict itself was not.

Our analysis of these two scenes reveals the limits of how and when Survivor is willing to engage with issues of race in its “new era.” In Season 41, the editing choices, musical cues, and references to the show’s mythologies curate a therapeutic “feel-good” multicultural moment between players. The depiction of post-diversity mandate multiculturalism is emotional, cathartic, and ultimately happy. This conversation about race on Season 41 allows Survivor to enter its “new era” as a beacon of diversity and happy multiculturalism, cleansing racial anxieties for players and viewers by performing a commitment to listening, learning, and growing.

Season 42 offers no such resolution. Following Kessler (2024, 571), reality television audiences take pleasure in the threat or “the spectacle of dysfunctionality” only insofar as “the functionality of the systems that govern our lives” remain stable. This scene exceeds the standard “spectacle of dysfunctionality” at tribal council because Drea and Maryanne identify the insidious role whiteness plays in governing both the “real world” and Survivor. The conversation is framed as volatile and antagonistic, with little moderation from Jeff. The uplifting music during Maryanne’s not-so-uplifting speech is unconvincing. When Jeff asks Drea if she “thinks this is race-related,” the question is more incredulous than generative (Survivor 2022b). DeShawn’s emotional release in Season 41 is met with comfort and support from Jeff and from castmates. Drea’s tearful frustration is interpreted by Jonathan as hostile and framed as an interruption to tribal council proceedings. Because Drea and Maryanne explicitly critique, rather than celebrate, Survivor, there can be no synthesizing narrative of “what Survivor is all about.” Jeff and the others reiterate the idea that “something outside the game” has reared its ugly head within Survivor’s sacred microcosm (Survivor 2022b).

Playing the game in a way that resists the whiteness and racial bias inherent to Survivor gameplay challenges Survivor’s post-2020 happy multicultural fantasy. Drea and Maryanne are framed as not only angry Black women but also killjoys, who disrupt the “new era” by identifying and resisting systemic racism in the game and thus make the scene unhappy (Ahmed 2010). Ahmed’s (2010, 6) concept of the “killjoy,” or “the one who gets in the way of other people’s happiness,” is useful for theorizing how Survivor’s “new era” “is sustained by erasing the signs of not getting along.” By identifying the harms wrought by systems of power, the killjoy is regarded as the cause of unhappiness itself, “as if the talk about divisions is what is divisive” (Ahmed 2010, 6). Season 41 and, up until this point, Season 42 celebrated Survivor as a beacon of liberal multiculturalism in its “new era,” highlighting the ways diversity enhances the game and player experience. By naming patterns of naturalized racist bias in the game, Drea and Maryanne willfully disrupt this happy multicultural fantasy. Reading Drea and Maryanne as killjoys invests the resistive act of their idol play with a larger significance: even if the game itself is left unchanged by their act, the act punctures the illusion of liberal multicultural cohesion in a way that is radical in itself.

After this volatile and emotional tribal council, Survivor must “set things right again” to propel the narrative forward and return to business as usual. The conversation ends with Maryanne reassuring Jonathan, Lindsay, and Tori that they are not racist, nor does she hate them. Drea and Maryanne, having played their immunity idols, are protected from elimination, so Tori is unceremoniously voted out. According to Survivor’s standards, the scene can be tenuously happy once more, as audiences are meant to interpret racism as a disruptive force outside of the island; while it might permeate the game’s boundary, we must trust Survivor’s process to sort it out and move forward. After all, the conversation about race is never revisited, and Maryanne ultimately wins the season, becoming the second Black woman to ever do so and receiving votes from everyone on the jury except Jonathan (Medina 2024). By the end of the season, the happy multicultural fantasy has been successfully restored.

Still, Drea and Maryanne’s powerful strategic move and critique of Survivor’s systemic racism signals, even briefly, the threat that Black alliance as strategy poses to the game itself. While the contestants in Season 41 see racial group solidarity and winning the game as mutually exclusive, Drea and Maryanne’s simultaneous idol play embodies the possibilities of maneuvering within the game to willfully interrupt its patterns of systemic racism. As Ahmed (2010, 8) writes, “when willfulness becomes a style of politics, it means not only being willing not to go with the flow, but also being willing to cause its obstruction.” Even though players insisted that Drea and Maryanne’s idol play was unnecessary, or that their critique was bringing race “into” the game, their killjoy move is both politically transgressive and strategically sound. Our analysis reveals that radical potential lies in undoing the contradiction between “good gameplay” and racial group solidarity on Survivor.

Conclusion

We offer this analysis not just to diagnose the failings of Survivor’s new era, but to signal for reality television scholars and viewers alike the importance of attending to the shifting terrain of “race-conscious postracial” popular media (Sandras 2024). Survivor has built its brand on a simple premise: removing people from society, placing them in the wilderness, and forcing them to strategize together while competing to be the last one standing. These logics have allowed Survivor to evade sustained attention to race, gender, sexuality, and other social markers by reducing the game to one’s ability to “survive” by simply outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting. However, after the events of 2020, CBS, as well as other networks and streaming platforms, turned to diversification to rectify long-cemented racial disparities on popular shows. Our analysis contributes to scholarship on race and reality television by revealing strategies that a show like Survivor uses to maneuver within the regime of liberal multiculturalism and retain its investments in whiteness while co-opting racial discourse as proof of the absence of racism in the game.

By broadening how we conceptualize racism as its legitimated on and by reality television, particularly amidst deliberate efforts to “‘do good’ by making visible certain previously marginalized bodies,” it is important to consider the stakes of this programing and the racism endemic to shows like Survivor (Kanai and Gill 2020, 23). Perhaps more damning and urgent are, at the time of this writing, the nationwide rollbacks of initiatives aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion in both the federal and the private sector. As of July 2025, Paramount and CBS (newly acquired assets under the Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger) “will longer set or use aspirational numerical goals related to the race, ethnicity, sex or gender of hires,” citing the Trump administration’s recent anti-DEI directives (Spangler and Maddaus 2025). One might interpret this rollback as evidence of the flimsiness of CBS’s diversity mandates from the start. However, we choose to read this development more substantively: by attending to the ways media institutions respond to political and cultural exigencies in changing conjunctural contexts, scholars of reality television are well-positioned to imagine the avenues for representation and resistance that are possible in spite of these cultural fluctuations. In the case of Survivor, our analysis reveals the limited ways Survivor engages with systemic racism but also the possibilities for disruptive forms of solidarity and alliance-building available to contestants within the paradigms set forth by the show. Yet, until Survivor, and other shows of its kind, engage not just with racial diversity but racism, the show risks repeating the same old tricks in a new era.