Survivor to Drag Race: The Standards of Reality-Competition TV (by Jack)
In the summer of 2000, reality magic was found on the TV screens of America in the form of a groundbreaking show, Survivor. While flipping through the TV guides of 2021, you can find pages and pages of reality-competition shows- and they can all trace their roots back to Survivor.
Originally based on 1997’s Expedition Robinson, a Swedish form of the show, the Season 1 finale of American Survivor had over 51 million viewers- second only to the Superbowl that year (Armstrong, 2000). It’s most recent seasons do not have nearly as many viewers, but as its 41st season will be airing next year, Survivor has inaugurated itself as one of the staples of American television.
There are a few components of Survivor's formula for success. I would love to go in depth on how it revolutionized the winner's edit (a practice that curates the season in post-production so that the winner is portrayed in favorable light) or how Survivor heavily relies on contestant tropes while casting. Both of those practices are widely seen in American reality-competition shows, and they were originally modeled by Survivor. But a standard set by Survivor that I believe to be more intrinsic is the structure of the show itself. Each season of Survivor starts with around 20 contestants and week by week one is voted off. There are a series of challenges throughout an episode that determine who is voted off. And either by nature of the challenges or through the editing, the elimination usually comes down between two players each episode (a bottom two, if you will).
That structure is very, very simple by 2021 standards since most reality-competition shows have this set up. RuPaul's Drag Race has two contestants in the bottom two each episode where they must "lip sync for their lives". One of my recent binge-worthy reality-competition shows is Glow Up, which is a make-up competition show. Each episode has three challenges, with the final challenge being a face-off between the two worst performing contestants. I admit that Survivor is not the end-all-be-all foundation of reality-competition, much has gone into our current reality-competition environment, but the roots that Survivor laid down in 2000 are still in use to this day.
Adorno & Horkheimer (1944) predicted this would happen. They were unable to write about reality-competition shows specifically, for obvious reasons. But they did write that since the means of production within the culture industry are standardized, there is no escape from recurring aspects of cultural works. For reality-competition shows this includes the tropes, the edits, and the structures. Survivor, RuPaul's Drag Race, and Glow Up are all essentially the same show when looking at structure, they just have different types of challenges.
I know that Adorno & Horkheimer saw this standardization as the possible downfall of culture at large, but the Survivor structure has given us countless iconic moments and challenges throughout the years. Not to say that Adorno & Horkheimer are wrong, but the Survivor structure is a lot like my grandma's recipe for chocolate-mayonnaise cake: it may seem unnatural or constricting, but it is a tried & true recipe that makes an appearance on a regular basis, to much appreciation from the audience (her grandkids).
Works cited
Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1944). The Culture Industry: Enlightened at mass deception.
Armstrong, M. (2000, December 19). "Survivor" Sequel Takes on "Friends". E! Online. https://www.eonline.com/news/40895/survivor_sequel_takes_on_friends.
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I love your grandma's chocolate-mayonnaise cake metaphor Jack, awesome! Sometimes an image is worth a thousand words! (is this for real by the way??). You have chosen one of the most interesting TV genres of all times to my view... Indeed, contests, tend to be extremely formulaic, hence the familiarity and the fun. Within the theory of play, Johan Huzinga (Homo Ludens) explains how repetition, is one of the elements of games that we find most satisfying when we play: There is no play without reiteration: think about the pleasure of swinging, or playing the same song all over again. That being said, there are other reasons for these shows to have a very visible blueprint, as you explain. What I find interesting is how experimental these shows can be at times, as if they were trying to outplay themselves, and come up with new revisions of the classic formula (Love Island, for instance, as a way of taking Survivor to the next stage). Glow up sounds fun!
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