So this is an article related to basically nothing aside from what this episode made me think of. Originally I planned to make this article about the story I expected from the rest of the season and how that tied into edgic, but I figure I’ll save that until next week when the giant crushed up merge is nigh, so I can make predictions that will probably not pass. This week, I want to tackle something hinted at, especially with this episode’s swing vote Angela- morality. Specifically, morality in Survivor.

Angela is a character from the start that interested me, and as we go along this season she’s shown potential to be an all-time great character. Her story is essentially that she’s had respect and love for Naviti, comparing it to a family both natural and like one that she would help form in the military. They have not felt the same about her, making it known by trying to vote her out to compromise with the Malolos- unsuccessfully. She’s noted that they betrayed her, but even her one Naviti loyalist brushes her aside and condescends to her.

This episode, Angela was faced with a choice. She was swapped to a tribe of two other Naviti and two Malolo, one of which directly saved her from different Naviti who all voted her out. To be clear, she and James got along really well according to James, who praised her in post-game interview. She showed that graciousness when recounting the story of Dom and Wendell betraying her, saying she would not be here if it weren’t for James. Meanwhile, while Kellyn and Des did not vote her in New Naviti, Kellyn also showed that she didn’t much care for Angela.

However, by the end of the episode, Angela votes James out over Des, who did badly at the challenge. Despite the fact that she knows and acknowledges James saved her, she voted him out. I believe it was loyalty to the other Navitis, who she again compares to her family. Moreover, the storyline of her divorce comes to light, where she mentions that, retiring from the military, and her daughter going to college has stripped away her friends and loved ones, leaving her with an empty nest in the middle of nowhere. To her, while Naviti as a family were crappy to her, that’s still her family. That’s still a group of people she’s given her loyalty to- something that’s not hard to connect to her loneliness in life. That’s morality to her.

Now’s the time where I pretend I’m a philosophy major and not a baby scrambling for answers: I ask, what’s morality as we think of it?

Things we have passed down to us from parents, religion, and other external influences to make one a better person. Your parents telling you to treat your siblings nicely, your Sunday School teacher preaching about the Ten Commandments, your teacher getting you to help your deskmate, or anything similar to that. What we know of morality are things we learn directly. However, that all has to go through us and our absorption- and the older we get, the less we are directly told, and the more we learn that it’s not just what is considered right behavior, but what we consider right behavior to us.

I’m a 23 year old goof writing Survivor articles and not exactly a psychologist, but from what I can surmise, Angela is military, and through that experience she grew to know the value to people- and the value of being close to them and vice versa. It grew to be a moral to her to be loyal to people as they were loyal to her because of how close you grew to them in the military- and how they relied on each other to survive.

There were times in life where she couldn’t follow this moral and as such she had no choice but to lose people close to her. This has stuck with her- and to her the right thing is to stick by people she feels close to. Which is a shame, because everything I’ve gathered from Naviti is that they don’t give a slight fuck about her, which is a damn shame.

She’s following morals she pieced together on her own, not the textbook given to every human child about what is socially deemed correct. I mean, she’s not doing anything crazy- in fact, something socially deemed correct itself- but this wasn’t given to her in a compact, easy to swallow form. She had to work for that moral. This was something she learned and considered right. That’s the kind of morality that interests me- what people gather themselves.

If this was just about morality the article could really end here. It would be far too short and far too sudden, especially from me (aren’t you a few thousand words short, Cam?) but the situation’s offerings on morality stop and end here. However, I want to expand this to the concept of Survivor- where morality is strictly a thing you carry, and the letter of the law has absolutely no mind for morality and decency.

That’s what has always appealed to me about Survivor when, given who I am (the most obnoxiously rigid SJW in the Survivor fanbase), it should not have. Sure, there’s encouragement to have some morality or decency- at least more than the people you are against in the game or a jury vote- but Survivor does not at all require it. In fact, you can make decisions based on complete immorality if so desired.

An example I pieced together was during Heroes vs Villains, where I had to separate what I thought was right from what I knew was hindering the process in the game. Unsurprisingly, this involved Russell, who in Heroes vs Villains was nakedly an abusive boyfriend with easily triggered control fetishes that lashed out whenever he didn’t get his way. Seriously, go back and watch for him in the merge/jury era, the way he deals with people- from his demands that everyone listen to or kowtow to him or him yelling at every woman who looks to stray from his plan- that shit is scary. He’s an unholy creep.

