Australian Survivor Is Fixated On Loyalty — & It’s Women Who Suffer

Survivor is one of the most culturally important television shows of our generation.

There, I said it.

It might seem like a gross exaggeration, as there's a temptation to view Survivor as how it presents itself at first glance: a bunch of hot people get dumped on a deserted island and lie, cheat and backstab their way to the crown. But there's so, so much more going on beneath the surface.

In my humble, Survivor-obsessed opinion, Survivor is the show — perhaps more than any other — that successfully holds a mirror up to our society. With over 44 seasons of the U.S. iteration (and countless globally), we've seen how religion can be used to manipulate other people, just as it can in the real world. We saw how Richard Hatch — the first gay contestant and first-ever winner — dealt with conversations about his sexuality amidst conservative and homophobic castmates. We saw how the real-world pattern of not believing victims of sexual harassment can bleed into the television screen when season 39 contestant, Dan Spilo, inappropriately touched female castmates, who were then chastised, not believed, and accused of using it to further themselves in the game.

But the latest evolution of the U.S. seasons displays an institution that is changing alongside the cultural zeitgeist. The show's host and producer Jeff Probst officially recently dropped the "guys" portion of his famous phrase spoken before challenges ("Come on in, guys!") to be more inclusive with his language. Conversations about race are finally making their way to the silver screen to address a cycle of unconscious bias that historically favoured white players.

"I was so proud because we have four Black contestants in Survivor. And then it always happens, where at one point, the Black contestants get booted out — Boom! Boom! Boom! — and then that's exactly what this is right now," season 42 contestant Drea Wheeler said at tribal council after the third Black person in a row was voted off the show.

During the 2020 Survivor: Winners at War finale, Sarah Lacina made a historical speech when she drew attention to the gender bias that operated in the game. Despite playing the game similarly to her long-term ally Tony Vlachos (who went on to win the season), Lacina was criticised heavily for her vicious gameplay and realised the Jury didn't see her in the same light as they did Vlachos.

"If a woman in this game lies, cheats and steals, then she's fake, she's a phony, and she's a bitch. If a guy does it, it's good gameplay," she said. "It's a gender bias. It holds me back, it holds other women back from playing the game the way we should be allowed to play the game." It's a hard truth that many women have experienced in their lives — even subtly — but Survivor is like life on steroids, with small, constant microaggressions and cultural rhetorics magnified to the point where it becomes impossible to ignore. Because of her speech, Probst himself admitted his own history of gender bias over the 20-year lifespan of the show. Because of contestants drawing attention to the racial inequities that prevail in the show and a growing attempt to have Survivor better reflect reality, the network, CBS, committed to 50% non-white casting across all of its reality shows.

Survivor's attempts to course correct play an important role in understanding how our perception of culture, race and gender have changed over the years. After all, it is a microcosm of society. But when it comes to the Australian iteration of the show, it's clear that Australia as a society has a long, long way to go.

Australian Survivor and toxic masculinity almost go hand-in-hand. It's not a new feature of the show by any means. Players making openly sexist comments have constantly featured, including 2018's Zach Kozyrski, who famously said, "Aussie men were once regarded as some of the toughest men on the planet, but not anymore", crediting man buns and skinny-leg jeans for the so-called demise of men. This is the same man who also said the only possible challenge a woman might beat him in was a dish-washing challenge.

And while Kozyriski's comments can be easily passed off as a gross exaggeration of sexism and toxic masculinity — almost a caricature of a villain — the reality of how men operate in Australian Survivor isn't far off.

In almost every season, it's expected for there to be a boys' club — a group of bravado men who seem to run the show thanks to their strong physiques, being the breadwinners (or in this case, fish-hunters), and their obsession with loyalty. In the 2022 season, Jordie Hansen (an initial member of the season's boys' club) claimed his strategy was "Blue strong, male strong", citing the tribe's women as the reason why they were losing challenges, which was blatantly false.

This obsession with loyalty and 'sticking with the boys' is of little surprise. After all, Australia's obsession with mateship, often paraded by stories like the ANZAC legend, has pervaded Australian consciousness, with over 58% of people saying it's the value that best represents Australia (2022 YouGov/Havas survey). Mateship — or "companionship or friendship, especially between men" (thanks, Google) — is synonymous with what it means to be Australian. A good bloke. A larrikin. Loyal.

Men in Australian Survivor will often value this loyalty over strategy — and the edit is in their favour. Players like Mat Rogers and Lee Carseldine are painted as 'Good Guys', building gameplay based on the concept of loyalty instead of, y'know, making moves.

But in Survivor, contenders are asked to subtly manipulate their way through social, physical, and mental challenges, utilising their own knowledge of the game to outwit, outplay and outlast their tribemates. It's an incredibly complex game with multiple layers — at all points, contestants need to consider not just how they're perceiving others, but also how they're being perceived. The complexity of needing to vote out, deceive and manipulate fellow tribemates while still convincing them to give you the final crown. Australia's seasons have a tendency to bypass this — instead favouring 'being in the numbers', a lack of independent thought, and a willingness to stay true to your alliances.

This obsession with mateship and masculinity isn't just lazy, it's sexist. Noted historians such as Miriam Dixon have challenged the concept of mateship, arguing that it's "deeply antipathetic to women" — a sentiment that's clearly evident in Australian Survivor.

