Survivor Through the Eras: Part 1

MTV's Are You The One? recently debuted its eighth season, breaking new ground in the reality TV landscape by featuring a cast of all sexually fluid individuals. While I do not watch the program, I find this change to its format both exciting and fascinating. While MTV has long been a pioneer in diversifying and evolving reality television, this latest innovation feels especially progressive and significant. The season, nicknamed Come One, Come All, feels largely like a response to, or perhaps a reflection of, our current moment.

Obviously, all media exists in conversation with the environment in which it is created, but reality television seems to be under particular pressure to have these conversations. Scripted television is constantly picked apart and analyzed in an attempt to connect it to a broader context.

I mean, that's kind of what I do here.

But part of the motivation for introducing a Survivor section to the site was the idea that unscripted/reality television seems to receive less analysis and dissection. And because reality television is expected to properly engage with, well, reality, it feels especially ripe for discussion.

So, as Are You The One? clearly engages with our current moment by celebrating, and maybe even exploiting, representation, I feel it is only right that I turn to Survivor as another indicator of change. Tracing the show's history, and situating seasons into certain eras, may help us understand how society has changed since the show's debut in 2000, but also, and perhaps more interestingly, how television has changed in that same amount of time.

In thinking about what makes a season of Survivor compelling, I recognize five different prongs. These are the five elements that I thought about in putting together my season rankings. They will also prove useful in understanding just how the eras of Survivor engage with a broader context. They are as follow:

1. Storytelling - Does the season have a coherent narrative thread connecting each episode? Seasons like Philippines and South Pacific excel in this area.

2. Characters - Are all or most of the characters exciting, unique, and well-developed? Seasons like Tocantins and Panama excel in this area.

3. Strategy - Does the season include innovative or complex moments of strategy? Believe it or not, not every season does. Seasons like Cambodia and The Amazon excel in this area.

4. Unpredictability - Does the season include unpredictable or flashy moments? Unpredictability often exists in direct relation to or direct opposition with strategy. Seasons like Gabon and Edge of Extinction excel in this area.

5. Theme/Location - Is the season's theme or location unique and well-integrated into the game? Seasons like China and Guatemala excel in this area.

So, with those five key elements of Survivor established, I will spend the next couple weeks or so discussing the last two decades of television and society, as told by Survivor.

Here is the first of eight eras of Survivor.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

O.G. Survivor: Self-Discovery (Seasons 1-3)

The first three seasons of Survivor, spanning 2000-2002, mark the show and its players figuring out what the hell is going on. Survivor: Borneo remains a groundbreaking piece of television for this exact reason. It is the ultimate social experiment, putting sixteen strangers on an island together, forcing them to vote each other off, and simply seeing what happens. This idea of voting people off is met with discomfort and derision, leading to some unique strategies, if you can even call them that. One player, for example, devises an approach in which he votes out players alphabetically so as to not offend anyone around him. The eventual winner of the season becomes Sole Survivor by forming an alliance with other members of his tribe. While the idea is commonplace and essential in today's game, it was revolutionary and controversial at the time. And to those outside of this Tagi Alliance, it was seen as "ganging up" on the rest of the players.

The Borneo finale even featured a poll for the audience that included the questions "would you do what Richard did to win?" and "did the right person win?" Viewers were pretty split on how they would handle the situation, and only 31% felt Richard was deserving, most of them preferring Kelly or Rudy instead.

Kelly, athletic and intelligent, and Rudy, comedic and personable, were edited as the heroes of the season, despite being in an alliance with Richard. Kelly notably wavered from the alliance at one point, a sign of moral strength at the time but almost certainly a sign of strategic weakness today. Still, the idea of bringing a group of people together to share strategy, and more importantly, votes was seen as villainous in 2000. But why?

