heroes or villains

I have seen most of the episodes of Survivor. The main appeal to me is that it is like people watching on steroids. One thing that doesn't appeal to me, though, is that the show is designed to bring out the worst in people.

This season the gimmick is that people who have been on the show in past seasons have been brought back to play either on a heroes team or a villains team. People who have done darker things when they played before are on the villains team and people who have been more likable are on the heroes team. While I understand the compelling narrative this will create for this season of the show, all I think it will do is prove that heroic, or even altruistic, behavior is not rewarded in the game and the people who have been edited to look heroic really aren't.

Even avoiding the fact that this use of the word "Hero" dilutes its true meaning (which is actually the topic of another post I have been mulling), most of the people who look like good people on the show and who do well can either thank the way the show was edited or thank the fact that people will usually forgive behavior they can see themselves committing. It is next to impossible to get far in the game, let alone win it, without lying or stabbing someone in the back. Most of the people who look like they kept their morals intact only appear that way because they allowed others to do the dirty work. By my personal standard that makes them complicit in the behavior.

While in my less sane moments I have wondered what it would be like to be on the show, I could never actually be on it. At some point I would have to make a moral choice about how dishonest or even malicious I would be willing to be to win the million dollars. I think that I would retain my morals, but part of me is scared I wouldn't. In Survivor: Fiji one of the contestants who was known as "Dreamz" famously went back on his word on a major deal with another player and later claimed it was a part of strategy. My impression of the situation is that Dreamz started with honorable intentions but eventually rationalized that the chance at $1 million was worth backstabbing. That one incident in particular is the one that most makes me believe that the show really is about compromising one's morals to win the game.

Some people will argue that Survivor is only a game, so being less than noble is a valid and acceptable strategy, but I believe that is a slippery slope at best. Where is the line of acceptable behavior? If lying is acceptable because it's a game is becoming physically involved with another player with the sole intent of moving forward in the game? Is physically harming another player acceptable? You could say that physically harming someone impacts their life outside the game, but I have to believe that getting stabbed in the back by someone he or she trusted also impacts a person's life outside the game. Honestly, if it really is true that morals don't apply because it is only a game, then the better player really is the one who does do the sketchier things if those things get him or her further in the game.

It is for this reason that Survivor is my second favorite reality show rather than my first. I like my favorite, The Amazing Race, because playing dirty is less of a benefit, and actually frequently a detriment, to the player or team involved. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy seeing how the different social situations and the narrative of the show work in Survivor. I just enjoy a show more when I can feel like an honest person doesn't automatically have the deck stacked against him or her.