Survivor’s Imperial Aesthetic and the American Guise of Innocence

Abstract

This thesis intends to investigate the connection between the desert island setting in the reality TV show Survivor, imperialism, and hegemonic US ideology. It will be argued that the interconnection between these three aspect reveals a mythology of US centrality that is encoded in into this ideology, as the desert island setting is used as a space to affirm US ideals. This argument will be constructed in three stages. The first will establish the way Survivor’s setting can be characterised as a desert island, and the way this reveals the imperial lens of the series, and serves the purpose of affirming the ideology that mythologises the US as the centre of the world. The second establishes the way Survivor is specifically an anti-conquest narrative, which reveals the way the notion of global centrality is upheld by a paradox, as Survivor both draws on imperial techniques, while ideologically avoided the US’ imperial history through a myth of naturalisation. Thirdly, through a study of the way Survivor engages with the rhetoric of military benevolence in the Pacific, it will be argued that the naturalised ideology of centrality that the US hegemonically upholds, is linked to a denial of empire. A history of imperial texts spanning European literature and American film and television will be used to support this argument, to reveal the pervasive and enduring nature of the ideologies this thesis engages with.