|
|
|
|
PLEASE NOTE: The Reality TV World Message Boards are filled with desperate
attention-seekers pretending to be one big happy PG/PG13-rated family. Don't
be fooled. Trying to get everyone to agree with you is like herding cats,
but intolerance for other viewpoints is NOT welcome and respect for other
posters IS required at all times. Jump in and play, and you'll soon find out
how easy it is to fit in, but save your drama for your mama. All members are
encouraged to read the
complete guidelines.
As entertainment critic Roger
Ebert once said, "If you disagree with something I write, tell me so, argue
with me, correct me--but don't tell me to shut up. That's not the American way."
|
|
|
"Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture"
michel 10812 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
|
04-10-12, 07:23 PM (EST)
 
  |
|
1. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
Welcome aboard but your exposé is wrong in its premise. Survivor isn't relevant anymore and hasn't been since the first All-Star. Some would even say that it stopped being relevant after 9-11. From 40 million viewers for season 2, Africa had only around 20M. People were not as interested in seeing DAWs trying to Survive in the wild when life and death had hit home. Don't get me wrong, it's still my favorite TV show and many here will say the same but as far as being relevant to today's culture or even simply entertainment, it is no longer relevant. Look at the numbers: Barely 3% of the population watches the show so it cannot be called relevant. It has a more cult-like following and impact. As for
"Survivor is the ultimate game show with the highest stakes and a game most ripe for game theory analysis application" There are only a few of us that has ever applied game theory to Survivor. It's a fascinating way to look at the game but it isn't even relevant to most of the Survivor fans.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
 |
iltarion 1791 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Herbal Healing Drugs Endorser"
|
04-11-12, 08:41 PM (EST)
|
|
2. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
Survivor is no longer relevant to popular culture. Other reality shows are the main reason for that. American Idol becomes less and less relevant as more and more knockoffs appear. However, in the context of relevant as in having something meaningful to say, then yes, Survivor is still relevant regardless of how many people are listening. It will always be relevant as long as real people are on the show. The more people act for the camera and create characters for the show the less relevant it becomes. In many ways, Survivor is a case study of our society, and as long as it brings 18 strangers together to live together and compete, it will continue to have more possibilities than any scripted show.
>
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
|
|
|
iltarion 1791 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Herbal Healing Drugs Endorser"
|
04-12-12, 10:28 PM (EST)
|
|
4. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
Wheel of Fortune is a game. If a game was all Survivor was, then it would have been off the air years ago. It is still 18 diverse, (handpicked for their diversity), American strangers who are forced to live together, compete together, and play a game that highly recommends they find a way to make connections. Aruba was always right in that people try to play to the cameras and be someone else, but they can't. Ultimately, the real person shines through. Survivor still has plenty to say about American culture that resonates. >
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
dabo 25344 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
|
04-13-12, 01:42 AM (EST)
|
|
8. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
LAST EDITED ON 04-13-12 AT 09:35 PM (EST)Welcome aboard. Finally got around to clicking on yur link, and the first thing I have to say is: Geezlouise, your site is terribly formatted. Some box in the middle of things blocking text and I couldn't get rid of, but even without that I couldn't read a damn thing anyway thanks to the terrible color scheming making it impossible for me, with my admittedly poor eyesight, to make out any of the text. I did copy and paste and email myself the article, though, so I was able to read it that way, so further comments on the article. Liked it, nice read. I don't think Survivor is as relevant as it initially was, which I will address in a bit, but it is still relevant, it is still popular enough to have, amongst other things, survived a schedule change from Thursdays to Wednesdays with an intact viewing audience. I'm pretty certain The Amazing Race is still relevant as well, though the move to Sundays did hurt that show more as it did lose audience. But it had been shifted around the schedule prior to being settled into the Sunday timeslot. Anyway, I liked that you used the word microcosm, because that in essence is what has always been what Survivor is, a contrived situation with a forced microcosm limited each season to simply those players playing the game. You are right about that. Unfortunately, long ago Survivor got away from what it was originally and by intention established as, a microcosm of America itself. Diversity of casting, covering the entire spectrum of the country as well as possible, fell by the wayside long ago, with most of the casts coming from an east coast casting concern, a west coast casting concer, and for many years a beauty pageant casting concern which has now been supplanted by a gulf coast casting concern. Ugh. I do wish they would return to the original concept and try to get genuine regional