“Life Can Be a Little Bit Fluffy”: Survival Television, Neoliberalism, and the Ambiguous Utopia of Self-preservation

Abstract

This article examines the utopian imaginary of two survival television shows: Born Survivor and Extreme Survival. These programs focus on the attempts by survival experts Bear Grylls and Ray Mears to remain alive in the wilderness. After considering the place of survival television in the history of nature documentaries and its articulation of a “primitive” form of masculinity, it is argued that the genre elaborates a neoliberal form of utopia. Survival television dovetails with the shadowy side of neoliberalism, ennobling a precarious, self-punishing mode of existence in which one struggles to maintain one’s present position rather than improve it. Yet, drawing on a widely shared meme featuring Grylls, I conclude by suggesting that the conservative effect of survival television is tempered by the exaggerated nature of Grylls’s performance, which offers a glimpse into how survival might be perceived from a genuinely utopian future.

Medicalized reality weight-loss television and the negotiation of neoliberalism on My 600 Pound Life

“…For example, Joe P.L. Davidson (2020: 487) notes the many ways by which survival reality television ‘departs from the general neoliberal tendency of reality television’ by depicting ‘the failed promise of neoliberalism’. I find this in my own research on globally circulated reality television series about weight-loss and fatness because they regularly expose their incapacities to consistently support disciplinary logics (Zimdars, 2015, 2017, 2019).…”