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But, at some point, both men agree to share time in "the little hut" where Ms Kerr sleeps. It's a wonderful silly comedy, and basically an excuse to see three great, very sophisticated movie stars pretend to go back to nature, a fantasy most of us have even munching popcorn at the movies. CBS has taken this idea, merged with it a game show format, and come up with Survivor: "real TV" at its "most compelling, real," etc. Survivor is about a group of extremely boring, amazingly dumb millennial people, now wailing about their lack of email and no McDonald's, who get stuck in this celestial, wonderfully protected environment of surf, sun, sand (but no sex, at least not on camera), who are trying to work out "relationships," stay on the island and get money prizes at the end. At the end of each episode, one of the "survivors" will be voted off the island, until I gather there is only one ultimate survivor, kind of like Cher or Ted Turner, someone with the tits and grits to keep going in this dastardly setting. Frankly, I'd give my left ball to be stuck in such a place--and I'd immediately shuck off all my clothes, and have one of those Perry Brass good times that I write about in my books.
There are two "girls" on this beach. One, Susan, is graciously dykey, although in the episode I saw last night she was seen shaving her legs. Yes, on my desert island in Paradise, I do want to be shaving my legs. And the other, Kelly, is all sport and appropriately brainless. Her great thrill in life is a Bud Lite. The whole thing is kind of Bud Lite. But, as in all network TV, nothing can be done that will either threaten the "sponsor environment," or show that "actual life" (meaning: something leading to real satisfaction) can take place outside of that environment. In other words, you can't show that the "characters" here, who are for the most part impersonating "real people," actually have what the kids call "a life." (Or something that makes them wake up in the morning with a clit-on.) So, what we end up with is that "standard American" existence, a.k.a. endless shopping mall "choices," at its most vacuous and dipshitty. Of course, some would argue that simply having an open, though gelded "real" gay human on Survivor is a breakthrough, but since we've already seen real queers in cars in Suburu commercials and true gays doing shopping at Ikea, I am afraid I am not so impressed. I would have been a lot more impressed if one of these dorks had actually taken a book with him/her to read, or said something that made me feel real intelligence was going on. Of course, I realize how retro I am--I believe that everything from teen violence to the rise of erectile dysfunction is caused by the fact that no one reads real books anymore and is able to talk about them. No one, as I put it, has an "inner story," except one already given to him as "default" by GM, Dreamworks, or Hallmark. The "inner story" used to be part of what was called the "religious make up" of a person. Religious make up is not something endorsed by RuPaul. But, basically, what I am talking about is that group of beliefs that you put together yourself from your own going forth into the world (referred to as your "experiences"), allied with the sense that there are other people in this same ship of fools with you. In this sense, the "survivor format," the idea that we are all stuck here, surviving, on this "island," called "life," no matter how big or teensy it is, should be perfect for our time. Or any time.
The 16 castaways upon arrival on the island
What could be more interesting than this situation (and huge numbers of dramas are based on it)? Everything from Robinson Crusoe to Gilligan's Island to the JFK World War II story is based on it: We're washed up in a strange place. We've got to survive NOW. This'll bring out all our heroism, all our mettle, all our resourcefulness . . . all our hair conditioner. Anyway, that is what CBS's Survivor seems to bring out. Hair conditioner. But there is that question: why is the show now so popular, and the answer, of course, is . . . envy. Who wouldn't want to be a millionaire, and who wouldn't want to be stuck out there in the warm Pacific sand-and-surf (all food and meds taken care of, real safety net provided) with a buncha good-lookin' people just a couple of ounces of cotton away from stark naked? I know, you schleps, you wouldn't! You'd think it was hell itself. You will probably fire off emails now about how bitterly cynical and stupid I am, since I'd rather be having a good time rolling around in the jungle bushes than having a Bud Lite in a hut. (The Survivor contestants are rewarded with things like a Bud Lite. Not a good merlot, not a genuine ice cold martini, but a . . . anyway, I'm sure Bud paid them a shitload of scratch for the plug, and it does show that our survivors are genuinely normal "'mericans," as lost servicemen used to say to me when I was an Air Force wife back in the 70s in Europe. "You 'merican?") This does bring back another "issue," and that is the appeal of "real people" on TV. Or any media. We now have "real" people on rap CDs, "real" people in movies, real people popping out of all sorts of electronic gizmos. "Real" people just cannot bear the thought of not documenting their realness. We all want movie stardom the way that young Catholic girls used to dream about becoming nuns first then saints. We are in the age of "real people," since so many people cannot be real at all. They are working fourteen hours a day, and somebody is always looking over their shoulders, even in the company can, where cameras now reside to make sure the corporate serfs are not goofing off and taking a long break. Friendship is now very much work organized (under the wonderful rubric of "networking," as in, "I can do something for you, you can do something for me, now we can be buddies"), which means that you have to embrace the sort of dorks that under normal, intelligent circumstances you wouldn't be caught dead with. Or on a desert island with.
