Finding the blessed on the TV beach

Finding the blessed on the TV beach

A lot has been written about the runaway popularity of the CBS summer hit Survivor.  What was the secret of its success?  An otherwise slow schedule?  The gorgeous scenery, or the scantily-clad youngsters, or the nasty tribal council vote at the end of each episode? As the show progressed towards its finale, the producers became increasingly blatant in their methods:  Survivor was religious television, and its audience followers with varying degrees of devotion. 6Content               jCommunity

Building each week, Survivor has succeeded in creating its own cult following.  First off, there is the satisfying order of the show, from the opening credits, the theme hymn - er, song - the day count in the lower left-hand corner, the contests, the immunity challenge, and the tribal council, somewhere between an all-American town hall meeting and the night of the long knives.

The constant pictures of paradise, the snakes in the garden, and the use of pseudo-indigenous masks, carvings and totems all suggest religious themes and epic narratives, before subverting them with the 'real' religion of Survivor.  The exoticization of a foreign belief system to prove superiority isn't a new trick: religion scholar David Chidester has asserted the concept of religion didn't even have exist until Western powers moved into frontier places like sub-Saharan Africa, where it was easier to colonize people first by suggesting they had no religion, and then control them by categorizing and defining their beliefs.  In its own way, the Survivor producers do this every episode when they remake the island of Pulau Tiga in their own image.

Television has been introduced into the Survivor ritual and reward system throughout the show, with contestants earning the right to see videotape of their families, and even of themselves in the Survivor show.  (We the audience, watching the whole thing, are the most favoured in this religion.)  There are boxes within boxes here, with some containing religion and others pop culture.  But the crucial development is that unlike traditional religious television, the boxes aren't hermetically sealed, and ideas and images leak and flow between them.

In episode 12, shown last Wednesday, the mix spilled over.  In a less that subtle move, a communal roll in one of the island's mud baths was used as a purification ritual, after which the contestants admitted they felt better and happier with each other.  The immunity challenge was even more blatant.  It was up as a parody of yet another pop culture hit, The Blair Witch Project, the film which took its own liberties with wicca and the occult, mixed with cinema verité.

Once assembled, the omniscient and annoying host, Jeff Probst, told the contestants about the island's "superstitions" and "folklore."  (To come right out and call any native teachings "spirituality" or "religion" would elevate them to a level too risky to play with.)  So Sue, Rudy, Richard, Kelly and Sean learned about sacrificing of goats, and the significance of conch shell trumpeting, and rain showers.

Briefing in the spiritual traditions of the island over, the camera itself became part of the ritual, as the survivors raced from tree to tree, reading the questions about 'folklore' off the back of masks, turning handheld cameras on themselves to answer the question, before ripping the mask from the tree.  Hit the pause button long enough here and consider what's going on with questions of self-identity, mixed in with masks and videotape.  The traditional teachings and symbols are replaced with videotape in the most straightforward of ways.

Finally, at the tribal council that night, all the tales came true.  It rained, just as Probst had foretold.  The 'jury' of former island-dwellers marched in and sat silently near their own dead torches, a sort of ancestor clan who will determine the final survivor.

Sean, when voted off, was told his torch had been blown by the wind. Not having shown himself to be the sharpest of the bunch, Sean is the doubting Thomas, murmuring something about someone blowing it out behind his back.  But the meshing of the island people's 'folklore' with the television ritual was played out with the host's revised mantra: "Sean, the tribe and the jungle have spoken" said Probst as he placed the coconut snuffer over poor Sean's already extinguished torch.

In the final episode, the last three to survive, Rudy, Rich and Kelly, went through a highly stylized ritual before holding on to a sort of totem pole to determine the last immunity victor. Probst emphasized the importance of taking a part of the island with them into the final test, and had them smear up with volcanic mud.  They processed through waving palms and people chanting that the spirits were with them, and they walked over burning coals en route to the final challenge.  At this point, there was no attempt to pretend these actions were part of the challenge itself, but instead, they pointed to elevating the activities to a religious ritual.  No matter who succeeded, the winner would be graced not only with the $1-million, but the blessing of Pulau Tiga.

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But religious television is more than just TV shows with religious content.  Survivor works because of the feeling of community it's generated, whether as the subject of water cooler talk or Web site reverence.  To belong, you at least need to know that the show is on, with extra brownie points for knowing what the 'alliance' is and top membership for those who can successfully expound on the probable winner and why.

Keeping to one special night a week together with the ritual and exotic surroundings easily explain Survivor's ratings win over Big Brother. But David Letterman and other Survivor 'scholars' give exegetical information for those who can't make it from Wednesday to Wednesday without a fix.

There are even the heretics in the crowd, including  Greg, the former survivor who refuses to do the media interviews and play along, choosing instead to use the camera to make up his own, bizarre stories. The authors of the Web site SurvivorSucks.com, by parodying the show, are of course acknowledging its power and popularity.

As with the so-called cargo cults that proliferated in the Pacific after indigenous contact with traders, Survivor is just sailing through our television universe.  Like the cults, preoccupied with material wealth and things, be it the $1-million, or the nights aboard luxury yachts, or even a Bud light, the series has pushed the worship of materialism further, but won't do much more, unlike, perhaps, the British version, Castaway 2000, with its lofty goals of trying sustainable power sources.

Like some summer blip in the attendance of the church near the cottage, we'll soon all be settling back into the more traditional, mainline religious services of E.R., Friends and X-Files before long.  At least until Survivor in the Australian outback starts.

Joyce Smith is Research Director of Faith and the Media, and specializes in issues at the intersection of news and religion.  She holds English literature, journalism and religious studies degrees from the universities of Toronto, Western Ontario and Natal.

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