The
Funny 115 - The Third One
#101.
Phillip! Shouting gibberish!
Caramoan - episode 5
I know this will shock you, but Survivor has not always been
the most culturally sensitive show on TV.
"What??"
you might say, in outrage, "Are you saying that one of the
whitest
shows
on TV isn't always sensitive to people from different ethnic groups?
Are you saying that the casting probably should have been a
little more diverse over the years, rather than having fourteen white
people
and then one token black girl and one token young black basketball
coach?
Are you saying that they shouldn't have done a season where
they
divided the players up by race, and then Jeff
seemed openly surprised
that people from different Asian countries might
have different cultures?"
"Are you telling me they shouldn't have done
a season called "South Pacific" (which isn't a real place, by the way),
and that
the only culture they came up with for "South Pacific" was
that people in that part of the world apparently have a lot...
of... coconuts?"
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.
Survivor is one of the whitest shows on TV. They don't even
try to hide it.
And what's worse, sometimes the Survivor fan base is even more horrible
about it than the show is.
Remember Vecepia, the first black winner of an American
reality show?
These morons immediately put her into the Reality TV Hall of
Shame
And
of course we can't forget that magical moment when a Survivor podcast I
am not going to name spent a large portion of their Worlds Apart cast
assessment making fun of Will Sims' wife, and the fact that she had a
super sassy ethnic black name.
So
yes, it is no stretch to say that Survivor (and Survivor fans)
have not always been all that sensitive to the minorities in
their
fan base. And this isn't really a new problem with the show,
either.
You'd think this is something that would have maybe started
around the time of, oh, I don't know, maybe around the time they
divided the
players up by skin color (Cook Islands, season thirteen.) But
if you know your history, you will
know this is something that was causing controversy all the way back in
the first season. People who were there in 2000 and who have
good
memories will probably remember that one of the criticisms of the first
season went something along the lines of "So wait, you only cast one
black guy on the show? And he's the only player
out there who has like six different kids with like five different
mothers? Seriously?? That is the one token black guy
in the cast?? The guy who bangs out illegitimate
babies left and right and who hangs out with strippers named Bubbles
and Champagne?"
"Where the white women at?"
There is no way around it. Survivor is, and will always be,
one of the whitest shows on TV.
And some of the hashtags they use on the show are
just terrible.
But
if you want an example of one of the whitest men on the face of the
Earth (Jeff Probst) not "getting" black culture, in a way that is
embarassing even by Jeff Probst standards(!), well, you've come to the
right
place. We now come to the very awkward #101 moment on the
countdown.
This one is horrible.
Get ready to cringe.
It's episode five of Survivor: Caramoan
Today the players will be competing for a barbecue lunch
This is the challenge where you have to hold a net up in the
air, and the other players try to throw coconuts into it
The name of this challenge is "A Tribute to South Pacific."
Note: It was not designed by a Make-A-Wish kid.
Throwing coconuts. We so have our finger on the
pulse of what brown people are doing these days.
The four holders take their turns, and grab on to their
ropes.
It is The Specialist and the Frotteurist for Bikal
Against I Don't Know and I Don't Care for Gota
Seriously. I literally don't know who this person
is.
Why is that sexy net trying to break up my marriage?
So the challenge starts.
Ready! Go! Make big moves!
The four net holders try to keep their nets in the air for
as long as they can
YOU HAVE TO THROW COCONUT!
And now comes the fun part.
The four coconut throwers (aka South Pacificers) come up to
the line, and they try to shoot coconuts into the nets
Eddie hits a shot
Brenda hits a shot
Reynolds shoots a coconut like he's my fucking grandmother
Meanwhile Probst is just yammering away in that way that he thinks is
so important to every Survivor challenge
"DID YOU GUYS KNOW THAT BEES AND DOGS CAN SMELL
FEAR?"
And now we come to the part that proves that Probst is
essentially The Whitest Man Alive. (tm)
With apologies to Astronaut Dan
Phillip
is on net duty during the challenge, and he discovers a neat little
trick he can do to distract the Gota coconut throwers.
Basically, he just yells at them
Phillip screams and distracts Eddie, who misses the shot
Well
that worked. That worked really well. So now
Phillip just
screams at everyone right before they throw their coconut.
It works every...
single...
time.
Basically, Phillip has figured out a way to outsmart the
challenge.
The Sherri Slayer
But it is the thing he yells to distract Sherri that is
going to become the focus of this entry.
I like pie. It is warm and yummy.
