TV Review

"Survivor" Gender Battle Overshadows Disability

by Cameron Oakes

You can=t blame the producers of ASurvivor,@ now in its sixth incarnation, for wanting to stir things up and add some new gimmicks to attract viewers. The reality show has become more predictable with each run. This time aroundCbesides choosing the Amazon, a truly challenging settingCthe creators came up with two other ways to get our attention: first, the two teams are divided by gender, and second, one of the participants on the female team is deaf.

Even if the reality of the setting is questionable, this is a new TV situation for a person with a disability. In my youth, we had Raymond Burr as the wheelchair-user AIronside@ and James Franciscus as the blind investigator ALongstreet.@ They have been followed by a string of other able-bodied actors portraying characters with disabilities. Only relatively recently have they been joined by actors with disabilities portraying characters with disabilities, including: Chris Burke in ALife Goes On,@ Daryl AChill@ Mitchell in AEd,@ and Marlee Matlin in AWest Wing@ and other shows. But now we have a person with a disability Aplaying@ herself in a semi-realistic situation. How will she fare? How will her Areal-life@ companions react to her?

Battle of the Sexes

For starters, host Jeff Probst told a gratuitous story about how the female Amazon warriors had been the ones to conquer the wild river area where this game is set. This tale made the women whoop and the men roll their eyes.

Entertainment-wise, the male/female team division has really brought out the worst in the otherwise typically attention-starved contestants. And, unless the editing was skewed, the men were making more derogatory comments about the women than the reverse.

The men are sure they are a shoo-in, because they feel the women are merely Aeye candy@ and do not have the mental or physical strength they do. The women will starve because they don=t have any ace fishermen on their team. Other comments called the female competitors the Aestrogen camp@ and made some reference to AThe Vagina Monologues@ that would be going on there. Then there was the Magic 8 Ball, a Aluxury@ item brought by one guy, used to ask adolescent questions about the likelihood of certain guys getting together with the Ahot@ women on the other team. The men can=t decide if they are attracted to the women or consider them a jokeCmaybe their gut answer is both.

Predictably, the girls called the guys Acocky,@ but the observations they shared seemed just slightly more reflective than the men=s. One woman said that the absence of the men was a nightmare for her, because they would have been easier to manipulate than the other women. Otherwise, not a lot of verbal fodder from the women.

At any rate, if the sexism exhibited was any indicator of how players would welcome a person with a disability, I felt the deaf contestant was in for trouble. Generally, an excess of one type of discrimination does not bode well for tolerance in other areas.

AI=m Deaf@

No sooner had the women landed ashore at their new camp, than Christy Smith made her self-admitted awkwardly-timed disclosure that she is deaf. She then made the polite request that her teammates take some care (making eye contact and slowing down) when speaking so that she could read lips.

Her admission brought immediate grumbling, in asides to the camera, from some of the tribe who were worried how she would work out if communication were a problem. The issue was dramatically brought home when darkness set in; Christy was unable to participate in the fireside discussion and went to bed early in frustration. This was seen as a solitary and troublesome act by the rest.

The next morning was no better. As the group dispersed from camp to get things done, not one hearing person took the time to bring Christy up to speed. Selective editing or rude behavior caught on camera? She seemed used to the situationCin a Apoor me@ sort of wayCand was unrealistically upset over it. What type of humanitarian regard had she expected from the sort of people who try out for ASurvivor@? It is, after all, a group of shallow folks, all of whom are out for themselves and the $1 million prize.

Throughout the rest of the premiere episode, the deafness issue was not mentioned again. However, I was still watching for signs of it. At the start of the physical challenge, Probst gave rather elaborate instructions to both teams. The camera shot of Christy showed full understanding on her face. Were unseen accommodations being made or did the host simply take the time to speak in a manner that lent itself to lipreading? During the obstacle course challenge, Christy was an active participant on her winning team and it appeared that none of the men discerned that she is deaf.

Outcome

As the he-men lost the challenge, they were the ones to vote a member off their team at the drama that is the Tribal Council. But what if the women had lost? Would Christy have been the first to go because her deafness was considered a liability? Or would she have been spared as a politically correct token? In time, will her teammates start to see her as a person or continue to see her as a deaf person?

Follow Up

Week 2: The first challenge of this show involved blindfolding all but one of each tribe. The sighted player had to direct those with blindfolds through some tasks. As the women now had one more player than the men, they had to sit someone out. Surprise, it was ChristyCbut it was unclear if she bowed out or was edged out. Realistically, the only role she could have filled was that of the sighted Adirector@ of others.

Back at camp, Christy asked Jeanne to fill her in each day on the nighttime conversations she was missing. The night before, the extremely religious contestant (mandatory: one per show), Joanna, was freaked out about having the immunity Aidol@ in the camp. Jeanne warned Christy about this and Christy responded that such a worry was stupid. Joanna overheard and a fight ensued. Christy now had one sure enemy and Joanna=s anger was not based on Christy=s disability.

Then the women lost the immunity challenge. Before they headed to Tribal Council, Christy exhibited what seemed to be a newfound desire to finish the women=s shelter. It appeared she expected the others to march to her drummer and jump in to work with her. The others took issue with this. When someone finally did drop what she was doing and pitch in, Christy decided she now wanted to go fishing. Related aside to the camera: AIf Christy gets voted off it=ll be due to her personality or attitude, not her handicap or disability.@ The truth or a pseudo-PC cover-up?

At Tribal Council, after the shelter squabble was rehashed, Probst singled Christy out and asked if she felt excluded. She said she did and told Probst it was solely based on her deafness. I wonder. At any rate, she escaped the axe this week.

Week 3: There were, to me, no overt or covert signs of the deafness issue. Perhaps it has become a nonissue that the women have adapted toCplus, they have bigger worries as their camp is still not really in order. Another possibility is that the disability has been displaced by raging hormones. A challenge that brought the men and women together almost socially had the dynamic of a junior high dance.

The Future

It appears that the person most concerned about her deafness is Christy. Part of her personality seems automatically and constantly defensive about being slighted, even when the Aslights@ come from a reaction to her personality, not her disability. In order to seriously be a trailblazer, she should stop being her own worst enemy.

For the others, there are more pressing concerns. While Christy was whining that her contemporaries, the three Ahot@ young women from her tribe, were excluding her from an activity, the sex goddesses themselves were scheming about how they would go toplessCsolely as a distractionCwhen they merge with the male tribe. So, any truly valuable lessons about a person with a disability fitting in are being diluted by battle strategies involving the use of sexual tension and angst revolving around gender issues.

Tune in (Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. Central on CBS) and see for yourself.

Cameron Oakes is, against her better judgment, a ASurvivor@ addict whose father used to work with the deaf. As a freelance writer based in Minneapolis, she combined these two factors to write this piece.

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