http://www.metromagazine.com.au | © ATOM | Metro Magazine 195• 57The narrative complexity ofSurvivor
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of competitive reality television.
Dedicated fans of the American
series, I posit, are similar to fans
of other complex, quality drama
productions, who have a heightened
awareness of storytelling mechanics.This reliance on audience memory and the heavily serialised
nature of the American2TQUHUNQspeaks to Mittell’s view that
narrative complexity avoids reductive and simplistic storytelling:
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Indeed, each season of2TQUHUNQconsists of several ongoing
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narrative. While game show–like events are always involved,
it is this narrative complexity that sustains audience atten
tion and remembrance. The demands of an audience having
a memory are also what separates a show like2TQUHUNQfrom
franchises like the3NO ,NCDKseries, which regularly replay
key events to aid viewer recollection. When former2TQUHUNQ
contestants return on the show, viewers need to have watched
their previous seasons in order to grasp the changing dynam
ics between contestants. For instance, when Cirie Fields,
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was given to the audience as to their relationship dynamics.
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vide texture, tone and character depth for dedicated viewers.
Pleasure, writes Mittell, can be derived from deciding ‘whether
a given event might be a kernel or a satellite in the larger arc
of a plotline or series as a whole’.^16
The narrative complexity of2TQUHUNQKDV UHGHĺQHG WKH
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fans of the American series, I posit, are similar to fans of other
complex, quality drama productions, who have a heightened
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on(MRHCD 2TQUHUNQ, in which commentator Martin Holmes
compares the visibility of each contestant on the show and
whether they are receiving a ‘winner’s edit’.^17
Australian Survivor
An analysis of the adaptation of2TQUHUNQfor an Australian con
text allows us to identify whether negative audience reactions
are the result of cultural cringe, or whether there were major
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2TQUHUNQhas been to maintain the diegetic pleasure and formal
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the demands of the Australian televisual landscape. While
the American series would generally produce fourteen weekly
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minutes, occasionally airing three times weekly. The American
version would feature a cast of sixteen to twenty, with at
tention paid to racial diversity, while the Australian iteration
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majority were white and of a similar appearance. The prize
pool is smaller, too, with the winner of TRSQ@KH@M2TQUHUNQ
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