SURVIVOR
Lord of the Sly
According to Survivor's web-page flackmeisters, the show's minions selected sixteen contestants from a pool of 6,000 applicants after extensive "medical and psychological testing". Survivor's consultant in affairs of the mind, one Dr. Gene Ondrusek (listed as Chief Psychologist of a Scripps Hospital project for Executive Health) averred that the ideal Survivor subject would possess the "ability to combine leadership skills with being a team player...", and "demonstrate conflict management without alienating or appearing aloof and detached..." From the evidence at hand, owning the morals of a magpie wouldn't hurt either.
The winners comprised a politically correct cross-section of Americans vis-a-vis gender, vocation, class, ethnicity. Hunks and babes, savvy elders, wilderness experts, city wonks, the fit and paunchy were all were put in play. The contestants met in Borneo, where they were immediately divided into two contingents and marched aboard a native supply ship. After being given a few moments to pick through a bewildering mess of gear, they were unceremoniously dumped over the side. They towed their acquisitions to two flimsy rafts, rowed several miles to beaches on the uninhabited South China island of Pulau Tiga, and pitched makeshift camps.
Over the next 39 days, the Tagi and Pagong "tribes" (named after their respective beaches) endured a series of physical and mental challenges -- grueling or merely absurdist -- while struggling with the rigors of life in the wild. Jeff Probst, the program's emissary from Real Life, periodically stepped into frame like a sleek Deus Ex Machina. Probst laid down the game's rules, issued challenges and solaced the castaways, even as he loaded more grief on their backs. (Regis Philbin's slippery persona as alternate cheerleader, comforter and tormentor on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire springs to mind).
Some contests yielded material rewards -- weatherproof matches; a pizza; a Bud Lite; one night of civilized leisure at the "Survivor Bar"; others awarded the far more crucial prize of several days's immunity from the dreaded "Tribal Council". After a tortuous night trek, the losing tribe would assemble in a jungle locale arguably designed by Trader Vic. Overseen by the crisply dressed Probst, the group proceeded to vote one of its members off the island. Balloting was open; the reasons for expulsion in plain sight, and often hurtful (on the first episode, a kindly middle aged lady who had weathered breast cancer was given the heave-ho by her erstwhile buddies, because she stumbled during a race to acquire fire). The banished were then ushered to a "confession booth" to meditate on their derelictions, before being whisked back to civilization.
As weeks passed, one participant after another would excite the intense curiosity of an impressively expanding audience. Some contestants -- notably the buff Gervase -- received the sort of loopy adulation showered upon the object of an adolescent crush. Then, like the crushee, each temporary idol seemed to fade from the audience's fickle focus after being expelled (although die-hard fanclubs still flourish).
When the castaways had dwindled down to ten, they were combined into a new "Rattana" tribe. Last two standing were plump, crafty 'corporate trainer' Richard Hatch, and Kelly Wigglesworth, a sinewy, tough-minded 23 year old river guide. Seven of the banished were now resurrected, a few with lively grudges, to chose the ultimate survivor and winner of a million dollar bounty. Increasing Survivor's already huge profit in the face of an impending actor's strike, no other prize was awarded except bragging rights. However, several contestants quickly cut lucrative commercial deals, and rumors of even bigger scores circulated.
The pleasures which spurred Survivor's surprising blockbuster status are complex, and ocasionally rather sinister. Leo Bellak ascribed the appeal of detective fiction to its skillful escalation of reader anxiety, the reduction of tension with the culprit's capture, and the potent "closure satisfaction" attendant upon solving the mystery. Another narrative which adroitly manipulates angst, and evokes even greater closure satisfaction, presents a group on some hazardous mission; its members then are successively eliminated until a single intrepid hero remains (less frequently, several or none survive -- the Alamo debacle an historical case in point).
Such tales are regularly discovered in virtually every place and time -- from Homer's Odyssey to the Alien and Highlander movies. Survivor's cunning "then there was one" scenario gained added potency from an ersatz primaeval setting, which was calculated to stimulate a host of entertaining distortions about authentic native habitats which have figured in centuries of Western literature, art, and philosophy from The Tempest, to The Rites of Spring and Tarzan. Inter alia:
The primitive landscape portrayed as a demi-Eden, where Rousseau's Noble Savage indulges innocent pleasures blessedly unfettered by modernity's ulcerous stress (smiling castaways laze about their paradise; gaze at glorious sunsets; go nude; exchange trinkets).
The primitive landscape portrayed as a Hobbesian battleground, "red in tooth and claw", e.g. the desolate island of Lord Of The Flies, where schoolboys stranded by a plane crash regress to feral animals, eking out a meagre, fearful subsistence (grimy castaways eat mice; shiver with fatigue; cast anxious glances into the menacing darkness).
