Following the end of yet another season of Survivor, I’ve had a significant amount of time to reflect on what has driven the success of the show to its upcoming 22nd season. Survivor definitely illustrates our interest in the unusual and threatens our sense of reality. The show is based on the unusual or the Other. People appearing to be normal, ordinary, and much like ourselves are placed in unfamiliar, exotic circumstances. I continuously find it interesting to think that to many people in the world, such circumstances would not be unusual at all. But our interest lies in making the discrimination between the cultures that the viewers and contestants belong to and another. These cultures are specifically ones that are often thought of by people of the West as being less civilized and more primitive. Such qualities are what make it unusual and threatening. I feel that such interest does nothing but exoticize these groups of individuals who are different from ourselves and provides us with negative connotations, stressing the unfamiliarity, which continues to captivate viewers season after season.
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