Outing Zeke: Why Survivor’s Episode Revealing a Transgender Contestant Sums Up Everything I Hate About “Reality TV”
The recent controversy swirling around the outing of a transgender contestant on CBS’ Survivor pretty much encapsulates everything I hate about so-called “reality TV” shows.
When they work, they usually cough up the very worst human behavior possible to show on network TV, damaging average people for the entertainment of the viewing masses.
Hard to argue that’s not what happened in the Survivor episode which aired Wednesday, in which competitor Jeff Varner turned to Zeke Smith – after a short soliloquy on deception – and asked “why haven’t you told anyone you’re transgender?”
That question, of course, played into the most damaging stereotype about transgender people – implying that Smith’s decision to be private about his gender transition was somehow indicative of a deeper untrustworthiness. That it came from a gay man who should have understood how personal the decision is to be public about gender and sexual orientation, only made it more perplexing and unbelievable.
Once the episode aired, the spinning began. Varner called into the show EW Morning Live on SiriusXM Thursday, saying he had apologized profusely to Smith and dreaded the broadcast which would make his actions public – originally filmed 10 months ago. At one point, he claimed his revelation was a response to Smith insisting he hadn’t deceived anyone, saying the 13-minute segment of the Tribal Council aired on CBS was culled from a two-hour session.
But he quickly pivoted back to his original line, accepting full responsibility for his actions, whatever that means. Survivor host Jeff Probst criticized Varner, while the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said it worked with Smith and CBS to make sure he could tell his side of the story when the episode aired.
Smith eventually spoke to People magazine, wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter and visited the TV show The Talk – which airs on CBS. And lots of people pointed out how Varner’s tactic backfired, turning the rest of the tribe against him as they stood up for Smith’s right to be private about his gender history. Varner was voted off the show.
Some have criticized CBS for airing the episode in the first place, but that’s like criticizing a lion for eating meat. This is what reality TV shows are designed to do – provoke extreme behavior from volatile individuals in an environment carefully crafted to encourage their worst tendencies.
When awful acts air, producers will say they’re creating a social experiment, or they can’t control what contestants do. But that’s nonsense. When things happen on shows which they fear will damage the brand – like some of the open racism which surfaced years ago on CBS’ Big Brother – they can edit footage to minimize or eliminate whatever material they desire.
Reality TV shows often ride a fine line between presenting controversy sharp enough to grab our attention in a crowded media world and uncorking material so shocking it turns viewers off or pushes them to hate the program. So Smith’s outing is the kind of controversy shows like Survivor use to stay relevant, profiting from the despicable actions of their contestants, even as they condemn or criticize them in later interviews.
Survivor fans and those connected to the show may argue that the long discussion featured in the Tribal Council after Smith’s outing was instructive. Like a reality TV afterschool special, it featured Varner providing all sorts of empty explanations – “I assumed that everyone in his world knew” – that Probst and the other competitors in the Tribal Council knocked down fiercely. When it was all over, Probst called it a “complicated but ultimately beautiful night.”
I call it needlessly exploitive. But maybe I’m just old school.
In the end, Smith was outed against his will to his competitors by Varner. And CBS compounded the impact by airing the footage on Wednesday to expose that betrayal to a national audience, with no indication of whether Smith had the ability veto the broadcast and protect his privacy.
Worst of all, this moment sets the bar for future reality TV incidents. Because if viewers accept seeing a transgender man outed on one of the genre’s most established programs, there no telling what the next unscripted show will try to gin up to engage our attention the next time.
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