It would be a mistake to view Survivor as a game show, although it is worth noting the elements it shares with this genre. Like a game show, it is highly structured, and has multiple competitors chasing victory. A host presides over regular challenges containing clearly defined rules that must not be transgressed. Contestants compete for a prize that will not be shared. Beyond this, however, the differences are striking.

Unlike game shows, Survivor is not set in a studio replete with bright lights and glittering prizes, but in an exotic, remote, post-colonial location, bereft of a studio audience. Instead of forming the entirety of the program, challenges account for little time: both televised and actual. The day-to-day lives of the “contestants” are shown - from cooking to building shelter, gathering food and sleeping, relaxing and interacting. Multiple cameras follow the participants’ every move, and selective editing is used to create a particular narrative flow (based on character, and tailored to the elimination at the end of each episode).

Survivor has its own terminology that removes it from the linguistic realm of the game show. Instead of being contestants, contenders or even competitors, there are only “Survivors”. Sixteen Survivors are divided into two teams of eight and sent to a remote location (in Survivor I, the “deserted” island of Pulau Tiga in the South China Sea; in Survivor II, north Queensland, and Survivor III will be shot in Kenya). In contrast to the British production Shipwrecked, the audience is not privy to the selection process for the Survivors, or the reasons behind the split of the teams. The word “team” is never used - the groupings are referred to as “tribes” with exotic-sounding names: Tagi and Pagong (series 1) and Kucha and Ogakor (series 2). 1.

In game shows, the host performs the role of mediator between the contestants and the holders of knowledge (those who wrote the questions, and can adjudicate on issues like time limits or pronunciation). The host is always present on set; indeed, the show cannot take place without him. 2 In contrast, Survivor’s host Jeff Probst is rarely on camera, appearing only when it is time for the challenges to take place. He presides over the gatherings in which Survivors are voted off, tallying the votes on camera, though he himself does not vote.

The issue of voting and elimination is an important and unusual one. In game shows, the difference between winning and losing is usually relatively objective: an answer to a question is either right or wrong. Most game shows adhere to a quiz format, and test certain kinds of knowledge (ie trivial, intellectual, or everyday: for example prices of appliances in New Price is Right). The winner is the individual who answers questions correctly and has the largest score (in points or dollars) at the end of an episode. Contestants with low scores are eliminated either during the course of an episode or right at the end.

“Voting off” is a crucial component of Survivor, which introduced the concept of eliminating not just one’s fellow competitors, but one’s actual team-mates (since seen on Greed and The Weakest Link). “Survivors” are thereby invited to analyse each other, assess each other’s relative worth to the team, evaluate the threat each poses, and build alliances that enable them to remain in the game as long as possible. Although competing as individuals for a prize that only one of them can claim, Survivors must bond sufficiently with their team-mates to guarantee their continued participation. They must establish alliances to keep themselves safe, yet bond with all team members in case an alliance is broken. They must contribute to the team to help it win challenges and foster morale. Survivors who do not bond sufficiently with their team-mates, or who are not part of a strong alliance, tend to be voted off early in the series. Votes are cast every three days by semi-secret ballot (the television audience is shown who voted for whom, but the contestants can only make assumptions about the votes).

When not participating in challenges, Survivors are left to their own devices, which involve gathering food, maintaining watertight shelters, and plotting against their fellow Survivors. Cameras follow the Survivors’ interactions, and they are frequently filmed speaking directly to camera about each other, alliances, and their own chances of victory. The crucial alliances are formed at the beginning, and have tended to structure the rest of the series, as members decide who to vote off next. After the teams combine, the alliance with the most people can simply vote off those from the other team, or from weaker alliances.

