Survivor Cook Islands and Other Reality TV Blurring Away Fiction and Nonfiction Lines

Survivor Cook Islands and Other Reality TV Blurring Away Fiction and Nonfiction Lines by Roxanne McDonald

It has come to our attention that now actors are appearing on reality TV shows.

How pitiful is this?

We get wannabe stars on reality TV game shows all the time. This season on The Flavor of Love, for example, wannabe singing star Krazy was finally booted ‘cause she wasn’t there for her man but for a record deal. (Ironically, sort of, another reality TV player who didn’t necessarily show inclinations toward becoming famous, BuckWild, as soon as she took a stand against the return of New York and walked off the show, is now a co-announcer on Vh1 between shows, including The Flavor of Love.)

On multiple seasons of The Bachelor,

women were let go because it appeared that they (Jenna, Susan, and others) were there for their close-ups and not for the closeness of the spotlighted man. And even Jack Benza (not his real name) created a performing monster by doing everything the producers wanted and therefore getting asked back on some thirty-plus reality TV shows, has “acted” his way into reality TV history.

And those with such a wish most often do go on to do cameos, to join established shows, even host their own shows. Elisabeth Hasselbeck (with a most musical name, for starters), who strained and struggled and strategized on Survivor: Australian Outback (when she was Elisabeth Filarski), now co-hosts The View with Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, and Star Jones. Ant, the marginal comic on the second (or third?) season of Last Comic Standing does a lot of high profile “acting”, including bringing us “Ant’s Rant”; hosting and narrating (sounding a lot like Amazing Race’s narrator, Al Trautwig) Celebrity Fit Club; and commandeering the U.S. of ANT.

We know, too, that the “reality” of such engaging shows as Survivor is “edited”, shaped to be alluring, addictive, and controversial. Take anything out of its main context and turn it into juicy subtext, and you have all you need for good TV these days.

And we get the lion’s share of MGM and other big names appearing on what will now be forever known as celebreality shows, segments and vignettes and competitions feature everyone from Ted Lange of the original Love Boat series competing to get fit to Danny Bonaduce (need it be said he was the adorable drumming redhead on The Partridge Family—the only kid to have more wisecracks than the legendary comics of the time) starring in his own boxing match with himself.

But now we have actors not billing themselves or getting billed as established actors appearing on reality TV shows that are or have been traditionally for the common folk to participate in. In this week’s (October 23rd’s) issue of either TV Guide or TNE (you know, that grocery store impulse rag we read but won’t admit to reading), a bulletin points out how Jonathan Penner—

the one who is purported on the show as a writer—is actually an experienced actor who has appeared on Grapevine, The Naked Truth, and Rude Awakening. It’s not like the information is covert; his bio on the CBS official Survivor site does list such credits. But it is curious that a show that is not completely scripted, or, let’s say, is not complete fiction, now accepts contestants who act as if they are starving, hating, competing to outwit, outplay, and outlast. Is the experience not as real for him as it is for the others? As the only one who has been exiled more than once is he instead swooped off to rest in a star trailer? Will this credit be a boon to his resume and continuing career once he is evicted from the island or once he wins?

And now, does it matter anymore?

The lines are so damned blurred at this point I am once again afeard that them whippersnappers are gonna end up outrunning predators and poachers for their lives ala the “contestants” (Arnold Schwarzenegger, for one) on shows like The Running Man…which is at this moment in history still a science fiction but which anticipates and foretells the ushering in of fight to the death reality TV that, like coliseum crowds, we will all sit around and cheer and jeer at…forgetting what is reality TV and what is real life and death.

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