Word: survivor
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...break down reality TV roughly into two major subgenres. The first - the big competition-event show - descends from Survivor and includes most of reality's big hits: Idol, The Bachelor, The Amazing Race, The Biggest Loser, Project Runway. These shows mainstreamed reality TV for bigger, broader (and older) audiences by applying it to familiar genres: game shows, singing competitions, cook-offs, dating shows...
...Evolution of a GenreThe summer of the first Survivor season, I wrote a cover story about it for this magazine. The concerns that the show's popularity raised seem so quaint now: a professor worried its success would lead to "Let's try a public execution. Let's try a snuff film." We're still waiting for those. But Survivor is still on - considered, together with the likes of Idol and The Amazing Race, to be relatively tame, even family-oriented entertainment. (See pictures of American Idol winners...
...quite a healthy field.) For a few talented individuals - say, Idol's Kelly Clarkson or the cooks of Top Chef - this has made possible actual real-life opportunity. Jennifer Hudson lost on Idol but won an Oscar as an actress. Elisabeth Hasselbeck went from eating bugs on Survivor to chewing out Joy Behar on The View. (See the top 10 TV episodes...
Reality shows showcase plenty of bad behavior, but they also presume a heavy moralism on the part of the audience. Survivor is known for its self-rationalizing, situational ethics. Anything you do to win can be justified as playing the game. But part of the reason fans become involved in the show is that they get invested in the good guys and bad guys. (Read more about television on James Poniewozik's blog...
Look at the title of Survivor's 10th-anniversary season, starting this month: "Heroes vs. Villains" - that is, those who played decently vs. those who "just played the game." Plenty of fans were entertained by Richard Hatch, who lied his way to the first-season title (often while buck naked). But a million dollars and one tax-evasion conviction later, do they admire...