‘You start at a disadvantage’: Benjamin Law on Survivor’s diversity problem

Fans of Australian Survivor would have been unsurprised to see writer Benjamin Law voted off the show earlier this week. Law had been on the outs with other players since the beginning, never able to form true alliances despite his best efforts – a necessity when looking to advance in the game – and repeatedly labelled by a number of players as “shifty”.

But his exit has prompted a larger discussion about the way people of colour can be “disadvantaged” on the show, and the issue of diversity on Australian TV more generally.

“I’m not exactly sure why I was questioned [by other players],” says Benjamin Law, of his time on Australian Survivor.Credit: Nigel Wright/Network 10

“When I watch the show back now, I feel for this past version of me who’s just being suspected at every turn,” Law said on the latest episode of Good Weekend Talks – a “magazine for your ears” featuring conversations between journalists from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and the people captivating Australia right now.

“I’m not exactly sure why I was questioned [by other players], and I do find it interesting that several players who have described me as ‘shifty’ … even while they’re saying that, they say ‘and I don’t know why; there’s something I can’t put my finger on.’

“It would be interesting to [ask them], ‘Can you put your finger on it now?’”

Though he speaks very fondly of his experience and his tribe mates too – “lovely blokes”, some of whom have since reached out to him privately and said they wish they’d formed alliances with him – Law is frank about the way a lack of diversity on the series (racial or otherwise) can have some players “starting at a disadvantage”.

“I really want to make sure that I’m not getting into a state of self-pity ... [but] when you’re in such an extreme environment, you flock to familiarity and safety. And very similar people ended up flocking to familiarity out there.”

This season of Australian Survivor has consisted of two “tribes”, heroes and villains, each with 12 players. On the villains, two of the three contestants first voted off the show were people of colour, leaving just one player who is not white. For the heroes, Law was one of only two people of colour on his tribe. The other, Nina Twine, is still on the show, however has also been subject to an incident involving her race.

Early in the season, a white contestant abruptly told Twine, a black woman, she was “more African American” than her – a comment which one fan called “one of the most insensitive things I’ve seen a Survivor contestant say on any version of the show”.

As Law notes, however, neither he nor Twine had “the luxury of talking back in that moment” for fear of being ostracised in the game.

“There is that sense that you’re entering into dangerous terrain if you’re the racial minority talking about race,” he says. “It’s something that I really didn’t want to do out there on the island because people get defensive – and when they get defensive, they can lash out.

“I think there’s a real opportunity for Survivor, and all Australian shows, to be bringing a better mix [to the cast]. The ironic thing is, if you actually have some sort of racial parity … the less the contestants have to think about race.”

This is something the US version of the show has recently been proactive about. In 2020, after similar complaints from past players, the network pledged that at least 50 percent of all reality TV casts would be black, indigenous or people of colour.

It’s a move many critics say has vastly improved the entertainment value of the show, allowing many players more freedom in the way they present themselves and the moves they make. Host and executive producer Jeff Probst recently said the decision has “forever changed Survivor”, praising US network CBS for “having the power and the courage to make [the diversity quota] happen”.

Network Ten declined the opportunity to speak about diversity in the series’ Australian iteration, but the show’s production company, Endemol Shine Australia, supplied a brief statement: “We at Endemol Shine celebrate diversity across multiple programs including Australian Survivor, MasterChef Australia, Gogglebox, The Bridge to name a few.”

Though Australian TV has long been criticised for its lack of on-screen diversity, it’s certainly true that some advances have been made in recent years. On the aforementioned shows: Gogglebox has recently cast its first Indigenous family, and in 2020 MasterChef diversified its judging panel with the introduction of Melissa Leong. This season of Australian Survivor is also more ethnically diverse than the show has been in the past (Network Ten’s first cast, in 2016, was widely criticised for being almost completely white).

But this issue has been lingering over the series for some time. Back in 2019, host Johnathan LaPaglia even told the ABC he thought the show was “whitewashed” and “never really got a satisfactory answer on [the question of diversity in casting]”.

“Basically, I’m told that there aren’t that many people from minority cultures that apply, and whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.”

In that same interview, Survivor superfan Shannon Guss (who currently co-hosts Network Ten’s companion show Talking Tribal) called it a “missed opportunity because the show ... is meant to be a microcosm of society at large”.

This is certainly how Benjamin Law still feels today. However, in a tongue-in-cheek post on Instagram this week, he pitched an alternative to the network: “Australian Survivor: Asians at War”.

“We’ve done the maths and there are now enough former Asian contestants to form our own tribe,” Law wrote, alongside a photo of him with four other Asian players from past seasons geotagged at “Shifty’s Bar & Grill”.

“Make it happen, @SurvivorAU!”

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