It is almost August and I realize that I haven’t updated my Free Survivor Tribal Swatch Palettes since the conclusion of last season! Yikes I’ll probably get voted off the island for that omission.
The past season was fantastic! Full of drama, double crosses, scheming and titanic struggles between the forces of good and evil. That may be laying it on a bit thick, though Russell might just be evil. Obviously the show is contrived, but what narrative isn’t? Survivor, like most works of, dare I say it, art are really vehicles to explore larger themes. Even if shows like this aren’t intended to be revelatory, we can still find some meaning or food for thought in every product of culture, well maybe not Carrot Top.
After all, the producers of the show have commented that Survivor is meant to strip people from their comfortable and familiar life and force them through stress (hunger, discomfort and paranoia) to reveal their inner nature. So it is not much of a stretch to add greater meaning to Survivor. True, the shows first and foremost role is to be entertainment and it is easy to over analyze these things, but if one watches as much Survivor as I have, you will (besides becoming slightly brain damaged) discover that the show is a microcosm of human emotions set on a smaller stage. An emotional petri dish where the 7 deadly sins are revealed one at a time in the microscope of television and the angels of our better nature stoop under the blazing tropical sun.
A deadly sin that that permeates the show is wrath, notably in the form of revenge. The structure of the show forces a group of strangers to bond together for security and comfort, all the while realizing that they will eventually have to betray one another at some level to win. Betrayal is a sucking wound that is difficult to close, it is no accident that Dante placed betrayers at the lowest level of his inferno. Betrayal leads to feelings of revenge, the form this usually takes in Survivor is a wince-inducing haranguing at the final Tribal Council, where the betrayed confront their betrayers and a winner is decided. Watching these speeches makes me think of something that Homer said in the Iliad:
It (revenge) is sweeter far than flowing honey.”
– Homer, the Iliad Book 18.
The best example of the sweet flowing schadenfreude in Survivor is most eloquently exemplified by the famous “Rats and Snakes” speech from Sue Hawk. She was betrayed by one time ally Kelly and she lets both of the finalists have it. It is an amazing piece of oratory, maybe not up to Pericles’ standards, but a pretty impressive bit of invective nonetheless. Watch it for your self and see.