It seems the early days of Survivor, and reality TV as a whole, strove for goodness. If we were going to put real people on television, and give that genre of television the lofty label of "reality television," then those people needed to be good and likable people. No one wants to consider themselves or those around them to be manipulative or evil. So, even in regards to a game like Survivor in which individuals are pitted against one another in pursuit of a million dollar prize, audiences prioritized positivity and likability in their reality TV consumption.

This attitude loomed over Survivor's second season. Richard's "evil" ways were well-documented, and so players were very careful not to deceive or strategize too heavily.

Well, at least not on camera.

The Australian Outback winner Tina was actually very strategic, organizing alliances and orchestrating blindsides, but doing almost all of this work along her travels to and from tribal council, when the players were not being filmed. This approach allowed Tina to play a complex and worthy game without earning the ire of viewers. The very fact that Tina's gameplay earned her four out of the seven jury votes demonstrates an evolution of Survivor, but it doesn't paint the full picture.

Her opponent at that Final Tribal Council was Colby, who dominated The Australian Outback by winning five straight immunity challenges. His athletic prowess and leadership ability seem like the exact kinds of traits that win you a million dollars on a show like Survivor, so what went wrong?

Colby was generally well liked by his castmates, and absolutely adored by the general public, so his loss cannot be simply chalked up as a response to the show's first season and Richard's perceived villainy. Colby did have a feud with Jerri, but Jerri was seen as one of the biggest villains in reality TV history at the time. Colby simply made the mistake of bringing someone even more likable than himself to the end. The winner of a season of Survivor, or any reality competition show for that matter, is seen as the representative of that piece of television. Therefore, the contestants on Survivor's second season simply felt the 41 year-old mother from Tennessee was a better representative than the 27 year-old auto builder from Texas.

And quite honestly, the decision rendered Survivor a surprisingly progressive show early on in its run. Its first four seasons saw a gay man, a woman, a Jewish man, and a black woman claim the title of Sole Survivor. Of course, this kind of identity politics is a rather simplistic and incomplete way of deeming a program progressive, but this kind of development still feels refreshing in the context of the early 21st century.

I find that reality television is always a little incongruous with the reality surrounding it, always a little bit ahead or a little bit behind. In the case of Survivor's early years, it seems to exist slightly ahead of the curve. Of course, some more specific character moments feel very antiquated in our contemporary climate, but I have always felt the show's inclusion of these moments is exactly what makes it so progressive. In addition to Survivor, I am a huge Big Brother fan, which has come under fire several times for not including controversial or inappropriate moments on the show, protecting offenders in the process. Survivor has the advantage of letting such moments disappear without anyone being any wiser, and yet such moments are often included nonetheless.

Look no further than Big Tom's "he's a Jew!" rant on Survivor: Africa, the show's third season. The moment is used for comedic effect, and is undoubtedly hilarious, but its very inclusion draws attention to social dynamics in the United States and how attitudes differ across different regions. The appeal of shows like Survivor and Big Brother is this idea of taking people from across America and putting them in a space together. So, with this idea in mind, it only makes sense to discuss how these individuals may relate to and differ from one another. The best seasons of Survivor understand this notion and develop characters/relationships that we may not get to encounter in our everyday lives. Including moments like Big Tom's will always be a tricky thing. Depending on how they are edited, they are either hilarious, powerful, or exploitative. Any of these qualities can be effective in generating conversation, but they can also be damaging in their messaging.

Big Tom is probably Survivor's first big personality. He's the first contestant to truly feel like a TV character, unlike anyone we would ever encounter in our everyday life, although that may not be the case for viewers from rural Virginia. Big Tom marks the show toying with this notion of converting real people into TV characters, but he remains a source of comedy first and foremost.

Africa is revolutionary in that it cements strategy and manipulation as essential to the game of Survivor, but it remains traditional in its storytelling.

It is the show's fourth season that ushers in a new era of Survivor in which the show begins to really reckon with its responsibilities as they relate to storytelling, authenticity, and character development.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of "Survivor Through the Eras" where I will discuss seasons 4-10, which make up what I refer to as the "Smile, You're On TV!" Era of Survivor.