So, getting to see "real" strangers on TV, getting to hear them talk, wiggle around, excuse themselves to go piss in the jungle: this is a real treat. These are the same people whom one could meet on the street, or at the supermarket, or in a bar, if one had genuine social graces. (But one, it seems, does not.) In the face of constant, frustrating boredom (the sort one finds waiting in any urban airport, where everything looks exactly as in any other urban airport), the banality of strangers becomes reassuring. It shows you precisely: you ain't the only one without a life. Everybody else lacks one, too. This is a cheering thought, and I'm sure it will hatch many other Survivor, voyeur-type shows. They will be franchised the same way Hooters is. There will be nothing shocking, delightful, or even particularly intimate on them, and that will be part of their appeal. To see that in extraordinary circumstances most people are as ordinary as . . . well, maybe not as "ordinary" as I am, but ordinary enough. Ordinary, but not ornery or orthodox, or anything that shows a kind of delightful kinkiness that might lead to a genuine connection. This longing for real connection brought me back to a memory of the grandma of "reality" TV, the old An American Family series PBS shot back in the early 70s, with the famous Loud family of Southern California. The "Louts," as Mad Magazine once satirized them, intrigued and seduced us. Everyone of them had a secret little place that he or she let us into. "AAF" marked the beginning of the veracity of Andy Warhol's famous dictum that in the future "Everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes." This family had star quality. They had BIG stories and they were showing them to us. Who could forget Pat Loud asking her macho builder husband for a divorce while she was chomping on a taco? Who could forget Lance Loud, her oldest son, coming out in dress? The Louds reveled in their notoriety. They had done that thing that only royalty gets to do and that Americans envy more than anything in the world: become famous (and noticed: "attention will be paid") only for being themselves. The Divine Right of Kings had been settled on them by the hard work of a video crew, who worked as tirelessly and selflessly as any army of courtiers would have done at the court of Louis XIV. The only problem is that Louis went on for seventy-five years, and Pat and her brood had to do something after the cameras stopped. Pat for a while became a literary agent, and she was my agent in the late 70s. I remember going up to her apartment on East 79th Street--she had a real patina of glamour about her, and looked great in simple black pants, red nail polish, and bare feet-and having glasses of vodka straight on the rocks with her. She liked gay authors. "My son's gay," she told me, as if the entire world did not know. We had an easy conversational relationship. She was very good at this: after all the entire world had gotten to know her intimately, or somewhat intimately. But . . . there are still those moments when you are completely worn out. When the great croupier of life has taken more from you at the gaming tables than you can possibly pay back-unless you are Donald Trump, big on ego, short of substance--and that is when the cameras and the fame does not work. You want, at that moment, the divine light of attention to be shut off. You want to go back to your blankie, suck your thumb, and have Daddy read a story to you in his own, reassuring voice. The sad thing is that for many people now, millions I guess, the story is no longer there. So they have to make do with a substitute, like Survivor, on CBS. A "true life adventure" with no true life. But the real "survivors" we know are the folks watching. And they'll have to get into their cars, or buses, or subways in the morning, and struggle to get to work. And survive there. Perry Brass's newest novel is Angel Lust, an erotic novel about time travel. He will be a panelist at Philadelphia's Behind Our Masks Writer's Conference, October 27-29, put on by the Lambda Literary Foundation, www. lambdalit.org, where he will also be seen in his performance piece, The Death of the Peonies. He can be reached through his website, www.perrybrass.com. |
Survivors Greg, Joel, and Colleen 
Survivor Jenna 
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