What I Learned From 20 Seasons of Survivor
In a situation where you and I were trapped on a desert island together, I would be good for two things: distraction, via high-energy complaining, and food, via my body, which would have succumbed to something or other several days in, and which you’d begrudgingly bring yourself to eat in order to survive.
I don’t know how to make a fire using only friction, the best way to build a structurally sound lean-to from bamboo and palm fronds, or which plants and animals are safe for consumption and which are not, despite the fact that a coworker pressured me into downloading the SurvivalGuide app (cribbed from Field Manual 21-76, the Department of Defense’s required reading for new soldiers) before I went on a six-month solo trip around South America. (I didn’t end up needing the app; my trip did include some stressful moments, but none of them required me to know exactly how much fluid is lost per blood-soaked bandage.)
My dearth of survival skills and complete lack of interest in obtaining them have not, however, stopped me from falling in love with the reality TV show Survivor.
The show is cast with a mix of aesthetically-pleasing aspiring actors and more normal-looking superfans who practiced eating gross things and using eyeglasses to spark flame for months before filming, but the show is not made for either of those constituencies. It’s made for the average American viewer—someone who loves Survivor largely because they are able to watch the drama unfold from a comfortable leather sofa with a fridge full of complex carbohydrates and cold non-water beverages within spitting distance.
Started at season 20 (…and now we’re here)
I’m not sure I would’ve appreciated Survivor so much had I not been watching it in gulps, a season every three days, during a pandemic that has made it impossible to anticipate literally anything other than continued TV consumption. Seeing a bunch of people have a really terrible time far from home certainly makes being unable to travel easier to bear; watching a group of close friends and allies turn on each other one by one, lies and backstabs galore, is doing a great deal for my extended-isolation-induced malaise.
It’s really the lies and backstabbing that the show is about. While Survivor’s motto is outwit, outplay, outlast, only half of the third of those refers to the actual survival elements.
Yes, you have to outlast the elements and suffer through being sunburned, dehydrated, and constantly hungry, but you also must outlast the scheming, anxiety, and constant paranoia while doing enough scheming to be inducing anxiety and paranoia in everyone else (there’s the outwitting for you).
Then there’s the outplaying, which requires not just getting people to vote for you at the end—”putting the right people on the jury”—but winning physical challenges along the way, each full of net climbs and balance beams and obstacle courses constructed by a set design engineer who probably dreams about slide puzzles and complicated knotting patterns.
I’d convinced myself that if I’d somehow managed to survive the living conditions and play a decent enough social game to not get voted out first, and could make it to a challenge that featured a word puzzle, I could eke out a first place and then go home satisfied I’d won a challenge. Then, in season 30, Survivor: Worlds Apart, I watched six haggard competitors, sleep deprived and hungry and trying to solve a word puzzle in 95-degree heat, struggle for over an hour until host Jeff Probst’s heavy-handed hints help them out and one of them got it: “a reward with all the fixin’s.” No, I would not be outplaying anyone.
Close reading Survivor
That combination of physical, mental, and social elements makes Survivor more than just a reality show; it really is a game, and one set up as a who-done-it mystery special. Who will make it to the end to become (she asks in a deep Probst bellow) the sole survivor? The producers litter each episode with Easter eggs for the enterprising viewer. What kinds of edits are different contestants getting? Who gets the most confessionals? Which tropical animal b-roll is used as interstitials? My favorites are the shots that evoke the cunning calm required to win the game: a small green snake snapping out to scare a rodent, shown before a successfully blindside attempt; two scorpions facing off, tails striking, before a feisty tribal council; a close-up of a spider weaving her web before a secret women’s alliance takes down a strongman.
The show is far from perfect, least of all for the casual sexism, racism, and homophobia that underpin the way certain contestants become characters and “exotic” locations become backdrops, but it’s still incredible watchable, especially during a pandemic.
3 Survivor takeaways that got me through the pandemic
First, watching Survivor during the shitshow of the coronavirus pandemic has reminded me how powerful our bodies are. On the show, contestants’ bodies transform. They get this patina of what my friend Angela has dubbed “island hot” at about the 14-day mark, when their hair has accustomed itself to not being washed and gets incredibly body (hello, Joe’s curls from Survivor: Worlds Apart and Cambodia) (goodbye to those curls after I learned that Joe is a Q-Anon supporter who uses racial slurs) (thank you to Survivor Reddit); a diet free of wheat, sugar, and dairy has completely cleared up their skin; and a dermatologist’s nightmare of constant sun exposure has given them this nice glow.
Then, when island hot is overrun by puffy, infected cuts, scraggly facial hair, and too-skinny ribs that stick out when they lie down on the strung-together bamboo poles that pass as a bed, they still manage to limp through to the end more often than not. My body’s transformation during this last year of indoor isolation hasn’t been as dramatic, but it’s still been a tale of adaption that’s kept me alive, and I’m grateful.
Second, the show proves our collective willingness to do whatever it takes to survive. As I’ve watched contestants lie and cheat and push their way to the end, I’ve recognized that we really can get through anything, if we commit to it.
And third, the visceral misery of the Survivor experience makes me very, very grateful to be here, with food and central heating and air and all the streaming services and a comfortable bed at the ready, perhaps not having thrived through this pandemic but, for now, surviving it.
I’m posting this as a “book club” essay because it pretty much is one. Sign me up to wax poetic on Survivor any day. And to do so with you, if you’re into that. Call me!