Okay, so here comes Sherri up for the first time. She lines
up to throw her coconut.
Phillip gets ready to pounce
She aims...
And....
"Kunta
Kinte!"
Fail
Now,
most people probably know what "Kunta Kinte" means. Or,
rather,
WHO it means. At least, I hope you do. If you
don't, you
are probably not going to enjoy this entry. Although, don't
feel
bad if you don't know who he is, because this entry isn't about you, it
is about Probst.
Kunta Kinte is this guy
Kunta
Kinte was the main character in Alex Haley's landmark 1976 novel,
Roots:
The Saga of an American Family. He was an African
slave who was kidnapped, and taken
to
America, and who was later forced to change his name to Toby.
He
was also the main character in the 1977
television miniseries Roots,
which was watched by something like eleventy billion people,
and
to this day is still the second most watched finale of
any series
in American television history. Basically, Roots is one of
those
shows that pretty much everyone
on the face of the earth has watched at
one point or another (either the original or the 2016 remake.)
In fact, in a lot of American schools these
days, the book
is actually required reading.
In other words, Kunta
Kinte was a really big deal.
He was also supposedly based on a real person.
Anyone who
is even slightly aware of the portrayals of African-Americans in the
media throughout American history would know who Phillip is talking
about when he screams out "Kunta Kinte!"
Well, everyone, that is, except for one guy.
"Kunta
Kinte!"
"Phillip! Hollering some sort of war cry!"
Yes, it's that point in the entry when we now get
to play the game of "How fucking white is Jeff Probst?"
"The most revered ancestor of my
people!"
"Phillip! Shouting out gibberish!"
"Earl Cole!"
"Phillip! Shouting some kind of English tea!"
This
wasn't originally one of the entries I had planned for the Funny 115.
In fact, I didn't really even write it down in my notes when
I
was watching Caramoan. Like a lot of people, I was so bored
by
most of Caramoan that I basically zoned out for about half of the
season. But I have to give credit to a friend of mine named
Kodi
Ross, who pushed for this entry for a long time because of how
ridiculously funny it is that Jeff Probst (a famed television producer)
wouldn't know the biggest character from arguably the biggest
TV
miniseries in history. Especially when Survivor is already
not
especially well known for being all that culturally sensitive or all
that nice to its black contestants. In fact Kodi and I are
both
amazed that they actually kept this clip in the episode at all, since
it doesn't make Probst look especially good, and you know how much
power he has over the way the show is presented these days.
"Rosa Parks!"
"Phillip! Telling us how far apart you are
supposed to plant corn!"
"Barack Obama!"
"Phillip! Impersonating a chicken from
Ireland!"
Does
Jeff Probst know who Kunta Kinte is? Or was this just a rare
brain fart for a guy who is usually concerned about the way that he
comes off on TV?
"Martin Luther King!"
"Phillip, naming some sort of a chess strategy."
In
the end, we will never know. All we do know is that you'd
think
Probst would be aware of the history of African slavery, since
it
was such a big move. And you know how he is about
about
jacking off over big moves.
Okay, I'm done. Sorry, that one probably crossed
the line.
Let
the record show that the author of this page loved Roots, and I love
LeVar Burton, and that I thought Probst not knowing who Kunta Kinte is
was funny as hell.
And if the rest of the Funny 115
now turns into a contest of "What is the whitest thing Jeff
Probst
could possibly say?", so much the better. This is why I love
to
write these things.
"Beyoncé!"
"Phillip! Yelling out some kind of a Pokemon!"
P.S.
By the way, I love the irony that we finally got a player to
be
the spokesperson for black history on Survivor, and it winds
up being
this guy.
PINK UNDIES ARE WAY BETTER THAN WHITE UNDIES, I WILL STAB YOU
IN THE HEAD!
P.P.S.
Since this entry turned into "let's make fun of Jeff
Probst," how about this quote from a reader of mine named Mark
Kalzer:
Hey
Mario, make sure to include Probst's quote about how he literally
ignores everyone else whenever Phillip is talking. He
basically treats Phillip as if he's the class clown, except usually the
teacher despises the class clown. Instead imagine the class clown is
also the teacher's favourite, and not at all funny.
Here is the actual quote Probst once gave in an interview:
"Any time Phillip says anything,
anything at all, I’m interested. When he ups the stakes and declares
something important or assigns a Stealth R Us name to another tribe
mate, I immediately begin to zone out all other distractions."
Translation? "Everyone else shut up.
Phillip is giving people nicknames."
P.P.P.S. Okay fine, I can't resist.
