Suddenly Survivor

First a confession: the only Survivor Philippines season I watched religiously was the first one, where JC Tiuseco won, where I was rooting for Nanay Zita and Kiko Rustia (he who kept a diary throughout his time on the island, aaaaw). Another confession: I stopped watching Survivor Philippines because I treat TV shows as one of those things you put in a box to return to your ex. Since I can’t actually do that, I’ve just learned to periodically let go of many shows on my TV list. But I’m suddenly back on Survivor Philippines, a surprise even to me. And I think it’s because the show has changed, enough to make me forget about the things I equate it with, enough to make me think that it’s a different show altogether. Something that might be easily explained away by the fact that it’s the Celebrity Showdown. But things are never as simple as that.

No stereotypes here One thing that’s most interesting about this edition of Survivor is that while it does have a set of celebrities, there is no major superstar, no box office king or queen that would’ve surely made ratings soar. Instead, many of the castaways are familiar in this I’ve-seen-her-somewhere-I-just-don’t-know-where kind of way, making the near stranger a real person to us, even when we barely know them from Adam or Eve. Even more interesting? The fact that there aren’t any clear-cut and solid stereotypes here, i.e., the celebrity castaways weren’t introduced with labels that would tie them down and box them up for viewers. This is what the Pinoy reality show usually does for its contestants from the get-go, which also explains why there’s always a girl and boy next door, a mahinhin virgin, a mayabang hunk, a single parent, a working student, a loyal daughter or son, a geek, someone who’s poor and someone who’s rich, on local TV half the time. These stereotypical labels create characters that are presumed to be more interesting than just regular normal people. And it is regular normal people that this season of Survivor is able to sell us. Instead of giving each celebrity castaway a producer-imposed stereotype, the castaways themselves talked about the roles they thought they’d play in the game, and were given labels based on these. These defining labels are farthest from the limitations of stereotypes, because definitions can change, are not cut-and-dried, not at all limiting. Instead it allows for a set of possibilities and impossibilities, the latter being the things that will necessarily be tested in the face of group dynamics and isolation on an island elsewhere. Instead it gives us a set of people who speak for themselves, versus characters that are limited by stereotypes, the ones that will surely capture our hearts. So we are given labels that we can barely fall in love with, nor be angry about. Because what can we conclude about a label like “The Tribe Leader" for Buhawi Meneses (who was my favourite to win), especially when this is the one position that will cost him the competition. There isn’t much to say about “Ang Bidang Extra" for Mykah Flores, because that doesn’t tell us what she herself might do in relation to the game. What of the “Bolero", the “Mr. Nice Guy", the “Cheerleader"? And when we’re told that Aira Bermudez is “The Dancing Warrior," where does that leave us really, when the rest of the Sex Bomb Girls aren’t there to dance with her? In this sense, the lack of stereotyping allows for the Survivor castaways to have more personality and character, and for the reality show to be a little closer to the real versus being a mere construction by directors and producers. This is really why I sense a difference in this season, and why Survivor Philippines has captured my attention once again, exes notwithstanding. The celebrity challenge I will grant that the season opening seemed as badly rehearsed as a Walang Tulugan production number of showbiz wannabes, complete with Pia Guanio’s horrible acting. Granted that there have so far been two portrayals of the Thai people on whose country this season’s being held: as masahistas and as the dirty, noisy, messy people on the jeep that was bringing the castaways to the remote Thai island – both of which are wanting more than anything else. Granted that the host still says “Nagsalita na ang tribo" to translate “The tribe has spoken" – one of the most awkward Tagalog lines I’ve heard on nationwide television. But these minor faux pas can be deemed irrelevant because the highlight of any Survivor franchise is how a bunch of castaways will individually react to the fact of not knowing what can and will happen in 36 days. Add to this the fact of being removed from their comfort zones, some from lives that are more than just pleasant, some who have seen lives that are bigger and better than even the life of the majority in Manila. Plus, for a bunch of “celebrities" there is another layer of struggle: how will this affect the country’s perceptions of them when they come home? Will there be a public at all for them then? This is part of the crisis of not knowing for this Celebrity