Survivors, he reality Telecinco, is facing the final stretch of the competition and, therefore, the narrative focuses even more on the contestants' bodies. A good part of the spectacle now consists of comparing and evaluating their nakedness at the beginning of the broadcasts and how it is in the last ones. Before and after images have been spread on social networks and television platforms.
The body becomes the space of dramatization, the battlefield. The physical appearance and the ravages caused by hunger, the sun and resistance are what demonstrate the sacrifice of the contestants. The conflicts of the reality shows They are induced and manipulated, and for this reason, the body takes on a key role in the narrative. Physical deterioration is indisputable and, therefore, supports a hypothesis. TRUE The bodies of the "survivors" in the final stretch of the show, the display of malnutrition, burned or wrinkled skin, loss of muscle mass, tangled hair, lack of hygiene, and sweat are the hallmarks of reality, of the extreme harshness of the experience. The female body is also subjected to an extra judgment. Emotionally coercing a contestant to cut her hair in exchange for being able to talk to her young son or judging another contestant's physique because she has developed a belly instead of losing weight demonstrates the patriarchal dimension that exists in this control of the body. They fabricate suspicions of a possible pregnancy and invite her to take a test publicly, after she has had to reveal details of her sexual behavior. Disguised as a game, as a contest test, what is actually symbolic violence is inflicted. A kind of punishment is inflicted on those who do not meet physical expectations in order to have material to dramatize the realityThe contestant's belly (which she herself tried to hide from the scrutiny of television and her own fellow contestants) was caused by abdominal distension resulting from excessive consumption of energy drinks to resist survival. In the end, the mystery is solved, but before that, the accusation, public debate, and criticism of non-normative or non-hegemonic physiques have been made a spectacle. It's a violation of privacy that isn't perceived as such because television has accustomed us to this form of social control over women's bodies.
The more radical the deterioration and the leanness, the more meaningful the epic nature of the contest. A message of moral worth is constructed around contestants capable of withstanding media penance. Survivors and similar formats become a kind of mystical transformative experience. Whoever wins achieves a kind of redemption, as if it were a journey toward purification. The viewer validates this humiliation and mistreatment of the contestants. And the finalists' bodies bear the mark of the cultural and media discourses of our time.