The Parvati double idol play is beloved from sea to sea, but came with an unfortunate side effect- her not telling Russell about having her own idol aside from the one Russell gave her led to him getting envious that he wasn’t in control. This eventually led to his downright cruel move against Danielle, where he downright screamed the house down at both of them to force them to split and took desperate measures to split them up that led to Danielle crying from all the emotional turmoil he put her through while he lied about and gaslit the fuck out of her on her way out at his hands.

On one hand, as a close friend of mine pointed out, it’s very, very morally hard to condemn Parvati for triggering an abusive control streak from her ally that directly led to her losing the game and appearing tied to her. (I think their words were more that you shouldn’t, but I digress). However, as I said, Survivor doesn’t care about morality. As much as Russell was an abusive bully who took the slightest sign of losing control as a sign that he had to kill- whether Coach or Danielle- Parvati triggered that happening, and because of that lost her closest ally and the jury vote.

That’s something that shouldn’t have happened if you had decent members of society, but not everyone in society is decent. Hell, not even half. And since Survivor doesn’t care about morality, the impersonal goal of the game does not take pity on those who got Russelled.

If you want a more controversial example, I think the entirety of the Aubry vs Michelle argument comes down to perception of morality. Namely, to the idea that Scot and Kyle- who decided the vote- were pretty sexist in their attitudes if you boil down to it.

Yep. I’m tackling bias. This whole argument just got kicked up a notch. Really earning that RTVWarrior badge.

Sexism is a heavy allegation on such good people like Scot and Kyle, but consider the context of the season. It started with their treatment of Alecia boiling over, where she got pissed at them calling her a cheerleader and they responded by heavily condescending to her under the guise of hating her bothering Cydney as she recuperated (while being loud as hell).

During this, Kyle gave probably the most infamous confessional of the season, where he said that he was treating Alecia badly because she was a bad example for women, and he wanted to show his daughters how to be strong women by deterring them from being Alecia. With the blatant code in that comment, and their later actions, I would like you to read “strong woman” as “doing and being exactly what Kyle expects from women”.

I say this because Cydney flipped on them at Final 10 after the world’s worst patch job on the clearly aligned F3 men’s little baby fears of a women’s alliance, and they responded by insulting Cydney as childish, petty, and brooding whenever they could. Keep in mind this is while they destroyed camp and tried to manipulate Aubry into giving them their way so they would stop. I think it would be ludicrous to call someone as accomplished and composed as Cydney a strong woman even through several layers of derisive misogyny, but they did it- because Cydney voted against them.

Now let’s talk about someone who more directly ruined the game of everyone’s favorite men. No, not Tai- the most they’d say about him is that he’s a flipper, and not vote him. Kyle was still decent enough to him (remember it was Julia who suggested eating Mark) and Scot’s final speech compared him to Aubry negatively. Aubry was just as bad in their eyes, and it’s like… really?

It’s their reaction to Aubry that’s more baffling. Sure, Aubry did ruin their game, but she was directly targeted by those men multiple times before they lost power. Her moving against them is the most neutral thing I can imagine. Yet, they hated her for it, because they did not get to ruin her game; and I’d argue, she was a woman while doing it. Remember, Kyle brought this upon himself when he said he wanted to show his daughters how to be strong women by punishing a woman who was quite powerfully rejecting the way Kyle treated her.

That leads us to Michele, who really did nothing wrong here. At worst she relied on the sexism of Kyle and Scot to get ahead in the game, which, newsflash, women have had to do that forever. Navigating the biases of biased people is nothing new, and I can guarantee you not doing so can be mortally unrewarding. Michele didn’t vote out Scot in the fateful Final 8 vote like Aubry and Tai did. In fact, she used her underdog status to keep her hands clean and made it to the Final Three. This painted her as a woman who was traditional and undramatic enough to what Scot implicitly and Kyle explicitly said they wanted a woman to act like. She could afford to be their “strong woman” while they ensured that Aubry could not.

After it all, it would be easy and, in my mind, correct to say that Michele’s win was based on Scot and Kyle going against moral ideals to get their way based on sexist trends. I’m arguing that discriminatory bias is prevalent and frequent on Survivor, which you would expect me to do. But against my inner self, I am arguing that decisions made on Survivor involving that sort of bias are legitimate. You have no idea how hard it was drawing that statement out of me, but it’s true. Michele’s win is a perfectly valid way to win Survivor.