representation of as much of the country as possible, but the casting department prefers to be lazy. It is still a microcosm, though, just not the microcosm it should be, which is why it is less relevant. And it is still fascinating as a sociological study in the sense of normal people thrown into a Lord of the Flies type contrived situation, what rules do they abide by, how do they comport themselves, etc.? Why is it still relevant? Look in the mirror, we are still fascinated by it. The one thing that hasn't changed in all these years, we still are fascinated by watching to see what people placed in an extreme and contrived situation will do in order to win. Lessons learned from the show, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt, or two, or a shaker full. In real life we do not get to backstab blindside someone every three days, we are not out to eliminate our co-workers, real life is more complicated than Survivor and is governed by mores which the game of Survivor intentionally dis-establishes. In real life if your community is hit with some sort of disaster you don't bunker down with your alliance saying to hell with everyone else, the entire community comes together and works together, becomes an alliance working for the best for all. Survivor informs us what people are capable of at their worst, and fortunately as it turns out more often than not rewards those who, if nothing else, do not descend to their most absolute potential worst.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
|
michel 10812 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
|
04-13-12, 05:31 PM (EST)
|
|
10. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
LAST EDITED ON 04-13-12 AT 08:33 PM (EST)It seems the problem I am having is the definition of what is culturally relevant. Does a show with a cult-like following mean that it is culturally relevant? Or are we fooling ourselves into thinking it does? If you guys define cultural relevance as something that speaks to a group of people then practically everything and anything has cultural relevance to someone. I look at the big picture and, in my eyes, very few things out of Hollywood are culturally relevant. Entertainment doesn't equal culture. Just like writing a book doesn't make it literature. A lot of what is on TV is to culture what bubble gum is to "haute cuisine". Granted, Survivor has a little more "nutrional" value than a soap opera. I'd put it at the level of what the castaways eat on a daily basis: Rice and beans!
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
|
dabo 25344 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
|
04-13-12, 09:20 PM (EST)
|
|
12. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
Survivor had a massive cultural impact in that it made a minor programming category, reality television, into a major primetime category, and spawned a lot of imitators, some of them by EPMB himself (Apprentice). It also knocked a major hit, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, down to the minors.Though less influential today, after 12 years, I think it is still a fairly interesting sociological experiment, though it is much less so when there are returning players. Complete strangers meeting for the first time to play the game, that's when it is best. The current season is a perfect example, we have to go back to Nicaragua for a season half as good (though player Jimmy Johnson was a well known public figure anyway, almost as bad as casting an allstarherovillainfavorite; and NaOnka was genuinely despicable). Really, the only returning player of whom I gained an improved opinion, in all these years, was Jerri, the rest either remained what they were originally or got worse.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
|
dabo 25344 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
|
04-14-12, 09:19 PM (EST)
|
|
14. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
LAST EDITED ON 04-15-12 AT 00:43 AM (EST)I thought the issue was relevance. The impact Survivor initially had in changing television habits is still in effect today, so that relevance is still valid. That, of course, is separate from the direct relevance that the show today, and over the past few years, has had. The norms of the game have become fairly stabilized, though the different mixes of people, each group being unique and composed of unique individuals, still provides fresh aspects in terms of the sociological experiment of Survivor. Issues of racism, sexism, homosexual roles, bad behavior and such, still crop up, influencing workplace discussions, online discussions, family discussions. And the show still creates celebrity. Minor and temporary celebrity in most cases, but celebrity nonetheless. Unfortunately, yes, cross-cultural exposure, visits with locals and the presentation of their customs, etc., has pretty much vanished from the program. They are also not finding unique settings for every new edition (though four seasons in Samoa, two of them filmed after the tsunami, hopefully they have helped boost up the post-disaster local economy, certainly a good cause). Unfortunate as well, though now in its 24th season, two of those seasons were cast entirely of returning players, four of those seasons had returning players mixed with new players, which deviates somewhat from the pure sociological experiment which works best when the game is played by people who were complete strangers unfamiliar with each other from the outset.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
|
michel 10812 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold"
|
04-15-12, 05:26 PM (EST)
|
|
15. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
>I thought the issue was relevance.