Whilst Hansen was going off about the strength of the men on his season, he also belittled his female tribemates, labelling them as "little" and "weak". That same season, we saw the 5'3" Shay Lajoie win the most individual immunity challenges and officially take the much-coveted title of 'Challenge Beast'.

Sam Gash played Australian Survivor two times. The first was in 2017 when she met her soon-to-be husband, Mark, and the second (and perhaps most controversial) in Blood v Water. She reached villain status after successfully outsmarting her ally and game-threat, Jesse, after she convinced him to let her hide his idol for him. He eagerly accepted, and that night, Sam turned on him, voted him out, and stole his idol.

It's a genius move that should have garnered praise. A perfect example of the outwit, outplay, outlast mentality the show is built on. In an American context, Sam's move would be held in high esteem. Individualism is a core value in the U.S. zeitgeist, and as a result, the American populous buy into an 'everyone for themselves' culture, where individuals are responsible for their own lives and need to climb over each other in order to 'make it'. In the American iteration of Survivor, players are often praised for making big moves and for backstabbing and outsmarting alliance members. But in Australia, it's a completely different story.

In Australia, Sam's perfect gameplay was met with severe backlash from both the real world and tribemates. When she was eventually eliminated from the game, a Jury Villa episode revealed that her castmates completely iced her out, even after the game was over. In the eyes of both the public and the contestants, Jesse's lack of understanding of the game was Sam's fault.

For season one's Flick Eggington, Brooke Jowett and El Rowland, their reliance on a women's alliance was the only way they could combat the mateship rhetoric that plagued their game. But in doing so, they were not only dubbed the 'Mean Girls', but they also received death threats.

“I think if it was a three-guy alliance, they’d be labelled as the ‘Strong Guys’ alliance. To call us ‘Mean Girls’ — what is that based on? I haven’t done or said anything mean," Rowland said in a news.com.au interview back in 2016. “We’re three strong girls who have seen our opportunity and have taken that. We’re good at challenges and we’re good at our social game.”

In justifying their gameplay, the trio said that they had assumed their positions because the men in their alliance had no idea how to play the game. Obviously, the double standards here are shining. Women are critiqued for finding innovative and resourceful ways to play a game that's not in their favour. Men are praised for playing the game badly — or, at the very least, rewarded for one-dimensional gameplay.

But while U.S. Survivor has addressed this kind of sexism directly in-game thanks to confessionals and heavy tribal council discussions such as Lacina's, for the most part, Australian women haven't had the same luxury. The glaring sexism issue that plagues Australian Survivor still hasn't been addressed on-screen. Conversations about sexism are only given light post-game and often in interviews with the media — not with Survivor itself. Their experiences live in a realm between real and imagined, and until Australian Survivor addresses its sexism issue head-on, women are forced to play in a game that is not designed for them — just as they often do in the real world.

It's therefore even more impressive to see that, despite the odds, women have been largely successful in Australian Survivor. Out of the seven rebooted seasons, four of the winners have been women. But it's not a success because of how they played the game, it's a success in spite of established cultural rules that don't favour women.

Kristie Bennett won despite the tendency for female players to be labelled as goats — a term used to describe someone who was brought to the end because other players think they'll be able to beat them. In reality, she cleverly played an understated, intelligent, social game that didn't intimidate others.

Olympic swimmer, Shane Gould, won the Champions v Contenders season in large part because of her stellar jury management skills as she appealed to the loyalty and friendship values that she knew her jury valued. Meanwhile, her opposition, Sharn Coombes, was destroyed for her lack of loyalty, despite playing an impressive physical and social game. Australian Survivor's obsession with loyalty and mateship was the reason why someone won — and lost — the game.

Pia Miranda beat out Baden Gilbert for the crown as she was a student of the game and a self-professed Survivor super fan. She utilised a 'smiling assassin' role to dominate over tribemates whilst being polite and amicable to their faces — a strategy many women have had to adopt in the real world as a survival mechanism. She surrounded herself with bigger targets, understanding that in the eyes of many, small women are not considered threats.

Hayley Leake won the game because she wasn't just supremely intelligent, socially savvy, or a challenge beast, but because of her understanding of strategy and gameplay. Acting as a swing vote allowed her to play in the middle of two tribes — ironically, the antithesis of loyalty.

Survivor has always been a magnifying glass on our culture. The boys' club and mateship mentality that pervades Australia's consciousness as a whole has dire consequences for how women's actions are patrolled and constantly ridiculed — especially if they attempt to break free of their constraints. In Australian Survivor, we see a world where this is pushed full-throttle. Women are villainised for making the same moves men do. They receive death threats online if they enter into a women's alliance, despite the constant pattern of boys' club alliances. Under the guise of loyalty, women are forced into submissive positions that only enable the males to sit pretty at the top.

But despite being against the odds, women in Australian Survivor have proved that they can manipulate arbitrary cultural systems to their advantage — using typical tropes, perceptions and predictable values to gain the crown. Just like in the real world, female excellence perseveres.

But to truly maintain relevance, Australian Survivor needs to evolve alongside our changing world. We need a post-mortem examination. The show needs to drop the mateship bullshit and start viewing the world through the multi-faceted, intersectional and multicultural lens through which Australia operates. If Survivor is a microcosm of our worlds, then it's time Australian Survivor started living in the real world — not some 1900s myth.