The corporate spin of Survivor is fairly obvious. It is not a light-hearted game show featuring people who want the opportunity to win a prize, appear briefly on television and acquire their proverbial 15 minutes of fame. All of the contestants on Survivor have a definite objective: to win the million dollars. There is one prize, and only one person can win it. There has never been any suggestion that the winner would even consider sharing the prize with their team-mates. The million dollars is not conceived of or referred to as a mere prize, it is “the money”, and it is behind every strategic move, every alliance, and even every conversation and interaction. “Survival” has nothing to do with literally surviving, despite the harsh, remote location: it has more to do with an individual’s ability to remain in the game. “Survival” is outlasting fellow contestants, withstanding their votes, and lasting a finite time (just six weeks!) in the location. When rations were running low and Survivors were unable to catch fish (potentially a genuine survival situation), Probst entered the camp with enough rations until the end of shooting. No matter how hungry, fatigued and weak the Survivors were, they are never in great danger. The proximity of a camera crew and medical staff, and rewards of food and luxury items for those who win the challenges held every three days, indicate that the program is not about literal survival.

Survivors do not refer to themselves as contestants, although they acknowledge that their quest for the money is the game. They can separate their relationships with other Survivors from the game, explaining that they will vote off people whose company they genuinely enjoy, so that they will have a better chance at winning. They also use the alliances to vote off people they deem to be “strong” - who pose the greatest threat to their own chances of victory. Indeed, the only emotion that Survivors continue to express direct to camera is irritation with other Survivors. Strategies and alliances are crucial, and obvious manipulations and management of other Survivors continually take place, particularly in discussions of who to eliminate. In Survivor I, members of the strongest alliance continually denied the existence of that alliance, while voting off every Survivor who wasn't part of it.

The language of the corporate and financial world easily finds its way into the program. Survivors actually assess each other in terms of stocks, shares, and value. For example, if a Survivor demonstrates a useful skill that no-one else has, they are described as having their “stocks go up”. When the last ten Survivors form one new team, this is described as “merger”. An auction actually took place in a challenge: Survivors were given A$500 to bid for items of food from corn chips with salsa to turkey sandwiches. The value of items becomes increasingly important, as when the shelter was deemed a fair trade for rice.

t could be suggested that such a structured, goal-oriented concept with its reliance on corporate discourses of “winner takes all”, greed, management and manipulation would be at home in a corporate boardroom. But Survivor, despite its structure, objectives and language, is as far removed from a strictly corporate setting as it can get. The exotic, remote location does not simply add interest for the viewer, but it enables corporate discourses to be re-presented as natural or primal.

The uncritical use of terminology such as “tribe” masks, to an extent, the program’s corporate undertones. Such terms have quite different connotations to the language of management and the corporate boardroom. It is as if, in order to win civilisation’s ultimate prize, contenders must return to the “primitive” and uncivilised. Deeply problematic is the implicit assumption that indigenous people in tribal societies would have lived as television’s “Survivors” are living.

Survivor has ample evidence of non-specific cultural appropriation. The tribal council with its elaborate set on a rocky outcrop is conceptualised as symbolic and primal. It is referred to as a “ceremony”, with its connotations of the sacred. What it actually is, of course, is the exoticised meeting at which one unfortunate Survivor is “voted off”. It is highly ritualised, with Survivors possessing a torch that symbolises their “life in the tribe”. If they are voted off, their torch is extinguished, and Probst solemnly utters the words, “The tribe has spoken”. When a Survivor or tribe wins a challenge that prevents their elimination, they are given not just immunity, but an “immunity idol”.

Obviously, there is nothing sacred about any of this. The tribe is just an exoticised team of white people carrying torches. 3 “Tribal council” is simply a way to expel people from the team. Tribes exist purely to allow individuals to pursue the goal of acquiring a huge, unshared money prize. (It is worth noting that although only one Survivor can win the million dollar prize, there were other incentives to “play the game”: most of the Survivor I participants scored subsequent television appearances, lucrative advertising contracts, and genuine celebrity status on an international scale.)