Showdown, because especially in third world Philippines, this can make or break each and every celebrity castaway, regardless. To begin with, local contemporary popular culture is already replete with the notion that the public image and the private persona of a celebrity is one and the same, that what we watch on TV and who these people are in real life, is not distinct from each other. For these celebrities on Survivor this dynamic is even more complex because it doesn’t have the layer of glamour and wealth, is without the beautification and the falsities that a celebrity-image requires. Instead, Survivor reveals a version of them that is about grit and grime. This is not a public image rendered suffering and succeeding via a soap opera character, but a real-life celebrity doing the suffering in some unnamed island with near strangers and a camera on her face the whole time. This is actually what we need to remember about Survivor and what it creates about our notion(s) of a celebrity’s “real" personality: this is an extreme situation that the show puts its contestants through, more extreme than your standard reality show. Because the latter will not expect a celebrity to survive the lack of a bathroom, the dearth of food and drinking water, the loss of one’s notion(s) of cleanliness and hygiene. All these the Survivor celebrity castaways have to live with and survive, and in that sense, you almost forgive the tantrums. After all, they’ve already survived 17 days at this point, and they’re so dirty it’s difficult not to see the grime on screen. They’ve already eaten insects in a contest for who finishes a whole bilao first, they’ve done an obstacle course that looked close to impossible, have made fools of themselves putting together a group play, have fallen in the mud and failed at winning the prize. And between one breast exposure and one lover’s quarrel, and a whole lot of shamelessness where there should’ve been an amount of it, I will almost forgive these celebrities anything. And can only be thankful that Princess Snell gave up early on because she would’ve ruined every other tantrum for us as viewers, brat as she was. Some woman power, some host lovin’ The one thing that I remember clearly about the first season of Survivor was how Paolo Bediones always seemed too stiff for comfort – not quite the friendly and charming host that Jeff Probst is for the American Survivor original. The thing with hosting a reality show is that the audience needs to believe that it’s possible for you to be the contestant, that is, that Joe Rogan of Fear Factor could actually eat those cockroaches (and he actually did it once, too!), that Phil Keoghan of Amazing Race could actually go on that race himself. This just didn’t seem to be true of Bediones, but it does seem to be true of the new host Richard Gutierrez. I imagine that this is because Gutierrez is younger than Bediones, but also because Gutierrez already has the built-in image of being a fantaserye superhero, a contemporary action star. He’s gotten into his own number of fistfights, and is known to have saved some damsels in distress. He doesn’t speak much, so we have no sense of who he truly is, something that’s part of standard Pinoy boy charm, especially since he also wears his heart on his sleeve. And then there’s this: he’s so darn good-looking, and just charming, that it was easy to see how that plate of cookies and the BLT sandwich were just more difficult to resist for the castaways who sacrificed immunity in the face of such treats. The only downside to Gutierrez hosting this Celebrity Showdown is that he almost outdoes the male castaways – no one’s nearly as good looking as he is, and given that season opener where he jumped from a helicopter into dangerous waters, swam to shore and ran to the back of a pick-up truck to deliver his spiels, it’s obvious that he can outdo these male castaways in challenges as well. It’s an added feather in Gutierrez cap, as it would be the bane of any male castaways’ existence. Not that the females are any less threatening. Despite the fact that the physically stronger castaways are the men, i.e., Doc Ferdz Recio and Buhawi Meneses, both voted off the island, and Jon Hall whose personality is too highly competitive for comfort, there’s something about the women here – and yes I include the recently voted off gay man Trizia – that just overpowers the men. And this isn’t just about Elma Muros being the Olympian that she is, and pretty much being as strong as the male castaways. It’s also about how determined the women castaways of this Survivor season are, and how rough they’re willing to go. Of course we saw Michelle Madrigal cry because she needed to pee in the jeep on the way to the island and didn’t know how or where to do it. And she did cry again when she couldn’t sleep because of the smoke from the fire inside their tent on that rainy cold night that they wanted to be as warm as possible. And she cried again – though most of them did – when they were asked to talk to their family and loved ones at home, via a video camera (as