Burly Surviving Men Travel and Discover Things People Already Traveled to and Discovered Before Them
Posted by sarah on April 9, 2009 @ 5:28 pm | rants
that'll teach the snake to live indigenously where Bear is trying to survive on camera
In the cases of the OMG SURVIVOAR shows Man vs. Wild and Survivorman (seriously, could they get any more HEY BRAH with those names?), the buff and courageous hosts teach us what it’s like to survive in extreme environments. They risk their lives and endure deserts and jungles. They eat things like bovine eyes and steam lizards in urine. So brave, right? Isn’t it awesome that a burly white dude brah took it upon himself to enlighten us about how to survive?
The thing is, people have already been surviving. And have been surviving in those places forever and ever. Why not just show them? Give them a camera, an interpretor, an accompanying historian? There are so many ways to explore undeveloped countries and extreme environments without this kind of boy scout Captain America spin to it. To me, these shows tread on the line of “nature/cultural awareness” and “OMG YOU DO WAT!”
The Travel Channel already has a show where a portly host eats “bizarre” things in the name of the “cultural enlightening” of the average American audience (more on this in a future post), so why did they need to take it a step further and have a GUY NAMED BEAR travel to different countries and eat indigenous plants and animals things to survive?
I highly doubt anybody actually watches the show for real information on how to survive (if they did, they have more problems than just watching a TV to learn survival skills. Like any show, there is editing involved and many hands the shows passed through for the ultimate end product.) People watch these shows for entertainment purposes, which is what worries me because Man vs. Wild and Survivorman portray undeveloped countries in largely a negative (or at least undesireable) light.
Take the Top 10 lists on the Man vs. Wild website. We see Africa (yup, the entire continent of Africa) associated with diarrhea and bushmen. Indonesia bring memories of “vipers, crocs and volcanoes.” That’s quite a different take on the country Anthony Bourdain visited in his travels.
I understand that at their best intent (and testosterone-riddled-money-making aside), these shows intentionally try to explore barely-inhabited areas for educational purposes, but foreign places – specifically Africa and South East Asia – are already portrayed in a negative manner in American media. I feel like until such places are commonly shown in a more positive light (as with the case with Bourdain’s show No Reservations), survival shows should either keep their focus on North America or re-examine how they choose to document other countries.
I am just pretty much sick of buff white guys showing me how to survive in places where people have already done it or are still doing it – without a safety crew, cameras, TV contract and probably a gazillion dollars in life insurance policies.
My name is Sarah. Half Japanese, half Irish-Polish-Lithuanian. I majored in East Asian Studies and yet somehow am working as a web and graphic designer. Go figure.
I completely agree. Not only are shows like this strengthening the gap between the east and west by showing/portraying these areas of the world in a negative light with harsh living conditions, they are also discouraging tourism to said countries which is unfortunately, what many of them survive on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people tell me they were planning on going to such and such a country for a holiday before cancelling when they read/watched all the horrible things that could possibly happen in that country.
Good point about the tourism aspect. I saw an interview on the Colbert Report the other day where a lady came out with a book explaining why giving aid to Africa encourages corruption and that people should invest in emerging companies and tourism instead. But you would never know that there were places to tour to or that Africa even has its own stock market with these sorts of shows.
Seriously. I feel quite saddened by the recent decline in tourism in Africa. There has recently been an increase in lion killings by African farmers who claim to be ‘protecting’ their livestock. They use this very deadly pestacide and by sprinkling it over the corpses of freshly killed cattle, kill the lions shortly after consuming it. Since most of (west) Africa’s income is from foreigners coming for safari tours the lack of lions has increased this business. Not only is it bad for the economy, how about the entire fucking eco-system?
Unfortunately due to the publicity surrounding the harsh levels of crime in Johannesburg South Africa (which happens to be the rape and murder capital of the world) tourism in Africa is down regardless.