I enjoy the competition and drama inherent in reality television as much as the next person (Hello, Bachelor(ette) Nation :), but is the upcoming CBS show The Activist taking it too far?
The Activist is an inelegant amalgamation of concepts from The Apprentice and Survivor, taking place in a Hunger Games-esque dystopia.
The official description from CBS reads: “One thing seems more clear than ever: Planet Earth is a singular village, demanding, if not relying, on individual engagement. From the Global Citizen movement comes an awe-inspiring look at what can come of it. The Activist pairs advocates from the worlds of health, education, and the environment with famous figures in a series of competitions that’ll take the winners – and their ideas for seismic world change – to the G20 summit in Italy.” (emphasis added)
In this article, I’ll break down the components of this show that make it so controversial.
Take a Moment, Say Your Goodbyes
Competition is part of the appeal of reality television, but it doesn’t belong in a show that aims to showcase the tireless efforts of activists to facilitate change on a local and global scale. The term “winners” implies that there are “losers”, which insinuates that causes in one of these areas – education, environment, or health – are more important than causes in the others. Of course, this is not the case.
In fact, the broken systems that perpetuate many social issues are largely interconnected, as are the solutions to fixing them. Viewing these issues in isolation only enforces the ideology that solving one problem occurs at the expense of the others. The following Tweet describes a satirical scenario of how the show could play out:
Instead of using tangible change created or amount of funds raised for a cause, the show proposes using superficial social media engagement and the judgement of celebrity hosts to determine a “winner”. We all know how effortless it is to repost a message on our Instagram stories and are familiar with the sense of accomplishment that follows. This is a hollow action and does more to cultivate our online image and satiate our guilt than it does to support the cause we claim to care about. This method of selecting a “winner” screams performative activism.
Furthermore, it’s nearly impossible to gauge the success of a campaign purely based on social media engagement. There are a number of organizations that have had a significant impact without a visible online presence, while others have garnered a large following without enacting any genuine change.
Criticism about the performative feel to The Activist calls into question the character of the contestants themselves. Should people who join a show to win a competition be venerated as activists? Are these the people we should be looking up to? How will the audience, and world leaders at the G20 summit, differentiate between people that, as the Bachelor(ette) franchise likes to say, are “in it for the right reasons”, versus those who are there for fame?
Problematic Hosts Run in the Reality Television Family
The Activist will be hosted and judged by three celebrities – Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Julianne Hough, and Usher. None of them are experts on social issues or activists themselves, so what purpose do they serve? The celebrity presence draws in viewers who are more interested in the celebrities than the social issues, thereby shifting the focus away from the activists and their respective organizations. Wouldn’t the exorbitant amount of money required to pay for the celebrities’ services be put to better use if it were donated to the causes that this show claims to support?
One of the celebrity hosts – Julianne Hough – even took to Instagram to say that she agrees with much of the criticism The Activist has received. She says “I do not claim to be an activist and wholeheartedly agree that the judging aspect of the show missed the mark” and shared some of the concerns voiced by the public, including “I heard you say that there was hypocrisy in the show because at the root of activism is a fight against capitalism and the trauma that it causes so many people and that the show itself felt like a shiny capitalistic endeavor.” She also appears to have taken these concerns to higher-ups at CBS, which may or may not have contributed to CBS changing the format of the show on Thursday.
Individual Engagement vs. Systemic Change
The fact that The Activist bases the success of a campaign on social media metrics shows just how little its creators know about activism. They seem to believe that a certain number of retweets, reposts on Instagram stories, or signatures on a petition are enough to facilitate change on a larger scale.
Newsflash: they’re not.
This is not to say that individual actions can’t have an impact. In Emma’s article “Waste Not, Want Not: Exploring the Zero-Waste Movement”, she explains that a few people leading plastic-free lifestyles wouldn’t make much of a difference, but if an entire state or country were to eliminate plastic bags or drinkware, the difference could be significant. Individual actions can also help us cope with the enormity of and fear associated with the myriad social issues we face. However, the reality remains that structural and systemic changes are required in conjunction with individual actions to see tangible change. A show that only emphasizes individual action encourages the sort of lazy activism that permeates social media now.
What’s a Living Wage for an Activist?
In her article “Roses, Champagne, and Wages: The Humanitarian Side of the Bachelor(ette)”, Alexa discusses how little compensation the franchise’s contestants receive for their time on the show. This raises the question of how the contestants who have signed on for The Activist will be compensated and treated. Things do not look encouraging based on the testimonies of two women who interviewed for the show but ultimately decided not to participate. One prospective participant got the impression that the creators didn’t quite grasp the concept of activism, assuming that it had to occur on a grand scale (e.g. creating a charity) to qualify as activism.
Another prospective participant was brought to tears during her interview because she was repeatedly interrupted and told that her answers were too complex. She quickly realized that the creators cared very little about the issues themselves and more about how they’re presented.
It appears that the activists are also not compensated for their time on the show. One contestant’s Instagram account reveals a post where he thanks his followers for donating to his GoFundMe page, which is covering the unpaid time off he is taking from being an elementary school teacher to be on the show.
As Alexa says in her article, “everyone deserves to be paid for their work– even people who take time off from their careers to be on a TV show.”
Activism Takes Down The Activist
The general consensus seems to be that this show is, at best, insensitive, especially in the midst of a global pandemic. The attempt to glamorize activism is disrespectful to the many activists who are imprisoned, hurt, or killed in the process of fighting for the issues they are passionate about.
After the harsh criticism The Activist has received over the past few days, CBS announced on Thursday, Sept. 16 that it would be redoing the show as a “documentary special”. The documentary will “showcase the tireless work of six activists and the impact they have advocating for causes they deeply believe in”. While CBS higher-ups had the sense not to pit activists against each other, the conversation surrounding effective activism is far from over.
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