if there wasn’t enough on the island) that did the rounds of the castaways. And yes, the girls have embarrassed themselves – that is, if the crying isn’t embarrassing enough. They’re dirtier than they would ever allow themselves to be, they’ve eaten bugs and insects and have vomited them out, they’re getting hairier by the day, and their prettified selves are nowhere in sight. They’re also darker than they would ever be allowed. Yet, all this is a welcome respite from all the white – and whitened –celebrities on TV every day that seem to have become standardized in terms of the way they look, what they do, how they speak. In this season of Survivor Philippines this Filipina celebrity is not just forced out of her comfort zones, she’s also released from all the requirements that being on TV and in the movies requires: it would be crazy after all to even want to wear make-up on that darn island when the goal for every day involves where to get food and water. And so it can only be refreshing to see FHM cover girls Aubrey Miles and Michelle Madrigal, socialite Solenn Hussef and Sex Bomb dancer Aira Bermudez, roughing it and living with so much less than what’s basic, and actually surviving. More than how living on the island changed the way they look though, it’s also the way they’re revealed to be intelligent women who know what they’re up against, and who can be as calculating as the men that’s more important. To this we might add the ousted castaway Karen, whose only claim to fame is a burger commercial and a quickly found and lost career as a teen actress, doing yoga in the middle of nowhere and thinking out loud about posing for FHM to revive her career. There were Trizia and Moi too, both as anti-theses to the demure and pretty, with the former being gay and traversing the lines drawn between genders, the latter being less of a celebrity as the PA (personal assistant) of Piolo Pascual and yet proving that she knows full well her capabilities precisely because she’s seen as just a PA. Ah, but in terms of knowing what they can do and being the stronger personalities, albeit being the quieter ones, it’s difficult to beat Aubrey, Michelle and Solenn. Aubrey, because it is clear that she’s determined to win, there are no tears here as there are no complaints, as if she’s always been a one-woman show, ready to win the whole darn thing, the rest of the castaways be damned. Michelle, because while she’s revealed to be the girlfriend of domineering castaway Jon, she speaks on camera separate from him and the rest of the tribe, conscious that they think of her as the weaker castaway, and knowing full well how her strength is her resolve to prove them wrong on that. The mere fact that Michelle’s still there in fact, is already proof of this resolve: she was after all the first castaway to cry. And then there’s Solenn, who just might have single-handedly changed our notions of the society girl, she with obviously foreign roots, she who was whiter than anybody else when they went to the island, she who we imagine must live a life of leisure and wealth. And yet she’s the one who hasn’t thrown a tantrum, even when she had to spend her birthday with nothing but fake cake on a deserted island and a dwindling tribe, and even when she could’ve already given up because that would be most understandable to us who think her nothing but a socialite. Instead Solenn has persisted, with nary a complaint, and has been seen to eat more scorpions than her tribemates, has cooked for them, has shown much love for the people she’s been with since the beginning like Nanay Elma and Mico. And in the face of a lazy Karen who refused to do anything in camp, and bratty quitter Princess, it does seem like Solenn has won by all counts. Because in fact, these images of the Pinay celebrity as castaway can only be a welcome addition to the discourse on popular culture and kawomenan (a by-word for the interest in and penchant for products by, for and about the Filipino woman). Of course there’s the fact of editing and a Survivor creative team that decides which parts of raw footage will be shown to us as viewers, and yes this in itself is replete with capitalist goals to lord over the ratings. But too, that it is these images of the female celebrity castaways that are shown us has to count for something – it’s not only different, it’s also something that can only be part of a (finally!) changing Filipina image, one that can only be welcome in the face of beauty-clinic-manufactured celebrities that’s become the order of these days. And there lies Survivor Philippines, Celebrity Showdown’s value at this point in time. For one season at least, in the midst of Filipinized versions of Koreanovelas and actresses-turned-supermodels battling it out on primetime television, there’s the grit and grime and dirt and despair of celebrities-turned-castaways, turned real people and real women and men, fighting it out for the top prize. This is the celebrity showdown, Pinoy-style. And I dare say, it’s one that’s difficult to beat, love life, exes and all. - GMANews.TV