My family rarely watched television together. My parents liked the news, my younger siblings liked Disney Channel, and my older sister liked robotics meetings. However, there was one exception: The Amazing Race. My family and I watched each season religiously for over 5 years, I even had an amazing race themed birthday party in second grade. We were obsessed with thinking about which family members would make the best (or worst) teams and enjoyed fighting about who we should root for. I’m not exactly sure why The Amazing Race became our favorite show but to fund such an expensive show for 36 seasons clearly means my family was not alone. 36 seasons also means The Amazing Race is clearly profitable.
At around 8:30 pm on April 3, Survivor players voted Mo off the island and credits began to roll. Then, The Amazing Race played and immediately everyone in the Weitz Cinema was bombarded by Expedia ads. It makes sense that the average viewer of Amazing Race would be enticed to travel from watching an episode. However, the bluntness of the programming and flow felt shocking to me. But then I had an epiphany–The Amazing Race is already an ad in itself.
Amazing Race sells a thirst for adventure and idealized view of traveling. Whether it’s eating an insane amount of foreign foods (to the point contestants would often throw up) or yelling at a taxi driver, “FAST, RÁPIDO, MUY RÁPIDO POR FAVOR”, or skydiving, it seems that contestants are being fully immersed in new landscapes and ways of life. The show is yelling at its audience to be free! We should just break out of our comfort zones, leave our jobs, and embark on a tour around the world!
Yet, in reality the contestants don’t seem to be enjoying their once-in-a-lifetime experience. Sometimes they don’t even seem to know what country they’re in. The show, quite ironically, strays away from a romanticized representation of travel by forcing their competitors to focus on superficial tasks, all for the goal of 1 million dollars. Locals are never interviewed during the episode. Oftentimes, they are literal mascots only to be seen at the finish line of each episode.
Looking back, I like to think my family enjoyed The Amazing Race not because of its consumerist themes about traveling and undertones of the exploitation that occurs in the tourism industry, but because of the message of teamwork it offers. Contestants are constantly put into infuriating positions (often traffic) or face a buildup of mental stress that is unleashed upon their partner. Only the teams that can tread the line between supporting one another while adapting on the spot can stay competitive in the race.
At the end of the day, even with all the problems The Amazing Race has, I still loved watching my favorite childhood show. Decoding the show as a big advertisement doesn’t change the fact that the competition aspect of the show is very entertaining. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll compete on The Amazing Race and follow the footsteps of that one Carleton alumni who won 1 million dollars.
2 replies on “1 MILLION DOLLARS (wait, what is this show about?)”
I too agree that it was a shock to me how obvious and blunt the programming and flow was. I never really noticed how advertisements were purposefully positioned at specific times in relation to shows to maximize audience engagement and profit. Watching The Amazing Race reminded me of how shows aired at specific times and advertisements that were purposely positioned affected my own life too, like how cooking shows were always aired right around dinner time and how my mom would always get ideas on what to make that day for dinner, or how food or delivery app ads would be aired around those cooking shows.
Hey!
I too also grew up watching The Amazing Race, though for me it was mainly whenever I was staying over at my cousins’ house whenever I was younger. We really enjoyed watching this show along with many other reality TV shows. I feel like many reality TV-esque shows nowadays are ads in themselves.
Though this isn’t explicitly a TV show, a modern example that I can think of in regards to this change of flow is with YouTube videos. This one time I was watching a more recent Mr. Beast video (one of those fancy game contest ones) and I distinctly remember how Mr. Beast would continuously drop in advertisements for his sponsors, his own brand, and the ads via YouTube itself. Though I knew what Mr. Beast was doing with his ad placements, I couldn’t help but watch the video all the way through because of that thirst of adventure that I felt while watching the contestants win big, quite similar to your discussion regarding The Amazing Race. I think it’s pretty interesting to see how some of these concepts can translate across platforms when they’re overall within the same genre.
Cheers,
Jonathan