How To Watch Television

10. The Amazing Race: Global Othering

94 10 The Amazing Race Global Othering Jonathan Gray Abstract: The Amazing Race is one of the most successful reality shows in American television history, and arguably no other program has spent so much time outside of the United States or introduced U.S. audiences to so many non-Americans. Jonathan Gray applies a postcolonialist critique to the show’s images and characters, finding plenty to criticize, while also pointing to moments that suggest the potential to challenge age-old images of crazy and exotic foreigners. American television was never just American, but in recent years, its production , distribution, and reception have all globalized in a more concerted way. In terms of American television’s onscreen representations, though, its interest in and use of the rest of the world are still starkly limited. Vancouver and Toronto stand in for American cities when Canadian tax breaks help Hollywood out. Law and Order: SVU’s Elliot Stabler takes a trip to Prague to bust a child pornography ring and spy or military shows jaunt around the globe to capture nefarious evil-doers, portraying the globe as a problem to be fixed by American law enforcement. Reality television and the news, meanwhile, also seem most interested in the world at large when it is corrupt and violent, corrupt and dying , corrupt and depraved, and/or willing to supply a judge for a competition reality show. Or occasionally the rest of the world justifies coverage when it is stunningly beautiful, exotic, and free of people, as in Survivor and many nature shows or documentaries. I generalize, of course, but so does American television. Exceptions can be found, but they are few and far between, largely because depictions of the rest of the world are themselves few and far between. In the 2011–2012 television season, for instance, every scripted program on American primetime network television was set in America, with only the retro airline drama Pan Am and the spy shows Chuck and Nikita leaving American shores even occasionally. Network reality The Amazing Race 95 programming offered us a quick trip overseas on America’s Next Top Model; it gave us a lush yet unpopulated South Pacific in Survivor, and The Amazing Race (CBS, 2001–present). As is often the case, and as had become de rigeur by the show’s nineteenth season (in its eleventh year on television), the heavy lifting of representing the world and its people on network television was left to The Amazing Race. Over those nineteen seasons, The Amazing Race regularly brought in 10–12 million viewers a week, according to Nielsen ratings, and won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program nine out of ten times after the award was introduced in 2003. The show’s format is relatively simple, filming several teams on a race around the world. The race is broken into legs in different countries with tasks to be completed before advancing, movement by all manner of modes of transport, and ultimately a footrace at the end of each leg to the Amazing Race mat where host Phil Keoghan and a festively costumed local await, ready to eliminate the last-placed team in most instances. The teams set out from the United States, and the first team back to the final mat in the United States wins a million dollars. The race requires the competitors to interact with locals to get ahead, and the series regularly portrays the competitors’ thoughts and opinions on the places they visit. As a result, it is a remarkably rare entity on American network television in this supposedly globalized era: a program that spends time in other countries, depicting the locals of those countries while doing so, and showing an interest, however fleeting and caricatured at times, in the rest of the world. As one of the few shows on American television to do so, it carries significant representational “weight” in speaking of, for, and about the world at large. Like it or not, outside of the news, the Amazing Race crew are one of the key sources on American primetime television for messages about the world and its various citizens.1 What, then, does it say about the world? Jordan Harvey argues that its depiction is mostly without merit, stereotypical, and Orientalized.2 I agree to a point and will illustrate how deeply nationally chauvinist the program can be, through analyzing season seven, broadcast from March to May 2005. However, I will not “only” critique The Amazing Race...