This so-called “reality television” spans today from talk shows where you wash your dirty laundry in public (The Jerry Springer Show); or converted lofts where 16 human beings are trying to live together (Big Brother).

Those realities shows, which sprang first in the States, have today spread to the Old World and find their equivalents there: Loft Story, Ça va se savoir, l’Île de la Tentation (in France); Big Brother (in the United Kingdom); Gran Armado (in Spain) and so on…

Amongst those shows, one that has become popular worldwide, is the one where 16 castaways are isolated on a tropical island and have to survive during a certain period of time. The original show found its roots in the New World and was called SURVIVOR, and the following analysis can easily apply to all the other genres.

VIVOR saw the light on the U.S screens on March of 2000. For a period of 39 days, 16 castaways were marooned on a tropical island in the South China Sea (Pulau Tiga), with one ultimate goal to be the last survivor of this “game”. These 16 human beings were coming from all the corners of the United States of America, they were women and men of all ages (all adults of course).

Back there, I was living in Canada and I soon became one of the thousands of North American viewers of that show. I must say that it was quite intriguing seeing people impervious to criticism and insensitive to living conditions, fighting for winning a million dollars. Otherwise if they had not a strategy to win or to survive, they were heading towards a nervous breakdown or isolation, meaning elimination. Looking at them, from a TV screen, struggling to get through the day, I was thinking that I could never endure what they were living on Pulau Tiga. However nothing was deterring me from turning on the television and watching them do…

To conclude I would like to say that even if at the beginning reality shows are intriguing and catching easily the viewer’s attention, there are putting human beings down, taking away from them: privacy, ethics and values… Although this particular show has done five sequels since (Australia, Africa, Marquesas, Thailand, and Amazon), I hope that this trend will go away slowly…

When SURVIVOR aired for the fist time, viewers were fascinated by this new concept of reality TV. They were witnessing the construction and the functioning of

Some topics in this essay:
Prize Literature, Island Council, Note SURVIVOR, Pulau Tiga, , Armado Spain, USA TV, North American, United America, Jerry Springer, tropical island, living conditions, pulau tiga, learn live, reality tv, bad ones, 16 candidates, 16 castaways, tribal council, 16 human,