Surviving

Another Survivor series starts on Thursday night. This is a much anticipated event in our house. It is something of a guilty pleasure for My Prince and me, but we enjoy the series immensely. We have been faithful viewers since the very first series a few years ago, and we always look forward to the new series when it comes out.

A great deal of our interest in the series is because it reflects some of our own experience in living in East Africa. At different points in time, I lived in Kenya and then in Tanzania. My Prince joined me in Tanzania. The experience was life-altering in some critical ways, but most particularly in giving us a greater appreciation of how luxurious is our material wealth in the U.S. Life here, no matter how hard, is really easy compared to what it is in a third world country.

We have always been a bit thrifty. That comes from having parents who lived through the Great Depression and World War II. We were both taught to treat our possessions with care, to think twice before we spent money. After East Africa, we became avid recyclers. We not only recycle, we re-use. Plastic drink bottles can be cut down to form really neat "bins" for sorting all those nuts and bolts that My Prince has been hoarding for a zillion years. Cardboard boxes are dutifully brought home from the office to be used for storing the books that no longer fit on the shelves (I'm saving them for my retirement, when I hope to re-read each one!). One old shampoo bottle has been re-used for several years to hold the watered-down shampoo that is doled out from the large-economy-size-on-sale stuff that is much richer than what is actually needed to get one's hair clean.

It's not that we're inordinately cheap--it's more that we have seen what it is like to do without on a fairly grand scale. We know how to purify our water. We know how to entertain ourselves without television or newspapers. We know how to look at "trash" and see what other use something can be put to.

In Dar es Salaam, when we could get margarine, it came in a tin can. How do you keep the flies out? Get a lid! But where? We actually asked our parents to send us old plastic lids in various sizes from the food containers that they were through with. It worked wonderfully. And now we know that we don't have to buy a special lid for the cat food cans--just use the lid from bean dip. (BTW, margarine is whipped oil. It is white--unless the yellow food coloring is added. It did take some getting used to to put white "butter" on bread, but bread was so hard to get, I guess any color would have done just fine.)

So we enjoy watching Survivor these days just to see how Americans can figure out how to live in an impoverished environment. Sometimes we see some really inept responses to the situation; sometimes we see someone who can make a fairly good go of creative use of the environment.

But Survivor is not actually about survival. It's a test of human relations. A group of strangers is placed in a stressful situation and challenged to be the last one standing. We never tire of looking at how people treat each other in this kind of situation. We do understand that each person is "edited" to present them in a particular kind of way. Some perfectly nice person may have a couple of quirks that are then highlighted in the few minutes of footage presented about them, and you'd never know by watching the show that that's a perfectly nice person. But getting past the individuals, we see the group dynamics. We always wonder how the women can't seem to band together to defeat the men. We see the division caused by age and recognize it for a reflection of something going on in our own life. We see how the presentation of self can differ radically from what one is really thinking and can deceive regarding intentions.

We are always amazed to see how much the group dynamics on Survivor highlights some of the problems in society at large. The fear of the "other" that crops up in racism and other -isms is well reflected in Survivor. As often as not, it's the ethnic folks that get voted out sooner rather than later. Although one black woman and one hispanic woman have won a Survivor series, they seem to be exceptions in surviving group dynamics. An Asian woman who quite validly ate parts of a chicken, I think, that most Americans consider inedible was reflecting her culture--and a wise use of protein in a protein-poor environment--was viewed as "gross," "weird," "scary." A native american who knew a few tricks about overcoming hunger and who also knew how to be alone with himself was accused of cheating and eliminated--quite simply because he didn't fit in to the lazier group culture. Interestingly enough, the gay folks who were "out" in the various series seem to be less of an "other" than the ethnic folks.

And, of course, we enjoy watching Survivor because it's just plain fun to try to figure out who is going to win. We always end up having our favorites. Sometimes My Prince and I agree on a favorite, sometimes not. We watch each week--together or separately (sometimes I work late and catch it at the office)--and then talk about our perceptions. We criticize the bumbling survival activities. We analyze the group dynamics. And then we just have a good time trying to figure out who's deceiving the others, who is getting along well, who might be vulnerable to an elimination vote. We tend to like those who work hard at keeping the camp running. We tend to like the ones who are honorable. We are both fairly disgusted with the bimbos.

Thursday night is "date night" at our house. It's best not to call between 7 and 8, cuz we'll be watching Survivor. I can hardly wait!