Entertainment
Why Survivor Is Not Reality TV
By Jennifer Asencio
| Published
Examples of “reality television” predate the late 1990s, but it was the period right before Y2K that saw the explosion of shows like Real World and Road Rules. These were shows where cast members were regular people, just being themselves.
In May 2000, Survivor premiered for the first time on CBS, ushering in a new wave of shows that were mistakenly called reality shows because they featured regular people acting candidly on camera. However, Survivor was the evolution of a genre that already existed: the game show.
The Difference Between Reality Game Shows And Reality TV
In today’s game shows, groups of people compete over a period of weeks for a large cash prize. What unites them is usually the theme: Survivor is primitive camping, Big Brother is a house full of cameras, and The Bachelor is a dating competition.
The shows are competitive, requiring the mastery of several skills, physical, mental, and social. The people who are cast on them are competing for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. They were picked because they’d be interesting in a competition, and they are acting like people competing.
Shows like Real Housewives that are not competitions are casting personalities they think will bring drama. These shows want social situations that are similar to soap operas. They cast emotional people with large reactions or people likely to cause trouble among the cast. The theme and setting are still the draw: Real Housewives brought the wealthy onto our screens, while Jersey Shore and its counterparts featured regional babes and hunks on the beach. With no competition, the show is a little more like a documentary cast to produce a soap opera.
Reality Game Show Contestants Outplay Reality TV Personalities
The truest proof that the two types of shows are entirely different genres is The Traitors (US). Both Season Two and Season Three of The Traitors pitted cast members from both types of shows against one another in a murder mystery competition for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Competitors from The Challenge, Survivor, and Big Brother quickly eliminated the majority of the Housewives, Vanderpump Rules staff, and even Drag Racers. More than a few of them were shocked and betrayed to be eliminated so quickly.
Social Game Is Still Game
It’s easy to mistake the social component of these games for “reality shows,” especially when the line is so often blurred by social trends and consequences. They are definitely a different class of game show from Wheel of Fortune or The Price Is Right.
Part of these games is getting to know the contestants more deeply than your average Jeopardy! contestant. How they interact plays a large part in the direction of each game, even ones as simple as The Amazing Race (where a racer convinced other racers to throw a challenge so he wouldn’t come in last).
“Reality television” is often not real at all, but shows that are filmed like documentaries are still trying to catch candid behaviors from their casts. Competitions are specifically looking for competitors who are ready to play a game. Many of them cast athletes because the games are so physically demanding, making shows like Big Brother more akin to a sport than a soap opera.