I could recite how Survivor is impartial to morality again- and honestly, I think this is the way myself and many others learned what a grip that immorality had. However, it goes deeper- Survivor is a reflection of society. The bias of society will therefore show up in Survivor. It’ll suck, but it’ll show up and be rewarded because it is in Survivor. That’s why I am opposed to the suggestion many fans have to make Survivor demographically identical to the nation’s census- because implicit bias will be encouraged and applauded if you respond to it by declaring it overrepresented by the people it is already biased against.

What has made the topic of Michele and Aubry so much of a “conversation” starter is that it’s an example of bias that went against what the audience wanted. There are provable examples of the audience getting their way due to similar immoral behavior. Not just in the general desire for blindsiding and gloating and getting angry that for some reason people are angry at getting teabagged when their dreams are crushed. Even more pronounced, it’s excused.

Remember when a mother of six had to relive personal trauma by taking out her teeth and people- my sorry uneducated ass included- praised it because she voted out an attractive woman and cried a lot? Remember back in the day when a woman was sexually assaulted by a man, and someone else used that to spread lies and misinformation to get the two people against each other before discarding the assaulted woman, then going on to dominate the season and get people to worship how cold it was? Really sheds a light on when those same people cry that rice serving and tea drinking are immoral.

This brings me back full circle to Angela. Famously last season we had Ben, also military, one who was profoundly affected by the experience. Yet, it was interesting to see how he was portrayed especially towards the end (as a hero no matter what) and all the benefits and privileges that fell into his lap- including some that arguably came from production itself. Meanwhile, Angela, despite committing to the loyalty she learned, has been treated like an expendable pest by Naviti, and who I firmly believe will be voted out by people like Domenick, who- judging on what he said about James pre-game- does not give us reason to believe he’ll be classy about it. I would bet he finds three idols in a row far before Angela.

Is there reason to believe that it’s solely due to their personalities of those involved? I mean, probably some. I can concede part of why they hated Aubry is because of her clear indecision on the crossed out vote. Part of why Naviti doesn’t like Angela is that she comes off as solitary and distant. But I cannot be swayed to believe that bias affects Survivor literally zero percent. While on the concept it’s impartial, Survivor is no longer a zero-sum game when you fill it in.

I wasn’t convinced when people said there was no implicit bias as to all of the women of color going home nearly in a row in MvGX, I wasn’t convinced when people ordered me to believe that none of JT’s words about Michaela were over the top and racially charged. And I certainly won’t believe it here. People are biased. People are discriminatory. People run Survivor. Survivor’s only central rule is to use votes to make it to the end and then win the jury vote.

At the same time… I cannot deny that decisions made based on those biased, even bigoted decisions, are valid in the effort to get your way on Survivor. The Axis of Evil letting a man who screamed abuse at a woman for being vaguely connected to those who stole food is deplorable, and I think less of them, but I cannot step in and say that they can’t play Survivor that way. They were close to winning, and I would have to accept Rodney as a Survivor winner, like I do that Heidik and Boston Rob are Survivor winners.

The thought alone makes me want to vomit, but until society adopts a system of not holding bigoted views and partaking in or tolerating bigoted actions, society is gonna be that way- and society will dictate how Survivor goes. As much as I want every act of bigotry to be met with a Jaison-inspired end, that catharsis is rare. As long as the world is fucked up, Survivor is fucked up- and to enjoy Survivor, you have to accept that it will be fucked up.

So here we are, Episode Six of Survivor: Ghost Island. Five Malolos, members of the “greatest tribe ever”, several with great, kind edits, have been voted out by who the show decrees is the most pampered brat this side of a Trump child, all while an asshole runs around with idols unopposed by anyone except a douchy model who thinks he’s burdened with masculine greatness. It is not the greatest place to be in a season.

But that’s the Survivor we have- a vessel for the crapulence of society and all its immorality. Immorality and morality are not encouraged by the show- though heavily implied- because on its own it is a base concept. People are simply filling in the blanks.

The sooner we can accept that it’s as poisonous as we may deem the society that built it, the easier we can react to it.

It took me far too long to, after all.

-Cam