> The impact Survivor initially
>had in changing television habits
>is still in effect today, I think the issue was contribution to Culture.
If you want to reduce it to relevance to your TV Guide grid then we are talking of completely different things.
> Issues of racism, sexism,
>homosexual roles, bad behavior and
>such, still crop up, influencing
>workplace discussions, online discussions, family
>discussions. But we know that so much is determined by editing that we aren't really seeing racism, sexism, etc... Bad behavior is often simply a way to get to the end.
>And the show
>still creates celebrity. Minor
>and temporary celebrity in most
>cases, but celebrity nonetheless.
That is more a denunciation of the sorry state of stardom in the bubble gum culture. Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton are celebrities! WHY???? They have nothing to do with Culture.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
Aruba 1891 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Herbal Healing Drugs Endorser"
|
04-13-12, 07:31 PM (EST)
|
|
11. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
Welcome to the Boards and hope we get to see more of you in the other threads.First of all, I pride myself on always being able to see the forest through the trees, so I am not a seeker of symbolism or inner meanings. Don't get me wrong; it's an excellent question. But I might not be the best one to reflect upon the "relevance of our culture in today's society," but I'll give it the old college try.
I accept Survivor for what it is--pure entertainment. I attribute its longevity to two main reasons: 1) Man has always had a desire to spectate any form of competition, i.e., games, sporting events, etc. When I vacationed in Italy 10 years ago I visted the Colosseum. Pictures do not do it justice. When you appreciate the enormity of the structure and consider in its heyday there was rarely an empty seat, it supports this desire. Some 2,000 years later, very little has changed in that regard. Now what makes Survivor a unique competition is reason #2... 2) Survivor allows its fans and viewers to play vicariously through the castaways in the game. Millions of NFL fanatics tune in every weekend to get their weekly dose of football. And even though this passion will never die, unless you have 4.5 speed in the 40, or can benchpress 400 pounds, you are unable to play "vicariously" through these supremely conditioned athletes. This is where Survivor is different. Each season we all have a player or two we can relate to and it adds to our entertainment value. And the opposite effect works for players we hate. At all stages in our lives we've come across people we disliked immensely. For example, in our teenage years I'm sure we've had classmates we despised and would have given up our lunch money for the whole year for an opportunity to "boot" them the heck out of our High School. Unfortunately we couldn't. But in Survivor you can...not only can you, you have to because that's the object of the game! Certainly there's more than these two reasons why Survivor has stood the test of time, but I would personally rank these as my top two.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
|
garyc 118 desperate attention whore postings
DAW Level: "Blistex Spokesperson"
|
04-15-12, 06:54 PM (EST)
|
|
16. "RE: Why Survivor Is Still Relevant In Today's Culture" |
Agree with several that likely was only relevant the first couple of years but used to find fascinating the way people made excuses for their behavior. Like a course in elementary psychology; defense mechanisms everywhere. People want to win, Americans in particulary want to win, and they want the $$$ but many players in the early years were unwilling to admit that they were manipulating and deceiving to do so. The more players began to accept that it is only a game the more they were able to accept manipulating others for money.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
| |
|
p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e -
p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e -
p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e -
p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e -
|
|
Email this topic to a friend
Printer-friendly version of this topic
Bookmark this topic (Registered users only)
