Presidential Election

From the outset, Hatch understood that he was playing a game, a game that existed because it was a show, and that the show’s survival depended on how much money it made for the network. The viewers who mattered weren’t on the island but sitting comfortably at home, eating snacks and watching commercials. Well educated, comparatively wealthy, and armed with a background in corporate, he was the first to come up with the idea of forming an alliance, then persuaded his fellow oldsters to form a solid voting block that easily knocked off the youngsters. Once they were all gone, the tribes reformed, and Hatch starting picking off his tribemates, one by one.

Based on the model of majority voting, the final round came down to Richard Hatch and Kelly Wiglesworth. It was up to a woman to decide the winner. Would Sue Hawk support the man whom everyone despised, or would she vote for the woman who was almost—but not quite–as hated by the other players on the island? Here was Sue Hawk’s famous justification for her choice:

This island is full of, pretty much, only two things: snakes and rats. And in the end of Mother Nature, we have Richard the snake, who knowingly went after prey; and Kelly, who turned into the rat that ran around like rats do on this island, trying to run from the snake. I believe we owe it to the island spirits we have come to know to let it end in the way that Mother Nature intended: For the snake to eat the rat.

Her logic, then, was that the worst person deserved to win because he was more authentic to his true self, even if that self was an fool.

Hawk genuinely loathed Hatch, yet the then-president of CBS, Les Moonves, speculated that his willingness to be the bad guy was exactly why he won. “The bad guys are often the most compelling characters,” Moonves said. “And people at home may have seen that and recognized what happens in their own lives, in corporate society or whatever. They have been thinking: ‘That’s why I haven’t succeeded. The bad guys are to blame.’” For that same reason, one might expect cathartic comeuppance with Hawk serving her revenge cold at the end. But no. By being an unrepentant jerk, Hatch turned himself into an evil godfather bestowing the curse/gift of fame on the entire cast. Hawk couldn’t have known what a monster hit the show would become, but she acknowledged that he’d made the game in his image, and closed the loop by declaring him the winner.

Hatch’s villainy not only made “Survivor” into must-see TV but set it up to become one of the most enduring—and profitable—series for the network. That summer, the show raked in money for CBS. If the network’s tacit approval of Hatch’s vulgar tactics sounds familiar, it’s because Moonves, who’d been promoted to executive chairman and CEO in the meantime, recently made similar remarks regarding Trump’s positive effect on his network’s coffers. “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the 2016 presidential race. “Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? … The money’s rolling in and this is fun. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

By going naked on network TV, Hatch exposed America’s cultural underwear. It may seem as if backstabbing and brinksmanship and humiliating yourself for peanut butter are necessary concessions to the terms imposed by the game. As “The Hunger Games” later underscored, the artificial parameters of “Survivor” presented competitors with one unswerving goal: to survive the machinations of the other players. (Non-American versions of “Survivor” might have two winners, and often did.) Surviving “nature” was incidental, because there was no profit in killing the castaways. Just get them off the island and out of the game, maybe crush a few dreams for good measure along the way.

But watch the first season of the French edition of “Survivor,” re-titled “Koh-Lanta.” The essential features of the game were the same: a bunch of high-conflict strangers on a deserted island voted off players, using immunity challenges put into place by the producers to prevent pure (boring) competency from taking over. But the French players reacted totally differently to the set-up. They were thoughtful, cooperative, and pretty good at sharing. They agonized each time they had to eliminate one of the group, quoting Great Philosophers to soothe their wounded souls. The man who won did so because the others couldn’t bear to let him go. So helpful. So kind. So caring. In short, he was beloved. Their mutual respect for each other was genuinely startling. France is a socialist country, you know. They value cooperation. (Cue the German invasion jokes here).

“In the current campaign,” Legum explains, “Trump is behaving like a professional wrestler while Trump’s opponents are conducting the race like a boxing match. As the rest of the field measures up their next jab, Trump decks them over the head with a metal chair.”

Quaintly, boxing matches can be fixed. But when outcomes are rigged, the reasons why are clear—someone placed a bet they couldn’t afford to lose–and Lord Queensbury’s 19th-century rules governing good sportsmanship still remain firm. Whereas it’s absurd to accuse a professional wrestling match of being faked, for they invert the classed structure of spectacle itself, letting the audience see its cheerfully crass desires mirrored in the simulated vulgarity of the action. Who would fault Sylvester Stallone for not being Rocky Balboa, even though it is his job to convince us that he is? Note that the inability to separate the character (“Rocky”) from the actor playing him (“Stallone”) is the very definition of delusion, helping to explain why Trumpers believe that liberals are insane. Why, it’s as if lefties don’t understand that Trump is playing the impresario inside a corrupt political system built on empty promises and falsehoods!