In a nutshell, the apparent disjunction between the location and the capitalist objectives at Survivor’s heart allows us to see colonialism at work. Exotic “uninhabited” locations have white people deposited on them. Land is colonised (temporarily, before being abandoned in a degraded state). Notions of “tribe” (and therefore any associations of kinship and belonging) are appropriated. Inaccurate ideas about indigenous people are perpetuated eg Aboriginal people survived on cow brains for millions of years (Survivor II). Everything on the land becomes a mere resource (from trees chopped down for shelter, to grasshopper and the fish for which they were used as bait). Those animals not killed for food become a resource for the camera crew, exoticising the location still further (Survivor II’s use of emus, crocodiles and kangaroos).

The Survivors’ relationship to the land is a colonial one, concerned primarily with ownership and exploitation. The “uninhabited” land that forms the Survivor site soon becomes a possession of the Survivors who, after setting up camp, refer to the position as “our beach”, “our camp”, “our home”, etc. The land is viewed as both property and resource, and this thinking is not confined to the Survivor site: when two Survivors spent a day at World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef, one returned to camp having broken off pieces of coral as souvenirs for the others!

It is no accident that Survivor locations are remote, exotic, and post-colonial. They are referred to as “uninhabited”, and no-one but the Survivor and the host are seen on camera. In Survivor I, indigenous people of the island were not named, and were only mentioned in a challenge that involved testing Survivor knowledge of the island and its “spirits”. In Survivor II, Aborigines are occasionally referred to, perhaps to avoid a dangerous dance with the concept of terra nullius, but they too are absent (although didgeridoo music forms part of the theme and background music, and the face of an anonymous Aboriginal man with white face paint is shown in the keys at the beginning). They were referred to as having survived for “millions of years” on fried grasshoppers, mangrove worms and cow brains (among other things referred to as “bush tucker” - which also included food familiar to the Survivors, like a “candy bar” and piece of apple). Few and inaccurate references to indigenous people are fairly poor attempts at tokenism at best, and exploitation at worst. Most references to Aboriginal people are in the external media coverage of the program. This includes a report of the producers’ exploitation of two Aboriginal stockmen (hired to teach the Survivors knowledge of the bush and paid a fraction of their entitlement). Another was an interview with host Probst who carefully explained that indigenous artists designed the immunity idol and the “rock paintings” that adorn part of the tribal council set.

It should have come as no surprise to anyone that the winner of Survivor I, a highly structured, goal-oriented competition, was a corporate trainer and consultant, someone skilled in the politics of the corporate world. From his first appearance on screen, Richard Hatch proclaimed that he would win the million dollars. He had a plan, a management strategy, a networking style, and a goal. He was not the most popular member of the tribe, nor the fittest. He was not the hardest worker, nor the smartest contender. In a challenge that tested his knowledge about his fellow Survivors, he had no answers. He openly admitted that he cared about nothing but getting the money. Audiences deemed Hatch the least popular of the last four Survivors and the least deserving winner. Yet somehow, it seemed because of his continued reiteration that he was playing the game for its own sake, Hatch won the respect of the last eight Survivors that were voted off - and they voted him the winner.

The workings and morality of the corporate world have proved to be as effective in the South China Sea and the Australian outback as the multinational boardroom. But Survivor is more than just a corporate game show complete with backstabbing alliances and a greedy quest for individual glory. While amending the conventions of the game show, it allows privileged Westerners to play out explicit capitalist fantasies while re-visiting colonialist practices.

Notes
1 The Survivors live on location with a minimum of food and personal possessions, and in the living quarters that they can construct. The tribes compete in two challenges every three days-one for food, the other for immunity (prizes that are shared by the team)-until six Survivors are voted off by their fellow competitors. Thereafter, the tribes merge, and individuals, rather than the tribes, compete for food or privileges (such as a snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef or a meal of several courses).

2 Until recently, with the advent of Greed and The Weakest Link, there has never been a female game show host.

3 It is worth noting that of the 32 American “Survivors” (no other nationalities were accepted by the casting agents), only three were black. No other ethnicity was represented.

Kathryn Goldie. "A New Spin on the Corporate Jungle: Survivor" M/C Reviews 04 May 2001.