Survivors’ Bias

If you’ve ever watched a show like The Bachelor or America’s Got Talent, you’re definitely familiar with the concept of reality TV: unscripted shows that use directing and editing to create a story after they’ve been filmed. But considering how mainstream these shows have become, reality TV is actually a pretty new genre. You’ve probably even heard of the first mainstream reality TV show—Survivor—which first aired on May 31, 2000, and has impacted society in a variety of ways since its debut. Curious about what those impacts might be? Assistant Professor Joseph J. Darowski’s (Pop Culture Studies) new book, cowritten with his sister Kate Darowski, takes an in-depth look at the history and legacy of Survivor’s twenty-five years on air, tackling its context, structure, and impact on, well, reality.

An Explosive New Genre

When Survivor first aired, news outlets didn’t know how to categorize the show, trying on terms like “televoyeur entertainment” (which combined the words television and voyeur) or “dramality” (a mix of the words drama and reality) to describe it. But even with the confusion over what exactly the show was, it turned out to be an explosive hit: fifty million people watched the original season finale (compared to ten million people on average for a top 10 reality show today), paving the way for hundreds of shows like it—and unlike it. Darowski points out that the genre encompasses more than just questionable celebrity shows and Survivor knockoffs; think of things like The Great British Bake Off and Dancing with the Stars. He says, “Most reality TV shows don’t look much like Survivor, but most of those, you could argue, would not be on the air if Survivor hadn’t come along and proved how successful this unscripted reality television could be.”

The Impact of Influence

So, what exactly did Survivor change? Darowski says there’s a lot—everything from everyday vernacular, with new phrases like “voted off the island,” to new aspects of celebrity culture. “Survivor introduced this new kind of celebrity that people weren’t sure what to make of, at first,” Darowski says. “Like today’s social media influencers—people who are famous not for acting or singing but just because they’re watched by millions of people.”

All of Survivor’s influence comes with a lot of responsibility, though. Since the stories are put together after the fact, with edits that can either cut out or overemphasize certain moments and contexts, the show has to be really careful in how they portray people from different walks of life. “The way we perceive people from places we’ve never been to is going to be shaped by the media we consume,” Darowski points out. “Even as we try to be resisting viewers and say, ‘I know this is edited and isn’t a real-life situation,’ it still has an influence on our perceptions. . . . There are definitely times that the show has not handled things well and times where they’ve handled things really well.”

Handing Grace to Reality TV

In writing this book, Darowski hopes that it will invite people to take a closer look at reality TV, rather than just dismissing it outright. “I think because of what reality TV has become, there’s a kind of dismissal of the value of any show that gets labeled as that,” he says. He believes that reality TV, same as any genre, has some really good shows that say something significant and some trashy shows that don’t really work. Survivor, to him, is one of those good ones. “Survivor not only started the genre and had an incredibly transformative impact on the industry, it’s also one of those shows that’s highly entertaining and has significance that makes you reflect on both gameplay and the social interactions,” he says. “You get these real human moments that can be really impactful.”

Interested in reading more? Find Survivor: A Cultural History here.