The primitive landscape portrayed as a mirror, in which the Conrad protagonist stripped of urban creature comforts and illusions, beholds profound existential truth about his being (castaways terminally appraise their strengths and failures in the "confession booth").
Survivor's milieu was constructed to exploit one or another of these febrile "gone primitive" fantasies. Hokey African tourist detritus abounded e.g., the Tribal Council's counterfeit masks and Indiana Jones torches. The island's vegetation was photographed as a lavish technicolor feast, or a labybrinthine, menacing tangle. Shots of gently wheeling birds alternated with shots of sinister writhing snakes. On the soundtrack assorted hoots and howls, and an "exotic" score replete with throbbing drums constituted familiar signatures of primitive promise or peril.
Cinema scholars have observed that the classic Hollywood picture expensively strives to efface the methodology behind its creation. When a film thus appears to be unspooling effortlessly inside one's cranium, aesthetic or ideological premises -- of which even the makers may be unaware -- tend to be accepted uncritically. Survivor's creators spent lavishly with analogous results. For instance, the show's skilful camera work, editing and other technical choices fostered the impression that the lion's share of the action -- rigorous or ridiculous competitions, light-hearted banter, down-and-dirty arguments -- were unfolding in an unmediated reality, and an eternal present tense.
Viewers were cannily prompted
to believe that -- aside from the curiously unjarring materializations
of the smarmy Probst and an occasional talking head interview -- the castaways
were alone, achingly vulnerable. Their duds were also often scant, promoting
the viewer's yeasty voyeuristic fantasies notably regarding the more attractive
competitors. (No one copulated on camera, but there were pointed intimations
of shady business behind the dunes.)
In fact, Survivor's
crew greatly exceeded its "cast"; included medical as well as psychological
support. Despite much huffing about the strenuousness of the ordeals, the
mortal hazards lurking under every stone or behind every tree, one sensed
that no contestant was permitted to get into substantive trouble -- if
only for legal reasons. Those coiled snakes were assuredly shot separately,
then cut into the action. Stripped of artifice, Survivor was about as dangerous
as a summer camp, with the counselors out of sight except for the ubiquitous,
smarmy Probst. While the seamless unobtrusiveness of Survivor's
construction may be rated value neutral per se, the ideology beneath the
seamlessness is thoroughly pernicious: The show is pervaded by a consumerism
so crass as to gag a goat, from the flagrant product placement within episodes
to the thicket of surrounding commercials. Survivor putatively endorses
sturdy heartland values: courage; responsibility; teamwork. But its true,
shameless agenda is to tutor the viewer on the acquisition of more and
more "stuff" until one has got it all -- from a can of Bud Lite to CEO.
Survivor's very fabric eerily reflects the duplicitous smash-and-grab ethos of much contemporary corporate practise -- the skull beneath the smile of capitalism with a kinder face. A sense of genuine comraderie developed within each tribe in the early episodes, engendered by facing contests and the quotidian difficulties of island life together. The merger, after six contestants had left, curiously evoked the cruelties spun out of actual corporate mergers.
From this perspective, the banished castaways resembled the legion of employees who have made valuable contributions to their respective companies, played by the rules, only to find themselves downsized away with little if any pretext other than the bottom line. Like many Manhattan therapists, I've treated a fair number of these dismayed, betrayed unfortunates.
As the challenges waxed ever more surreal (recounting trivia about the departed; being the last to keep a hand on the 'immunity idol'), the remaining contestants, uncertain of their roles or who to trust, became increasingly wary; fell back on old "alliances", or formed tricky new ones in aid of not being amputated. I've encountered analogous anxiety over ambiguous new roles and relationships in middle managers who survived megabusiness mergers.
By the game's last episodes, neither authentic survival skills nor simply keeping one's head down could stave off elimination. Machievellian manipulation without being deemed an assassin oneself became the crucial key to success. Paranoia and bitterness intensified in some of the remaining players, especially when the previously expelled were brought back to become the final judges/executioners. Rancor could be overt, but was more likely to be masked by a diffident, smiling facade. I've seen similar bruised, angry feelings and brittle defenses involved in the devastating depressions suffered by clients who've nearly reached the top of the corporate ladder, only to be backstabbed by former colleagues.
Thus the Hobbesian ferocity of the boardroom, not of the jungle characterized Survivor's wicked-intentioned post-Darwinian project. In the end Richard Hatch was elected Lord of the Sly, by being hated less rather than loved more. Astute in the ways of executive doublespeak, the corporate trainer claimed he had all his ducks in a row the moment he hit the beach.
"I don't feel I was diabolical.",
the oleaginous Hatch asserted. "There were ethics in this game. There was
morality, and I think that is a big part of why I won."
Huey Long was once asked if
there would ever be fascism in America. "You bet,", replied the Kingfish
-- "But we'll call it anti-fascism!!!"