People That Like You Want To See You Suffer
The thirteenth season of Survivor is coming to a close, and against all odds, it is still as entertaining as ever.
People who think this season is some experiment in racial Darwinism have probably never seen Survivor before. Rarely does the million dollar winner actually outwit or outplay anyone, let alone out-survive them. Jenna Morasca could not survive an hour inside a pillow factory. Amber Brkich has all the virtues of a burr. On the contrary, having survival skills has a beneficial peak at the merge after which it becomes a social disadvantage (along with any other likable qualities).
Survivor, if anything, is about Freud's narcissism of minor differences.
In seasons past, tribes have fissured along age, race, class, gender, and work ethic. There is no consistent social marking that can predict fractures. Instead, each voting bloc temporary colludes around a (seemingly) mutually advantageous decision. These disparate bonds, however, rarely last. The Vanuatu contestants' dream of having an all female final four fell apart spectacularly amidst personality conflicts.
Indeed, the current power voting bloc of five consists of at least one individual from the originating four racial tribes.
But Survivor's allure has never been about social commentary as Mark has suggested (although it has provided some fascinating subtexts such as the conflict between the hyper-cerebral Hatch and the self-professed working class Sue).
Instead, its appeal, as proposed in Henry Jenkins's Convergence Culture, stems from the friction between an unpredictable plot and an omniscient narrator, and the knowledge communities that develop around this tension. As Haralovich and Trosset write, "Narrative pleasure stems from the desire to know what will happen next... In Survivor, unpredictability whets the desire to know what happens next, but how that gap will be closed is grounded in uncertainty due to chance... In its invitation to prediction, Survivor is more like a horse race than fiction."
Reality shows are invariably more social than comedies and dramas, and Survivor's unpredictability, created by immunity challenges and volatile tribal councils, added to possible clues from Mark Burnett's knowing editing, lead people to collectively speculate. In college, dormmates of mine would attempt to forecast jury temperament (oh, those wild college days), and a girlfriend and I kept a running competition on who could most accurately predict the final four.
And it is this central mechanic that causes viewers to turn in season after season.
People who think this season is some experiment in racial Darwinism have probably never seen Survivor before. Rarely does the million dollar winner actually outwit or outplay anyone, let alone out-survive them. Jenna Morasca could not survive an hour inside a pillow factory. Amber Brkich has all the virtues of a burr. On the contrary, having survival skills has a beneficial peak at the merge after which it becomes a social disadvantage (along with any other likable qualities).
Survivor, if anything, is about Freud's narcissism of minor differences.
In seasons past, tribes have fissured along age, race, class, gender, and work ethic. There is no consistent social marking that can predict fractures. Instead, each voting bloc temporary colludes around a (seemingly) mutually advantageous decision. These disparate bonds, however, rarely last. The Vanuatu contestants' dream of having an all female final four fell apart spectacularly amidst personality conflicts.
Indeed, the current power voting bloc of five consists of at least one individual from the originating four racial tribes.
But Survivor's allure has never been about social commentary as Mark has suggested (although it has provided some fascinating subtexts such as the conflict between the hyper-cerebral Hatch and the self-professed working class Sue).
Instead, its appeal, as proposed in Henry Jenkins's Convergence Culture, stems from the friction between an unpredictable plot and an omniscient narrator, and the knowledge communities that develop around this tension. As Haralovich and Trosset write, "Narrative pleasure stems from the desire to know what will happen next... In Survivor, unpredictability whets the desire to know what happens next, but how that gap will be closed is grounded in uncertainty due to chance... In its invitation to prediction, Survivor is more like a horse race than fiction."
Reality shows are invariably more social than comedies and dramas, and Survivor's unpredictability, created by immunity challenges and volatile tribal councils, added to possible clues from Mark Burnett's knowing editing, lead people to collectively speculate. In college, dormmates of mine would attempt to forecast jury temperament (oh, those wild college days), and a girlfriend and I kept a running competition on who could most accurately predict the final four.
And it is this central mechanic that causes viewers to turn in season after season.
posted by d l wright at 12/05/2006 07:49:00 PM
6 Comments:
I love you Logan. You win the prize for most literate Survivor commentary. xoxo, Janet
I think we need to shut this blog down and start anew. Outsiders are beginning to take notice.
logan! you never told me about your new girlfriend Janet. you dog!
isn't the dream of every blogger that outsiders will take notice?
I was waiting until you came home for the holidays to tell you this, but: I am your father.
Brad: I am pretty confident that anybody who didn't know (biblically) at least one of us would have absolutely no interest in this blog.
agreed, i know all of you (biblically [rufies]) and am only slightly interested.
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