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Watching the summer TV phenomenon, Survivor, is like a guilty habit. You know it’s bad
for you, but you still tune in every Wednesday night to see which castaway is voted off the
tropical island situated somewhere near Borneo. Each episode stays fairly close to a
consistent script: we see the contestants backstab and belittle one another since they are
each vying for the $1 million payday that will go to the last one left standing.
It’s Jerry Springer by the sea, without chairs being thrown and a studio
audience egging on the participants. (Studio lighting at night is provided by
Trader’s Vic tiki torches.)
In the interest of MVT—must “vomit” TV— the survivors are forced to
do something disgusting and squeamish, such as eating larvae beetles, canned dog food,
or chopping off a live chicken’s head. (Mind you, in carnival freak shows of the
past, “geeks” were paid to bite off the heads of chickens.)
Before the two tribes recently merged together into one happy dysfunctional Swiss Family
Robinson, these ersatz jungle commandos in their bikinis and sarongs would square off in
athletic challenges yanked from the pages of an old favorite game show found only on
cable: “Beat the Clock.” To the victors went the spoils—fresh fruit,
chocolate bars, chickens, a large knife that would do wonders in Martha Stewart’s
kitchen.
What do they do all day?
These survivors have plenty on time on their hands. The guys play cards, nap in hammocks,
or fish. The women cook, clean, and seemed to have never read Backlash. There used to
be one book on the island, a Bible, but its owner, a Wisconsin dairy farmer is long
gone. So much for the power of the Lord to protect His flock.
You know what sloth and indolence breed? Short tempers and sizzling emotive fuses.
Here, polite grandstanding thinly masks contempt for each other. Remember: Only one
lucky stiff wins this South Seas lotto game. We see firsthand the effects of Darwinism
at its tooth-and-claw sharpest, fiendish, most lethal. It’s survival of the canniest.
The weak are culled from their midst with great ease. The strong are also dispatched with
unconscionable haste, as what happened to Gretchen last week, one of the more sensible and
levelheaded of all the castaways, and who once was an U.S. Air Force instructor in survival
training. Go figure.
Why do we keep tuning in?
The reason this show has captured the voyeuristic hearts and minds of the American public
is because it brings out the inner child in all of us. I’m talking about the inner
child who learns his or her survivor skills on the playground which is a daily battleground
of taunts, threats, fights, skinned knees, bruised egos, and colliding and collapsing
alliances and friendships, all played out in physical contests such as King of the Hill
and Capture the Flag. The school playground is a metaphor for all that follows in
one’s life as an adult.
Sometimes we get voted off the schoolyard team that controls the monkey bars or swing set,
and other times, we decide who is master of the sandbox. We learn to ferret out strengths
and weaknesses in others, and equipped with this knowledge we do our best to survive until
recess is over and we are forced to return to the classroom—which is like a parental
tribal council in which our votes as students don’t count or matter.
Survivor is destined to spawn many imitators; some of these challenges will involve greater
physical challenges and feats; others will be merely all about surviving. But survivors have
been with us for a long time. Last Spring, Julia “Butterfly” Hill climbed down
from her arboreal perch in a redwood forest after almost two years to protest logging in
the Pacific Northwest. The Guinness Book of Records has entries for people who like living
in caves for years, or atop telephone polls, or alone in a rowboat across the Atlantic. Or
how about the Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungles for several decades because
he refused to surrender after the end of WWII. When he finally emerged, he became a folk
hero in Japan.
Surviving in style
Less a Donner party than a dinner party for these supposedly marooned contestants, a
five-star resort is only short hike away (the TV crew gets to hang out there). These
CBS darlings are not emaciated survivors of a plane crash in the Andes, like what once
happened to a Chilean soccer team, who in order to survive, were forced to resort to
cannibalism. But the network has provided these hapless castaways with enough rice
to open up a sushi restaurant in San Francisco.
If the goal here is sky-high ratings, here’s my suggestion: The remaining contestants
should tie up the smirking and annoying, safari-attired host, Jeff Probst, at the final
tribal council and slowly roast him over the open fire. And why not? Borneo tribesmen have
long shown a fondness for eating human meat; their term for foreigners is “long
pigs.” Anyway, it’s just food for thought.
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